It is official.
I officially weigh more than my husband.
Sigh.
Pretty soon we are going to look like a “10″ strolling around the streets of Fort Wayne (right now we sort of look like an “18″).
He will be able to stand behind me and you won’t be able to see him at all…..except for his hair, sticking up over the top of my head.
The sacrifices we women make.
As a pregnant woman, one of the questions I frequently get asked is, “Have you had any strange cravings?” As of yet, I have not experienced any really intense and/or strange cravings. However, I have noticed a couple of things. One, while I am not quite as chronically famished as I anticipated, when I am hungry….it has an intensity that is much more pronounced than in my non-pregnant days. When I need to eat, I need to eat NOW. The other thing that I have noticed is an increased polarization of what I like and don’t like. While I don’t think this quite qualifies as a “craving” per say, I do have to say that good food tastes better and if something sounds/smells/looks yucky, it sounds/smells/looks REALLY yucky.
Here is a short list of things that I have always liked, but for which I have a new found appreciation….
1. Crock Pot Stew: Yum. Maybe it is the time of year, maybe it is the fact that this meal has always been one of my favorites, maybe it is the fact that it in the “universally accepted as comfort food” category, but yum.
2. Yoplait “Whips” Lemon Meringue: If you haven’t tried this flavor of yogurt, you are TOTALLY missing out….it really is almost as good as a real live dessert.
3. Peanut Butter on a Spoon dipped in Chocolate Chips (preferably Ghiradelli): Better than a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup…and I am convinced it is healthier….less preservatives, higher quality chocolate, natural peanut butter….need I say more? (Oh, Nutella on a spoon is pretty good too).
4. Grilled Cheese: Again, another childhood favorite. Mmmmm…..and now, totally justifiable…babies need calcium.
5. Peach Pie: As of yet, this is the only late night trip to the grocery store that Troy has had to endure. He went to go get me some pie late at night and in the rain. What a good husband. I had one big piece…..felt a little guilty after I read the nutritional info (How can they fit 20 grams of fat into 1/8 of a pie? It seems like a physical impossibility)….then scooped out the rest of the pie filling, mixed it with a bag of frozen peaches, and three little bags of peach oatmeal and made a makeshift “peach cobbler,” which I convinced then myself was much healthier than the sinful pie and ate, in its entirety, over the next day and a half. Ahhhh….the power of justification.
6. Guacamole: I don’t know why, but guacamole is especially good right now. Go figure. Mexican food in general is pretty darn appealing most of the time. Shrug. Who knows.
I am sure that the list will continue to grow/be updated over the next few months…..there is still time for the pickles and ice cream thing to kick into high gear.
20.5 weeks
Pregnancy is definitely an interesting experience.
My second trimester has been SO much better than the first, and I am thankful every day that I am one of the fortunate women whose morning sickness was limited to one trimester. All-in-all I am feeling really good and have been going about life as usual.
Having just crested the half way point (we are now at 21 weeks)….my ever forward expanding belly continuously makes me aware of all the things that I used to take for granted.
1. Getting out of chairs. It is definitely getting more difficult. I am great once I get out, but I can see that this may become a problem…..
2. How cute “skinny people” clothes are. When I go shopping at the ONE maternity store in Fort Wayne, I am forced to walk past the windows of the non-maternity stores…..with their SUPER cute new fall collections tauntingly displayed for all to see.
3. Putting on panty hose. Oye. This is all I have to say. It is getting more difficult, and promises to become VERY hard. Putting on pantyhose is much harder than putting on shoes (and the shoes are getting tricky too) because they are connected in the middle, thus preventing the “bringing the foot to the outside of your thigh” or the “sitting Indian style” methods of putting on shoes that are becoming more and more necessary. Pretty much any bending over where I cannot stand with my legs apart is getting pretty uncomfortable….and threatens to be impossible in the weeks to come.
4. While we are on the pantyhose discussion….panty hose in general. So far, I have yet to find a great, or even adequate, pair of maternity panty hose. Even the specifically maternity pantyhose hit your belly in the middle. VERY uncomfortable…..a little hint for the designers of maternity pantyhose…..they need to go ALL the way up….the waistband needs to go right under your boobs. Right now I am buying regular non-control top (control top….WAY TOO TIGHT) pantyhose, cutting off half of the waistband, and pulling them up as high as I can. This has been working moderately well so far, but is a temporary solution. I will soon have to experiment with the queen plus size….or whatever comes after queen…..king?
5. Sleeping on my back (I have MUCH MUCH sympathy for stomach sleepers). I love to be able to sleep on my back, but according to all of the pregnancy literature out there, after the first trimester it is a bad idea to sleep (or even just lay) flat on your back….something about the weight of your uterus compressing the major blood vessels in your lower body…..blah blah blah…… Not only is it sort of hard for me to sleep on my side all the time, but all of my “educational prenatal reading” has freaked me out so much that I will wake up with a start if I happen to roll to my back in the night. I have found that lodging myself between pillows sometimes prevents the inadvertant and horrible “roll to the back,” but it also makes it sort of difficult for my husband to snuggle with me.
I am sure that there are many more thrilling, interesting, and unexpected things in store for me as we continue on this journey…… In fact, I have a feeling that in only a few weeks I will look back at this list and laugh at my inexperienced naivatee. 
