Thank you, everyone for the comments in response to my question about eating. I have already used many of your suggestions, and my weight is on the upswing (I weighed three pounds more yesterday than I did a week ago (although my hair was wet when I weighed myself last night))! It was especially awesome to be reassured that my babies are good at being parasites. I don’t mind giving up my nutrients if it means they are getting them.
Although (at 15 weeks today!) the nausea has not left me yet (dangit), something marvelous has begun to happen. Jeff and I were at our favorite restaurant (a Chinese place that’s about as authentic as you could hope to get in the middle of Texas) a little over a week ago, and I was sitting there eating my sesame chicken and shrimp with lobster sauce when suddenly it occurred to me, I am enjoying my food!!! My heart began to soar! (Okay, maybe I am overstating that a little bit, but I had been force feeding myself for, like, two months, and it was very exciting.) I grabbed Jeff’s arm almost reflexively. I guess I scared him a little because he suddenly looked very concerned and asked if I was okay. “I’m enjoying my food.” He breathed a little sigh of relief, rolled his eyes at me, and told me he was glad and that I’d better eat up because I have weight to gain. Since then, I have had increasingly more time enjoying what I eat and less time force feeding myself, I need Zofran less and less (although I have gotten overconfident a few times and ended up puking in inconvenient places), and I am starting to have energy again.
I have to admit, for a while there it seemed like I was going to be sick forever (or a least for the rest of my pregnancy). I read all about how nausea goes away for most women around the start of the second trimester, but as the second trimester arrived and I felt no relief, I was certain I was going to be one of the unlucky few with whom the nausea just sticks (I already have an innate hyper-tendency towards nausea (when I was on the BCP, I threw up for a couple days every time I started a new cycle of pills)). Now I am hopeful that there might just be a few months of this pregnancy that are not miserable, and that makes me so happy.
We just got back yesterday from a trip to Chicago. Jeff spent the days in talks at a conference, and I spent them hanging out in our beautiful hotel room sleeping and watching TV. It was wonderful. Well, I didn’t laze away the entire trip. I went out a couple of days walking around downtown looking for maternity stores (most of my shirts are barely reaching the top of my pants these days) that I later came to find no longer existed (at least I got some exercise and ice cream out of those excursions).
When Jeff wasn’t in conference talks (at lunchtime and in the evenings), we wandered around the beautiful parks along Michigan Avenue (How the heck did they make that giant bean?) and ate lots of good food (The food of our city has proved very disappointing to us. I started to write parenthetically about it, and it started getting irrationally long (it upsets me), so I will just leave it at it is disappointing.), and even made time one afternoon to rent a car and drive out to the suburbs to visit some friends of mine (I lived in the NW suburbs of Chicago during my high school years).
It was really great for me and the little guys to have such a relaxing vacation. Between the rest, the availability of delicious food (Just to be clear, Jeff usually makes me dinner at home, and it is always delicious, but I hate deciding what it’s going to be. It’s nice sometimes to just have a menu.), and the easing up of my nausea, I have managed to get my weight back up to what it was before the nausea hit (well, just a pound or two shy). Right now, pregnancy is pretty good. (Although I am starting to get anxious for another ultrasound. It has been almost three weeks since my last one! (Yes, I know I am ultrasound spoiled.) I think Dr. Wendy will give me a fix at my appointment on Monday since I just got the doppler last time.)
Happy National Senior Health and Fitness Day, everybody!