Week 12

Hi everyone, I know it's been AGES since I've written. But I figure maybe this way would be a good way to keep everyone up to date on how our Small Fry, aka, Baby Koehn, is a-cookin'. So, without further adieu, here, in bullet-point format, is how my pregnancy has been going. In a nutshell.

Leading up to this week, here are a few of the symptoms I have been experiencing:

• Starting in week 7, I had severe dizziness/fainting. Yes, I said fainting. Nothing a little hydration through an IV couldn't fix!

• A HUGE increase in appetite. Those books that say you should only eat an extra 300 calories/day (approx 1 bagel, without cream cheese) has clearly never been pregnant.

• Nausea off and on, but has mostly subsided

• Constantly needing to pee.
  

• Constipation. Severe. Eww.

• Occasional migraines-oh the agony! So miserable when you can't take a single thing. Sometimes a few sips of coffee seem to do the trick.
  

• Decrease in motivation/ability to work out. I am SO unbelievably tired that taking myself for a walk around the block is nearly impossible. Pretty crazy for me, considering I was working out pretty intensely, 5 days a week, before this "alien" has taken over my body. Hopefully in the second trimester I will gain some energy back to start up a workout regimen again.
  

That pretty sums up the first trimester. Here, again in bullet-point format, is a list of my most recent symptoms:

• A growing belly. NO JOKE. My belly seems as though it's growing by the minute. No pictures yet, because I'm frankly not quite ready to accept that it's ok to get "fat." (This is a whole issue in itself, one to be discussed in another post.) I never realized that this would be such an issue for me! (Well, maybe I did.)
  

• No cravings, per se, just a beastly appetite for LOTS of food. One thing that I have NOT wanted since the minute I found outI was pregnant is beef. Not steak, not barbecue, no slab of beef in any form. I can barely choke down beef tacos. However-chicken is a whole different story! Give me chicken in any form-baked, fried, in quesadillas, enchiladas, on pizza. Wherever I can get it! Weird, because I've NEVER been a huge fan of chicken. Hmm.
  

• Foods that I have wanted in my diet recently: yellow squash, eggplant, apples (granny smith or honey crisp) with grandma's caramel apple dip, lots of CHEESE! (hmm, constipation cause???) and wheat thins. And to be real honest, I would eat hamburgers and pizza every night if I could. I have never in my life allowed myself to do that, but this pregnancy has really opened up my abilities to eat junk food whenever offered! (Let's just say Halloween was areally difficult holiday to get through.) Next up: THANKSGIVING! Yessss. A pregnant woman's dream!

• (I really miss lunch meat. I used to eat it all the time for a quick piece of protein.)

• Horrible constipation. This is an ongoing issue. We'll leave it that.

• Indigestion. This is an issue that my NAET dr and I are working on. Gotta get that liver motivated again!

• I've been super super tired, but just the last few days have seemed to pep up *ever so slightly.* I'm hoping that this is a good sign!

Well, I think that is really as much as you probably want to hear for now. I must say that when people ask me "How are you feeling? Do you feel different?" I think to myself, "YES! I feel nothing like myself!" All these symptoms are SO foreign to me, along with getting "fat," I'm just hoping that the second trimester will bring me some more energy in hopes of feeling like a real person again. But as they all say, it's all worth it in the end! Cheers to our little Small Fry!