By Christine

As of Sunday, I’ll be twelve weeks pregnant. I was able to see the heartbeat at my first checkup, when I was eight weeks along, but because I’m leaving for a two-week vacation tomorrow, I won’t be able to confirm that this baby is alive and well until week 14. But I assume that it is. In fact, I’m positive I can already feel tiny flutters. Most people think I’m mistaken, but those same people thought I was nuts when I was adamant I could hear my daughter’s joints popping in the womb and sure enough, her shoulder popped every time she moved her arm for the first three months of her life.

Before I got pregnant this time around I assumed I would be doing this again. As the youngest of six, I couldn’t imagine producing a family any smaller than a total of five (parents included). That’s before I was hit with a tsunami wave of endless exhaustion. And as a mother of a toddler, naps are hard to come by. Let’s just say my little girl has been watching an usual amount of Sesame Street lately, while her mother’s been laying comatose on the couch, leaving drool tracks on the cushions. A family of four seems the perfect size right now.

Other than the tiredness, some pesky acne, and scary moodiness, I’ve had no symptoms. No nausea. Not even food aversion. I do count myself lucky as I’ve endured both of the former and would not wish them on a serial killer, but still. As a generously proportioned woman, I could use a little incentive to back away from the plate. In fact, I was counting on it. But no. Instead, I have a nagging hunger punctuated by stupefying exhaustion, which means I’m all about the convenience foods. Read: carbs. On top of that, certain foods, like meat and dairy have been tasting off. For example, I bit into a grilled burger the other day only to spit it out swearing that it tasted rotten. Everyone else’s seemed to taste fine. A spoonful of ice cream made me gag as I was sure that the milk they’d used had soured. My friend tasted it and declared me delusional.

So, it’s all about fruit, vegetables, pasta and bread with meatless and dairy-free toppings right now, not exactly the high fat, high protein diet I’d envisioned for myself when the line turned pink, but you make do.

I started swimming again, for the first time in 16 years, around week six of my pregnancy. On my first day back, the farthest I could manage without stopping was 50 yards, two lengths. Within a few weeks, I swam a mile non-stop. That’s 71 lengths. It was damn boring and I had trouble keeping count, so I’ll have to look into some sort of underwater iPod and a watch that counts laps, but I’m so damned proud of myself. My goal is to complete 2.5 miles and someday enter an Ironman Triathlon Relay.

My suit is starting to feel a little small as I alternate between looking five months pregnant and severely obese, depending on the state of my bloat. I’m disappointed to report that neither Nike nor Speedo seem to make maternity swimsuits, the bigots. Most maternity suits seem better suited to lounging on the beach than doing butterfly and freestyle, but I may have found one online that seems promising. I will share the link once I’ve tried it.

The scale is reporting a three-pound gain already and I’m only allowed to put on twelve more over the next six months. Tell me I can do this.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Blogs, Hippo in a Tutu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.