First we had each other, then we had you, and then we had everything!

As my first trimester draws to a close, I thought I'd pass along some of the valuable tidbits I've learned over the last several weeks:

1. Starting at about the 8 week mark, your pregnancy alter-ego starts to show up at very unexpected and inopportune times—and she is not nice.

2. Your significant other will start to worry if the sweet little woman he fell in love with is ever coming back.

3. You will start to pray (for the sake of your relationship and your sanity) that she will come back someday.

4. Prissy girls be warned: You WILL break wind in front of other people, whether it’s your significant other, your co-workers, or everyone in the produce aisle at Wal-Mart. You have two choices: You can either cough really loudly or you can swear that you just saw a wild, rabid duck running by.

5. At some point in time, you will go to bed at 7:45 p.m. and you will love it.

6. You will frequently be seen by others with a blank look on your face because you’ve just forgotten what the heck you were right in the middle of doing.

7. Being able to say, “Oh yeah? You try growing a human and see if you feel like (insert here: cooking supper, doing laundry, vacuuming the carpet, sweeping the floor, cleaning the bathroom, being romantic, and basically anything else you need an excuse to get out of) never gets old!

I can't wait to see what I learn in the second trimester!

I just began the last week in my first trimester and I think I’m more worn out than ever. I was exhausted before I even managed to get out of bed yesterday! My poor little dirty house just keeps getting more and more piled up by the day. My dog, Bubby used to come into the bathroom with me every night when I’d take my shower and lie on the bath mat in front of the tub while I took my shower but these days, he has to lie in front of the sink because all of the laundry that I can’t seem to get caught up on is spilling out of the hamper and onto the floor, leaving no room for the little guy and I can’t exactly blame him for not wanting to get cozy on someone’s dirty underwear! I actually went to sleep at 7:45 last night and didn’t wake up until 6:30 this morning. It was fantastic! I think I’ll do the same thing tonight. I’m hoping that my energy level picks up soon, otherwise we’re going to have to buy a new couch because I’m quickly making a permanent indention of my butt in the one we have now! Who knew manufacturing a human could be such hard work?!?

This has been a really tough week for me. If Tony were reading this, he’d just laugh and say, “Honey, they’ve all been tough for me lately, living with your crazy hormones!” He told me the other day that if he didn’t know better, he’d think I was on drugs. Remember those commercials on television telling parents about the warning signs of drug use in their children that described how your child may become really moody or sleep more than usual? Yup! That’s me! Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a rehab for pregnancy, unless you count getting your tubes tied. And I have had ZERO motivation lately. I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning and when I get to work, I just sort of sit in a fog most of the day because I can’t gather my thoughts enough to accomplish much. And then when I get home at night, all I want to do is throw some supper together real fast so I can shower and go to bed. Even writing this, just now, I sort of zoned out for several minutes before I remembered that I was in the middle of something and started typing again. It’s been so hard for me to concentrate. Sometimes women develop Gestational Diabetes during pregnancy. I wonder if maybe I’m the first documented case of Gestational Attention Deficit Disorder!

I recently read that the baby has fingernails now. Maybe that explains my blinding back pain: the little booger is trying to claw its way out through my spine! Pregnancy just got a lot less fun in week 12. Stay tuned for week 13, hopefully things will look up by then, but even if they do look up, I probably couldn’t focus on them anyway, what with all my pregnancy-induced vision changes. :-)

My mind has finally been put at ease and the weeks of torture that Tony has endured thus far haven’t been in vain: I’m not losing my mind, there is indeed a human being growing inside of me and now we have the pictures to prove it! For the longest time, I was wondering if those two pregnancy tests were right after all. Since I have yet to have morning sickness (Thank you, Jesus!) and until yesterday hadn’t had my pregnancy confirmed through ultrasound, I was beginning to wonder if there was anything in my belly or if it was all just in my head. It’s tough when you first get pregnant and the only signs you’re exhibiting just make it look like you’re turning into a fat mean woman! But now I have proof that there has been a reason for my crazy mood swings and bloated belly, and I’m not losing my mind after all. I’m just rapidly losing my waistline!

This is baby's first official photo, taken on ultrasound February 10, 2009 at 11 weeks pregnant. The baby is upside down with its little butt facing up. If you look really hard, you can see little legs and an arm. Love at first sight!

Today I had my first ultrasound! Leading up to this morning, I was excited, anxious and down-right scared in equal measure. I couldn’t wait to hear the heartbeat for the first time and I was in desperate need of reassurance that the baby was okay and developing just like it should be. Tony, my Mom, and my Dad all accompanied me to the Dr.’s office and after almost an hour wait, they finally called my name and Tony and I were ushered into the ultrasound room. First, Dr. Bailey lit into me about how important it is to get my diabetes under control (like I didn’t already know that!) and asked Tony if I was lying about my eating habits or if I really was being a good girl and eating like I should be. Tony, being the wonderful hubby that he is, told Dr. Bailey I was doing a good job and conveniently forgot to mention the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup filled brownie I had eaten on Saturday that had sent my blood sugar through the roof (Tony threw them out!). Dr. Bailey then pulled out the little Doppler machine that detects the baby’s heartbeat. He explained to us before he began that at 11 weeks, there is a 20 to 30 percent chance that we won’t be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler. But I was so excited about the prospect of hearing the little boom, boom, boom coming from inside me that I was only half listening to his explanation. If I would have been giving the doctor my full attention, maybe I wouldn’t have been so distressed when I didn’t hear anything when he put the cold wand to my belly. For weeks now, all I could seem to think about was how much better I was going to feel when I heard that wonderful sound of a little beating heart. So you can imagine how freaked out I was when I didn’t hear anything. Nada, zilch, zippo, not even the slightest gurgle. Dr. Bailey tried to reassure me that it was nothing to worry about, but I wasn’t having any of it. Just as I was imagining the worst, Dr. Bailey started to perform the ultrasound. I immediately saw the perfect outline of a little tiny human, complete with little arms and legs flailing around everywhere. Tony couldn’t believe that the baby was moving around so much already. He also couldn’t believe that I can’t feel it moving around inside of me yet. That’s when Dr. Bailey explained to us that the baby is only an inch and a half long and far too small to feel yet, but with all that activity, he’s sure that the baby is destined to be a fantastic athlete!

