pregnancy & weight watchers

So, for those who missed it, I'm pregnant again. I'm really excited to hold this baby in my arms -- but in the meantime, I have to endure the whole pregnancy bit again. It's actually nice this time around because both of my kids are in preschool and so I can be miserable on the couch in peace and quiet for a couple hours 3x per week. Unfortunately, this "morning" sickness is an on and off all day kind of sickness.

With my 2 other pregnancies, I was done with the nausea at about 15 weeks. I was terribly sick with Ben (partly because I was commuting 1+ hours each way and would get sick during the car ride). I wasn't as sick with Caroline, but still nauseous and had one really bad day of vomiting. I thought I was going to get off easy with this one because I had one day that was really bad of vomiting, and then I was feeling pretty good, on and off. But, around 9 weeks, I started feeling really exhausted and nauseous and that's continued on until now (I'm about 10 1/2 weeks right now). I'm worried that it's going to continue past the 15 weeks of the other kids, which was something I was banking on until now!

Ah well. At least now I have the perspective that it's totally worth it and to just endure through it. It won't be forever and it will seem like a small blip once I get to meet this little one.

Now onto my topic -- not to fret, I am not doing Weight Watchers while pregnant. I was musing to Chris the other night how strange it is to be pregnant after doing WW. I'm in a stage right now where food is simply unappealing to me. I'm not having cravings, it's more trying to find food that I can possibly tolerate to get down. I have to eat when I'm not hungry (which is a cardinal sin in WW) -- I'm eating when I'm starting to feel nauseated and I'm pretty much eating anything that I can eat quickly, which has meant carbs (pretzels, chips, crackers)!

When I was on WW, I meticulously planned out what I was going to eat the next day the night before. Now, I can't plan out what I am going to eat in 2 hours because what sounds good to me now may not sound good to me then, and in fact, it probably doesn't.

No wonder my eating patterns got so screwed up after pregnancy! And then comes nursing when I'm forever ravenous and eating whatever I can get my hands on. Before I started to feel sick, I really wanted to try to limit my weight gain (I gained about 32 lbs with my other kids -- I had no deigns on healthy eating with either of them), but I see now the pitfalls that I fell into. In these early stages, you just want to do anything to make the nausea abate. And after the nausea abates, having an appetite return is among the best things that has ever happened, so I eat with abandon. I'm going to try to eat a little more sensibly this time, but still indulge once I start feeling better!

good riddance summer

I must say that I'm not sorry to see summer go this year. While we have had some fun things going on (friends in town, vacation in the Dells), the majority of it has been stressful and difficult for me and my family.

Starting in mid-April:
-My maternal grandmother fractures her pelvis, has to go to a rehab/nursing home facility, for what appears to be about 8 weeks
-My aunt (mother's brother's wife) discovers that she has a rare and aggressive form of liver cancer
-My maternal grandfather has a stroke (mid-June), my aunts & uncles try to get both of them into a nursing home in southeastern Michigan instead of south central Michigan where they live
-The following week we find out that my stepdad has Parkinson's Disease
-In July, my grandfather suffers from many infections and winds up in the hospital two or three times
-In July, my stepfather starts to noticeably decline from depression and fatigue. He is hospitalized three times (turns out to be the meds -- he got off those and is doing much better)
-My mother's drinking spirals out of control and she checks herself into a rehab/detox facility at the end of August
-Labor Day weekend: my paternal grandmother is admitted to the hospital with chest pains.

So summer 2010, I'm done with you and I'm hopeful that fall and winter will bring some much needed stability.