One Down, Two to Go!

I am done with my first trimester and charging full speed ahead into my second. That's it- a third of this pregnancy is already over. According to the "What Kind Of Food Is Your Fetus If Your Fetus Were A Food?" website, the baby is the size of a peach. A juicy, farm stand fresh Georgia peach. This peach of mine is in the process of forming teeth and vocal cords. I find it incredible that all this magical forming and growing and whatnot is going on somewhere not too deep inside me while I sit here and do something as inane as pick at my cuticles or daydream about Bradley Cooper.

Wait, did you say something? Sorry, I was thinking about... cuticles.

Due Date

This first trimester has been so much different than my first trimester with Andy. The experience of previously giving birth to a textbook perfect, diaper-box adorable little boy has given me a more laid-back perspective this time around. Hey, I did it once, I can totally do it again. When I was pregnant with Andy, I was a mess. I am a worrier by nature, but my anxiety was through the roof. I stayed up at night replaying every thing I ate, touched, and breathed, calculating out the odds of whether or not my tomato soup may have caused a birth defect so profound that my child would be featured on the cover of "Weird Babies Monthly." Every twinge, ache, and flutter of movement had me running to the internet to double check that things were normal.

This time around? Half the time I forget I even am pregnant, and the other half I'm enjoying a cup of coffee with artificial creamer. My concern over whether or not I am able to produce a healthy baby is basically zero. Hopefully, this won't be some kind of ironic problem after I deliver a baby with no toes and thirteen fingers, because then I would probably go insane and need to be committed. However, the ultrasounds, blood tests, everything has been fine, and that has satisfied the usual level of worry.

This isn't to say that I am completely worry-free. My nervousness is more about what's going to happen AFTER the baby gets here- how Andy will adapt, if I can go back to getting zero sleep for a couple months, the financial aspect of it all, how I'm going to comb a baby's hair into pigtails if it happens to be a girl, et cetera, et cetera. But my worries about the actual pregnancy? Eh.

I've been more nauseous this time around. The nausea is gone by this point, but I was definitely more pukey this time than last time. Also, I am so much more fricking tired. It's unbelievable how tired I am. I work all day, come home and entertain a one year old, do my household chores, sleep for a bit, and then am awakened by Andy well before my alarm goes off. I am so very tired. There's no time for napping with Baby #2. In fact, I don't think I will ever be well-rested again. My tombstone will say: Here lies dearest Mommy Jackie./ She never slept and thus went wacky./ People thought that she smoked cracky.

I think I'm showing sooner this time, too, but that was to be expected. All of those gloriously tight stomach muscles that I took for granted in my youth have been all stretched out and wrecked. So much for washing my Cobalt while wearing a string bikini. Another dream, dead on arrival.

To think, I only have about six months left. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was peeing on a stick in the office bathroom. Oh, October.

Last Friday, I went for a standard, twelve week ultrasound. I remember seeing Andy at twelve weeks, and it totally freaked me out. At twelve weeks, it's most definitely a baby, with wiggling arms and legs and a freakishly cute little head. This time, I was not as freaked out, because I knew to expect something that was not so much a blob but actually a recognizable human. And, this time, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is incredible" instead of "Wow, this is incredible- and I'm totally going to throw up and pass out, but maybe not in that order."

You really do become kind of a pro at being pregnant, I suppose. Now excuse me while I unbutton my pants and let my belly hang out.