Potatoes

I am craving potatoes. . . and specifically, mashed potatoes. That's okay, for right now. As of yesterday, I'd lost a few more pounds, due to my general inability to eat lately. I never really craved potatoes with Samnini. I kept my mashed potatoes down last night, and I just had a whole bunch a few minutes ago. Maybe my body needs the nutrients contained in potatoes. Also, for me, it's also the texture and the comfort food aspect. (I am also craving pizza with wheat-containing crust, tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni - all things I am allergic to!)

And so it continues. . .

Since I last posted, I have actually thrown up a number of times, including dry-heaving. It has not been pleasant. I've officially thrown up more times now during this pregnancy than I ever did during my pregnancy with Sam.

I've made it through part of the training for my new job, which I am pleased about. I felt queasy most of the time, but I made it.

My breasts are very sore and full. I can still wear my same bras, but just barely.

I am not convinced that vitamin B-6 really helps the nausea.

I hope that all of this nausea means the baby is healthy. . .

A Description of "morning" sickness. . .

As a child and even now as an adult, I loved the Little House books. I must admit that I did not like The First Four Years for many years. However, that has changed. I think more portions of is are more appreciated by an adult than an 8 or 9 year old child. In it, Laura remembers that her mother always said, "They that dance must pay the fiddler" (page 45). I never really understood this when I was a kid. Something else that I still don't understand is why they did not name their precious baby boy who died. He deserved a name even if he was apparently sickly at birth. I know, I know. . . thinking was different back then. . . but still.

Here is a quote from Laura's pregnancy with Rose:

"Watching the plump wheat kernels slide into the open mouth of the sack made Laura dizzy. If she took her eyes from them, they were drawn irresistibly to the newspapers pasted on the shanty walls and she read the words over and over. She was unreasonably annoyed because some of them were bottom side up but she read them anyway. She couldn't take her eyes from them. Words! Words! The world was full of words and sliding wheat kernels!

And then she heard Manly saying, "Sit down a minute! You're tired."

So she sat down, but she was not tired. She was sick. The next morning she felt much worse and Manly got his own breakfast.

For days she fainted whenever she left her bed. The doctor told her to lie quietly. He assured her she would feel much better before long and that in a few months, nine to be exact, she would be quite all right. Laura was going to have a baby." (Pages 45-6)

Interesting Report/Article on Morning Sickness

So, I found a report on Baby Center about how mothers who had morning sickness had babies that are smarter than babies whose mothers did not experience morning sickness. This research was reported in Journal of Pediatrics, and apparently the research took place with the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto . . . I'll have my husband look it up on his medical database. In the meantime, this report also says "Pregnant women who have morning sickness are less likely to have a miscarriage and less likely to have babies with congenital cardiovascular problems."

Yeah, right. I had major all-day sickness with Sam (although it started a little later than it did for my current pregnancy, and maybe wasn't quite as bad as what I am experiencing right now - I thought it was bad at the time). . . and I would say that Sam had some major congenital cardiovascular problems!!

(I have no idea why the link will not show up! I've tried something like eight times!)

http://www.babycenter.com/204_morning-sickness-linked-to-smarter-babies_10312743.bc

Found gluten-free pregnancy blogs. . .

I just found a gluten-free pregnancy blog, that so far I find quite interesting. She even presents the idea of adding pureed fruit or vegetables to Trader Joes' Gluten-Free Brownie Mix (which I've tried once and loved. . . I could definitely add sweet potato, etc, to that brownie mix. I already add it to the pancake mix!)

http://glutenfreepregnancy.blogspot.com/

At least I don't have to run into the "saltine advice" on this blog. . . oof, when I actually did eat saltines during my pregnancy with Sam, I threw them up. Since then, I had trouble even looking at them again (and for most of my life, I refused to eat soup without saltines. . . not a problem, anymore.) Now that it has been shown that I am allergic to wheat (and oats), and trying to maintain a gluten-free diet, this website looks quite helpful . . . except for the entry on eating banana! I am also allergic to bananas, so that suggestion is rather unhelpful. Ah, well, the rest is decent!

One potential issue about this blog is that it does not appear to have been updated in at least a year.

I also found out that Shauna James Ahern who wrote Gluten-Free Girl was pregnant last year, and here is a link to a very long post:
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/2008/07/gluten-free-pregnancy.html

Nicknames

When I was first pregnant with who turned out to be Sam, I started calling the tiny being growing inside of me "Niniboof". 'Nini' (pronounced NEE-NEE, not "ninny" or NII-nee)is a Persian term for 'baby'. Boof is a childish, perhaps silly, term for rice in persian. My husband kept saying at the time very early in pregnancy that the baby wasn't much bigger than a grain of rice, and then Niniboof just popped into mind. Later into pregnancy, when we'd figured out Sam's name, we started calling him Samnini.

So, we've already decided on a nickname for this little one. "Ninibaa" is our choice this time around. Baa - for a little lamb. In Persian, a term for lamb is "baa-by-ee".

So as I am writing this, I am waiting for my backup data to load back onto my laptop (I had to completely wipe the whole drive -- it had problems.) I am also resisting the urger to run to the bathroom to throw up. All-day sickness continues!

Scrapbooking. . . . Part 1

Today as I walked on the treadmill in the fitness room (before my "afternoon" sickness set in), I allowed myself to think about starting a scrapbook already for this baby. I know that I am only maybe about 6 weeks along, but it made me excited. For Sam, my dear husband and I picked out a scrapbook together one night at the scrapbook store. Since by then we didn't know how long we'd have with Sam, I started putting everything in it. . . even a page where I creative wrote down most of the titles of music Sam heard in utero - in the car, on the radio, when my dear husband played the piano, at a concert we went to, etc. Today as I listened to music while exercising I dreamed of doing this again. Some of the songs that I have already exposed the baby to, although the baby cannot hear yet, may not be appropriate to mention to the baby when the baby becomes a preschooler, such as the All-American Rejects song "(I hope my face)Gives You H*LL". He or she might think that is funny (or maybe rather lame) later, but not really appropriate fare for a four-year old.

If this baby could hear yet, he or she would have already heard quite a variety of bell music (and will hear it close up again in the near future), piano music of various kinds (but mostly classical, as that is what my dear husband mostly plays), persian music (there is a cd for kids I like, and then music by Axiom of Choice), and then The Beatles, Regina Spektor, Enya, Weird Al, Pink Floyd, and various rock and pop songs from over the years. If I get my flute fixed, the baby will hear whatever I feel like playing, for the most part.

When do I start writing the names of songs down for the baby? Is now too soon? Do I wait? I know my husband wants me to wait until we're sure this baby is viable, even though we already love the idea of him or her. My husband has even started talking to the baby, even though said baby is barely the size of a baby pea! This is making me hopeful that everything will go reasonably well in the long run. My uterus is also apparently the size of a plum currently.