Thursday, January 23, 2014

Baby Showers and Morning Sickness


Nov. 9th- Just got back from my college roommates baby shower J. She is having her first baby in early January. It was so weird to be at a baby shower knowing I’m next! It was a little scary actually, like holy crap this is really happening. I’m almost 10 weeks along now so we are starting to move out of the ‘Is this really too good to be true’ stage into the ‘It’s on!’ stage. On one hand I was bummed that I wasn’t far enough along to tell my friend, since she lives in Florida and this was the last opportunity to tell her in person. Especially since she is going through it right now I want to discuss with her. But on the other hand I’m glad it’s still a secret because it was her day and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to steal her thunder. She knows she is having a girl and as I suspected there was so much pink in that room I was overwhelmed, definitely solidifies my decision to not find out the gender so people will only be able to give gender neutral stuff pre-arrival. I love the gender neutral things and that way my baby will have more color options. I feel like if it’s a boy people buy blue, green, yellow, red, orange but if it’s a girl 90% buy pink and the other 10% buy purple. I also had to resist some serious temptations at the shower- they had delicious looking cold cuts out and the Sam Adams Winter Sampler which I love. But I’d rather be pregnant than drink beer and eat cold cuts, I can wait this baby out and go back to both so it’s all good. The cold cuts thing has been funny, I never would have guessed I’d have that much of a problem giving them up but I miss them so.
Nov 10th- I've been reading up a bit on the science behind morning sickness, for the most part I just assumed, as a science geek, that there was a biological phenomenon going on during early pregnancy that explained the nausea and vomiting. But I also wondered if there was a bit of psychology going on as well because I feel like in modern culture pregnancy is synonymous with morning sickness and I kid you not the week after I took the pregnancy test is when I started to feel the symptoms and I totally was playing devil’s advocate with myself thinking ‘Is this all in my head? Is my preconceived notion of what early pregnancy is supposed to be like leading me to have this nausea and issues with food?’  Now for the most part in week 10(!), I am mostly over the morning sickness and I considered myself pretty lucky on that which is why I am looking into it now because who wants to look into it while they are going through it? Turns out for a long time the thought process was it was psychological in its origins. That made me think of an interesting experiment if it is even possible. The experiment would find women somewhere out there in the world that have no knowledge of these preconceived notions of what side effects are seen in early pregnancy and then see how many of those women actually get morning sickness.  In another experimental design, researchers recently studied morning sickness and determined it might not be all in our heads after all. In fact it’s most likely one of the first motherly instincts we have, protecting our developing babies for any foods that could potentially cause the baby harm. Things with potential contaminates- food borne illness, even phytochemicals in plants- are things women tend to develop a fleeting aversion to during pregnancy and in lieu of them we favor bland foods. Now I have read this after my bout and it describes me to a tee. I didn’t want raw veggies which is so weird because I normally eat tons of them. When looking back in September before I knew I was pregnant I no longer wanted salads and raw chopped veggies for snacks like I normally have for lunch. At the time I figured it was my palate getting bored with the norm but it might be because I was being motherly!
Nov. 12th- I feel like everyone around me is pregnant. I finally went and got my hair done today. I haven’t seen my hairdresser in over a year (I panicked in November last year and was convinced my hair wouldn’t grow even with a trim here and there so I stopped getting it cut so it’d be long enough for the wedding). I don’t actually know my hairdresser that well, I’ve only been to her a handful of times but she’s really nice. Plus I feel like we have the same mindset on certain things. I get in there this afternoon, in the chair, and I’m thinking she’s pregnant but I have this policy where I will not say it to a woman ever even if she looks ready to pop because I would never want to be in the wrong on it. I always wait for them to bring it up, because sooner or later it will come up and I’d rather look rude then ask someone who is having weight issues ‘When are you due?’. Turns out my hairdresser is 6 months along. It’s funny because I know she has a toddler daughter so I asked if she was finding out the gender and she said yes of course I’m too much of a planner to not know. Which I think is funny because in theory I thought that was how I was too (except I’d substitute ‘neurotic’ for me where she said she was a planner) but now I actually don’t want to know. She’s also the first person I felt like I have actually lied to about it, since we were talking about my pregnancy plans,  which we all end up doing I’m sure.

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