With our eyes glued to the grainy screen, Tony and I got our first glimpse of the life that we created together. I can’t even begin to explain what it felt like to see that tiny little human being moving around inside me. It suddenly makes everything very real. No more abstract thoughts about baby. Everything is finally concrete. I am a mommy. There is a life growing inside of me that was created by the love that Tony and I have for each other. I am so thankful to God for giving us this wonderful gift and I feel like a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that I know everything is okay. My first reaction to seeing the ultrasound was pretty much exactly the same as my reaction to the positive pregnancy tests: lots of happy crying followed by giggling. It was funny to watch the screen every time that I laughed because the baby would disappear for second until I stopped giggling, like my laughter was squishing the little guy or something. So now every time that I laugh, I immediately feel guilty for squishing the baby. No more Adam Sandler movies for me until after the baby is born!

Dr. Bailey also told me that with women who have type 2 diabetes, there is an increased risk of still birth during the last two weeks of pregnancy. For that reason, he is going to induce my labor on Wednesday, August 19th, exactly 2 weeks before my due date. Let the countdown begin! Only 6 months and 4 days until we get to meet our baby! Roberta Flack sang a song called, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” that begins: The first time ever I saw your face, I thought the sun rose in your eyes. I can’t seem to get that song out of my head today. I am already incomprehensibly in love with you baby and I haven’t even met you yet.

Well, it’s official. I am now a human pin cushion. I found out Friday that I can no longer control my diabetes with oral medication alone (which is what I have done since I was diagnosed in 2004) and I am now totally insulin dependent. That means that between checking my blood sugar and giving myself insulin injections I have to stick myself with a needle a minimum of 11 times everyday. Good thing I’m not afraid of needles or I’d be in serious trouble! I am also on a super-restricted diet of no more than 30 grams of carbohydrates per meal and no more than 5 grams of carbohydrates per snack. That may not mean much to most of you reading this, but for me, it sucks! Case in point: My favorite place to eat is The Olive Garden. To stay under my 30 grams of carbohydrates per meal there, I could walk through the door, eat 1 bread stick (27 grams of carbohydrates) and walk right back out again. I guess that puts an end to me and Tony running to grab a bite to eat on Saturday afternoons, because that’s literally all I could eat—a bite. My doctor doesn’t even want me to eat fruit—too many carbs! This is just crazy! Where on earth is all of my already-in-short-supply energy supposed to come from? I can just picture the baby inside of me, almost comatose, because it’s not getting enough carbs to even have the energy the take a stroll around the womb. When the baby is born, it’s going to refuse my breast and immediately pick up a phone and order a pizza just so it can get some carbohydrates in its system! The good news in all of this madness is the possibility that after the baby is born and I am finished nursing, I may be able to completely stop all medications. Here’s hoping! Until then, for some reason I can’t seem to stop humming Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”.

Bless Tony’s little heart. He’s been such a trooper through my roller coaster ride of emotions these past few weeks. To give you an idea of how bad it’s been, he said to me last night, “Wow, honey! It’s been almost 2 whole hours since you’ve gotten mad at me!” The tiniest things seem to set me off. Case in point: Tony was making garlic buttered shrimp the other night (I know, I know, I should be shot for getting mad when my husband is in the kitchen cooking, saving my too-tired behind from doing it) and he used all of the margarine we had left. The following night I got a crazy craving for garlic toast and when I went to make it, there was no margarine left so I launched into a tirade about how he put an empty container back in the fridge and now I couldn’t make the garlic toast I thought I was going to die without! Then when he pointed out that we still had real stick butter in the fridge, I proceeded to gripe at him some more for not using that instead of all of the margarine we had because it was a pain in the butt to have to melt the stick butter in a bowl when I could have just spread the margarine all nice and neat on my toast and been done with it! The poor guy just couldn’t win. So after I cooled off for a few minutes, I melted the stick butter in a bowl and used it on my garlic toast and apologized to my wonderful husband for hurting his feelings when he was just trying to do me a favor and make us a wonderful meal so I wouldn’t have to cook. I even let him have a piece of my toast, which is astonishing considering that I didn’t even share food before I got pregnant. So to all the husbands out there who have dealt or will deal with their wife’s crazy pregnancy attitude: Hang in there, pray that we return to normal some day, remember we love you, and remember that we didn’t get this crazy all by ourselves: You had something to do with it too! Oh, and when we offer you a piece of garlic toast as a peace offering, just take it and smile, thank God you survived another killer mood swing, and begin the countdown to the next meltdown. Take heart, in a few months it will have been worth it. At least that’s what we have to tell ourselves each day to avoid divorce court! I LOVE YOU, TONY!!!