Now that I've done the Christmas posts (a month late), I'll catch up from there. This has not been the best pregnancy. Starting with historic reflux and indigestion from about week 7, I have been unable to eat a wide variety of foods. I also had awful morning sickness that started mid-morning and got worse as the day progressed. For quite a while in the beginning I could only eat bits of cheddar cheese, cottage cheese with a little fruit, pudding, applesauce, etc. I even started eating Gerber food for toddlers at one point. If I even looked at a tomato or onion or anything spicy I felt so sick. The end result was that I lost weight, which was fine at the beginning and typical in pregnancy.
I still tried to do things. In August I went to Austin, Texas, for my annual Society of American Archivists meeting. This was when I was feeling the worst of all, but God was merciful and allowed me a decent trip. Here I am with my friend Su Kim at an Italian restaurant near our hotel.
I went to Arizona with Jamie and Gina to see our friend Tracy and her husband and baby over Labor Day weekend. I was able to get through that trip with only one or two major incidences and had lots of fun.
Here we are at the Grand Canyon.
This one was taken at a park overlooking Sedona, close to where Tracy lives. It was beautiful there!
Jon and I managed one last mini-vacation in September and went to Gulf Shores for a weekend. Buddy, Betsy, and Harrison went too, but I don't think I have any pics. I was feeling pretty sick that weekend.
There was a period in late September/early October when the morning sickness went away. I still couldn't eat very much, but at least I didn't feel sick ALL DAY LONG. Throughout this whole period I could only eat about a cup of food at a time. If I ate more than that I felt as if I had gone back for 4ths at a bad all-you-can-eat fried seafood buffet. It was miserable.
In October I started having bad back pain. At first I didn't think anything about it--I thought it was normal pregnancy stuff, maybe the "round ligament" pain I'd heard so much about. I was still having problems eating. I think at that point I weighed 6 pounds more than I had when I found out I was pregnant in June. I mentioned and described the back pain to my doctor. He told me it sounded like gallbladder pain. He put me on a strict, low-fat diet. Then it all started making sense. The last time I had had the back pain (so bad that I couldn't breathe and should have gone to the ER according to my doctor) I had eaten a lot of cheese and eggs that day. Kim had thought I was having GB problems, but I convinced myself otherwise until then.
So in mid-October I switched to the low, low fat diet. I can't even have "good" fats like olive oil or almonds for snacks. This made life pretty tricky, aggravating, and difficult since I couldn't eat some of the foods that I needed in pregnancy. Add to this my reflux and indigestion stuff, and life really became fun. Since then my diet consists of 1% or skim milk with cereal; plain chicken or turkey, in small amounts; applesauce; sweet peas and other mushy vegetables; potatoes; and some fruits. That's pretty much it. It's pretty healthy really, but I needed some fats for the baby. I also needed more protein. One bad part about this is that if I eat very much chicken or turkey, I still had bad pain. Sometimes I accidentally ate things that caused attacks.
In late October Jon went to Sweden for about a week for a business trip. He had a great time! Here are a few of his pics:
Unfortunately, the last day of his trip I had a GB attack so bad that I had to go to the ER. Jon was flying over the Atlantic when I got there. Thankfully his plane arrived in Birmingham late that night, and he was able to stay with me. At the hospital they did an ultrasound of my GB. As the doctor said, there was good news and bad news. Good news was that the ultrasound didn't show anything bad with my GB; bad news was that the ultrasound didn't show anything bad in my GB. I couldn't have more definitive tests done while I was pregnant. The end result was that I was sent home the next day with a prescription for pain medicine if it happened again.
I have had quite a few attacks since then and had to leave work or miss work completely. My side or back hurts most days, but I'm able to manage the pain or just ignore it. If I eat just one thing, like a bite of cake or drink 2% milk, then I can have an attack. The end result has been that I have only gained 6 pounds during my pregnancy. As baby grows, other parts of my body have shrunken. It worries us sometimes, but my doc assures me that it's okay as long as baby is okay. Subsisting on this diet was not fun at all during football season, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. While other people at football parties ate wings, pizza, cheese dip, and chips, I was the nerd in the corner eating a boring turkey sandwich. I don't even want to talk about Christmas. It was the first Christmas in my life that didn't include making and eating decorated sugar cookies.
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