on being pregnant. intimate details included.

 two years ago i wrote {this post} about how i keep ending up doing the things i never thought i'd do.

(thank goodness i didn't end up going to massage school. so glad i went with my psych degree.) 

reading back on that post, it's pretty amazing how little i knew about the future and what would come next. 

a year ago right now, i was positive i'd be in grad school this fall, working on becoming a therapist. 

and here i am. 

11 weeks pregnant. 

and happy about it. 

you know those moments when you step back and examine your life. 

you ask yourself, "who is this person i have become?'

um, yeah. pretty much. 

one of these days, when i'm done throwing up and being miserable, and have room in my mind for being emotional, i'll tell you how i came to want to get pregnant and that whole journey of being ready.

because yes, this happened on purpose. 

but until then, i'll fill you in on the past several months. 

on "trying" to get pregnant

while still working as a counselor, i made an appointment to get my IUD taken out. if you've ever had an IUD shoved up your cervix, you probably understand the panic i was feeling waiting to get that sucker out. something that painful going up, had to be just as awful coming down. so imagine my delighted surprise when, feet in the stirrups, staring at dr. barton's handsome face looking up my hoo haw, encouraging me to "relax. and relax. wow, you have some strong pelvic floor muscles, don't you." to just feel an uncomfortable pinch! and then it was all over. 

and a week later i was knocked up. 

can i just say how much i love the phrase, "we are trying to get pregnant." as if the word 'trying' takes all of the sex out of it. no, pretty much trying to get pregnant means having so much sex you are sure you'll never want to have sex ever again when you finally do get pregnant. which is ironic. but more on that later. 

as a general rule, once i've decided i want something, i go after it full force. i think travis may have been a little shocked at how ...aggressively i pursued this particular goal. the goal, body permitting, was to get me pregnant by sept. (and know that i know how incredibly blessed i am to have the fertility i do. the joke on my  grandmother's side is that she was already pregnant by the time the man hung his pants on the bed frame and apparently i inherited that too.) anyway, we were trying in full force. and remember, travis is gone two days a week at the fire station. we didn't let a little thing like that get in our way. 

also, trying to get pregnant is the craziest mind game ever played. after our third time trying, i woke up, on my birthday, feeling a little sick. "travis, am i a crazy person? it's way to soon, right??" i spent the entire month googling symptoms, calculating ovulation dates, and obsessing over whether or not i was pregnant. one night, travis had already fallen asleep and i was awake, reading up on heartburn and early pregnancy, because i had the heartburn of a middle aged, obese, cheeseburger eating man. "travis, wake up!" i shook his shoulder. "mmmhmm?" he mumbled. "travis, i'm pretty sure i'm pregnant, because i have heartburn and this thing says-" he rolled over. and i layed awake for another hour reading forums about getting pregnant. 

for those of you who tried or are trying for multiple months or even years, you have so my respect from me. you are so strong. because if you are dealing with the crazy mind games on top of the hopelessless of waiting, i can't believe how strong you are. it's enough to make you insane. 

i took two pregnancy tests way too early because i was too impatient. i cried looking at the negative sign. and then tried even harder to make that positive sign show up. i don't do well when i set goals that aren't completely in my control. (see every single post about trying to sell our house.)

so then the weekend before taking the pregnancy test that gave a positive, i was a mess. my family was taking a trip to island park, idaho, and i decided to go with them, since travis would be working and i needed a distraction. i was due to start my period that weekend and i went through several rolls of toilet paper obsessively checking to see if i had started. i'm not exaggerating. every half hour i was in the bathroom, praying i wouldn't have started. as we motorbiked all over, me on the back of my dad's bike with him going off jumps and popping wheelies, and then later kayaking in a very dangerous lightning storm, i wondered if everything would be okay if i was pregnant. wasn't even sure yet and i was freaking out about the possibility of harming a tiny life hypothetically growing inside me. trying to get pregnant will turn you into a crazy person. 

on peeing on a plastic stick and shoving it in your spouse's face 

i hadn't started my period by the time i got home from island park. we drove home early monday morning. the first thing i did upon arriving home was run upstairs and head to the toilet. travis was hot on my heels. "maybe we should wait until you're a week late." he suggested.but  i had had enough waiting. except that while splashing pee on the test, i started to doubt. maybe i had just been so exhausted all month from worrying and working out so much. maybe i hadn't really felt sick, it was all in my head. maybe the heartburn was from stress. i realized i wasn't ready to face the test. so i finished peeing and then left it on the floor and shut the door. "i can't look yet!" i wailed to travis. "you look!" he determined we would wait five minutes and then face it together. i brushed my teeth. we layed in bed for a sec. and then when the suspense was at the killing point, we ran into the bathroom, banged the door open, and saw. 

double lines. 

pregnant double lines. 

which led to travis grinning in disbelief, me grabbing the test and shoving it in his face, him telling me that thing is covered in your pee, get it out of my face, me screaming over and over I'M NOT A CRAZY PERSON SHUT UP SHUT UP I'M NOT A CRAZY PERSON!!!!!!!! us running through the house, kissing, me yelling at travis, who kept saying, stop telling me to shut up! and then us laying on the bed together, crying. yeah, one of those moments in your life you remember forever with all those funny details. 

the rest of that day was a crazy blur. we went to the bookstore. we went out to dinner to celebrate. big dopey smiles on our faces. having no idea what was coming next. 

