"Symptoms"

Well, I'm finally seeing more signs of this pregnancy. I hate the term 'syptoms' in regards to pregnancy. Diseases have syptoms. Pregnancy is not a disease or a medical condition. It seems like everyone I talk to online who's around the same stage as me is already experiencing the whole range of yes-you're-preggers signs, and I was feeling a bit left out and possibly nuts because I need some kind of physical confirmation from my body that I'm not just imagining this whole thing. So, in chronological order, here's what I got:

1. The missing period. A good sign-- it's still missing!

2. The positive pee-on-a-stick: I took a photo for posterity, because I couldn't quite believe it and they do fade quickly.

3. The appetite. Oh my god, the appetite. Seriously, I thought this was something that would only kick in later in pregnancy. I am eating enough for a farmer or construction worker or something right now. Last night, I heated up some of this Italian-based casserole I made called cavatelli (think all the flavors of lasagna without the tedious layering) but it looked a little dry so I drenched the top in some Alfredo sauce. After dinner (throughout the evening), had half a grapefruit, some toast with almond butter, toast with regular butter, the other half of the grapefruit, and my usual yogurt-with-prenatal vitamins. I only stopped eating because I was sleepy and had to go to bed...

4. The fatigue. It has hit me pretty hard; all of my energy (the energy I should be getting from eating all the fucking time!) is being re-routed, I suppose, and there's none left for me. At work, I want a nap after lunch. By 3:00pm, I'm sagging against the counter thinking, "I can't do this, I want to go home, I need to sleep..." Keep in mind that I'm a bank teller and the physical aspect of my job is, like, standing at a counter; it's not exactly taxing work. Of course, I'm cutting back on the caffeine, which is probably also contributing to the afternoon crash, but still... that's *after* going to bed at 10:00pm the night before and sleeping till 7:30. I used to make plans tp go to bed early, maybe 10:30, in order to better-organize my day, get more rest, make better use of the morning, etc. Now, I struggle to at least stay awake until then.

Unfortunately for neurotic people like me, things like appetite and tiredness can seem like they're all in the head, as in "if you *expect* to be tired, you *will* be tired", ditto for hungry. Ditto for crazy-emotional. Which brings us to... the boobs!

5. My breasts are changing. What's strange to me is not that they are changing from their pre-pregnancy state but that they are not changing at the same rate or direction at all, so they are also changing from each other. Um, I kind of liked having a 'matched set' so I hope this is temporary and that lefty catches up here soon. I've read that breast-feeding babies often have a preference for one over the other and I thought, well that's silly. I guess I was thinking of breasts that were more or less the same. Looking in the mirror, I could totally understand that behavior now. I would personally prefer the right one at this point.

I haven't felt any nausea yet (fingers crossed) and the spotting seems to have been a sporadic, fluky thing, at least so far. I made a doctor's appointment with an OB team that's highly reccommended here by the crunchy-granola set, but it's not until April 10. What I would like to have is a midwife, one who will come to my house to catch the baby. That would be ideal... But, that is also expensive and the doc is covered by my insurance plan. So I'm hoping that with him I can have a hospital birth free from interventions, that he'll just let me do my own thing. Based on what I've read about this doctor, it looks good.