on being a vomitus mass 

ahh, those early weeks of pregnancy. feeling only a twinge of nausea a few times a day. constant heartburn. overwhelming exhaustion. daily headaches. how i long for those days. up until six weeks, i was hitting the gym regularly, eating my usual meals, and going to bed early and sleeping through the night. then at six weeks, the realization of first trimester struck. 

i've always been blessed with great health. even as a kid i was hardly ever sick. my body has always been healthy and worked correctly. the longest i have ever been sick was a three week stint with viral meningitis my first semester at byu hawaii. i never get carsick or airsick. i could count on one hand the amount of times i've thrown up since i was a kid. other than regular migraines, i don't have much to complain about. so when i started feeling nauseous every second of every day, and then started throwing up on a daily basis, my world was kind of turned upside down. i missed a few days in a row of gym time. then a week. then three. all the sudden food lost its appeal. i started waking up in the middle of the night with this gnawing starvation that terrified me. it was all i could do to walk down the stairs to lay on the couch. the house became a disaster, the laundry piled up. two weeks into this, i started to panic. how much longer was i going to have to live like this? when would i be able to stomach meat again? when would i be able to sleep more than four hours in a row before waking up nauseous and starving? how could my body survive the violent vomiting fits that brought me to my knees, puke spewing from my nose, dry heaving stomach acid, splashing myself in the face, leaving me gasping for air, and my legs shaking for an hour afterwards? at first, i just cried a lot. i would cry when i felt so nauseous i was sure i was about to die. then i would cry while heaving over the toilet for five straight minutes of gagging and heaving. then i would cry afterwards about how terrifying it is not to know when/if this will ever stop and you will be you again. 

then some more weeks passed and i began to adjust to my new lifestyle. i started talking to myself a lot in a soothing voice. "you're okay, once you puke you can go back to eating your breakfast." or "hey at least all those calories don't count against you now, right? just eat more!" i started laughing at myself when i got vomit in my hair or noticed i hadn't shaved my legs in weeks. or worn a bra or brushed my teeth all day.(it's a battle every time because the act of putting the toothbrush in my mouth makes me gag.) i learned some tricks of survival, like breathing out of your mouth so you never smell anything. or going outside and letting cold air blow on your face. or listening to your body so you know if you should eat now or wait ten minutes to throw up, and then eat. because there is nothing worse than forcing yourself to eat, an enormous accomplishment, and then all of it coming back and up and knowing it was for nothing. 

something that does not help, is being told that you will want more kids, that you will purposely subject yourself to this torture a second or third time. because at this point it just feels like i have had the flu for months. i don't know the good part yet. 

something else that doesn't help, is all of the "advice" about keeping food in your stomach, eat small meals, don't drink water with meals, etc. all of that is crap. i tried it. nothing helps. 

knowing why you're sick, that it's your hormone levels being wild and free and jumping all around in your body, doesn't help. all you want is to go back to being your old self. and not having to stake out all the garbage cans or exits anytime you go anywhere because you might need to vomit. 

and while writing this post, i had to get up and puke, which is kind of funny. 

but now that i'm 11 weeks, i'm really hoping to start feeling better soon. that hope, it's a strong thing. and my dad says that if it were easy, we probably wouldn't care for our offspring as dutifully as we do. all of these theories will be infinitely more interesting when i'm done being a vomitus mass. 

on seeing a little jumping bean living inside your body

i've done crazy things in my life. i've felt a lot of emotions. i wasn't prepared for how utterly wild it is to see inside your uterus (and that in itself, is a crazy thing to see.) and see that a little creature is living there. for one thing, i never thought i'd be in a doctor's office, laying on that weird bed thing, waiting to have cold gel smeared around my stomach, searching with that wand that reminds of a the tool used when you ring up merchandise with the red beeping, (you know?) for a fetus. so being that person was crazy. then the fact that it's travis bodtcher's baby, cute travis bodtcher from 10th grade, growing in my body, is kind of insane. dr. barton was so nonchalant about it. "here's your pelvic bone, oh here's your bladder, looks like you emptied it recently, here's your bowels, here's your cervix-" at which point i had to interject, "wow, that's a good looking cervix!" because when i'm nervous i say things that are strange. (i also may have told dr. barton that i wish the baby could keep it's little tail, to which he responded with, it would be tough to change diapers with a tail. in complete seriousness.) 

then finally, he finds my uterus and we see this little mass inside. moving around! he shows us the head and the legs and the heartbeat, which is beating at 163 beats per minute! i have two hearts beating inside my body. i grew that tiny heart beating at 163 beats per minute. can i just say, HOW AMAZING IS THE FEMALE BODY! travis is standing next to the bed and grinning and staring at the screen. i have another ah hah! moment of, i'm not crazy, i really am pregnant. 

everything is healthy. everything is growing according to plan. i'm really as far pregnant as i thought i was. then i go have blood drawn and we leave with a cute picture of our mexican jumping bean. who isn't actually mexican at all. travis is the father and he's pretty much white. but i digress.

we didn't cry. mostly i think we both felt relief that everything was healthy and growing. it's a pretty abstract thing to believe at first, because i'm not really showing much and travis hasn't felt any of the symptoms personally, so you just kind of hope it's all really in there. quite amazing, our bodies. 

i have a few pictures somewhere showing my nonexistent bump and us finding out i was pregnant, but i'm way too tired to post them right now. maybe tomorrow, now that i don't have to hide out from this blog. 

life really doesn't go where you think it's going. and a lot of times, it's better than way, huh? 

being pregnant is tough and i don't believe men could do it. 

i'm going to go lay down and watch desperate housewives. and keep eating. all day. 

love you.

xo