Step By Step

Sorry I tuned out for so long!

Quick updates for the curious:

I'm still pregnant!  Yay!  About 17 weeks at this point.
I feel kicking every day, and that helps make me much more optimistic about the future.
Nobody has to keep this a secret anymore.
We find out the sex of the baby at our big survey ultrasound this week.  So excited!
Elsie is doing awesome.  Yes, she knows that there is a baby in my belly.  No, she is not so thrilled about it.
I've been looking into the possibility of preschool for Elsie next year.  She will be barely old enough for it, but she seems more ready every day.

Life is good!  Except for one thing:  morning sickness.  It is getting old.  The sickness has improved over the past weeks and months.  I get longer periods of feeling good during every day, and I get some days off.  I can eat many more foods than I could a month ago, expanding my repertoire beyond potato chips, soda, and pickles.  My friends who know me as a health nut should get a good chuckle out of that one!  My status is improving, but I am not 100%.

I still find myself making emergency vomit plans.  You know, when you're driving in your car frantically wondering, "Where can I pull over and throw up out my car door?" My energy is terrible.  I still grind to a halt, completely out of the blue, and have to lie down for hours in the evening.  I can't handle getting Elsie to bed most nights.  I still find food cravings overwhelming and food aversions crippling.  Cooking is still almost entirely out of the question. 

When I tell people that I don't have a full time job right now "because we want more kids," I get a lot of quizzical looks.  People probably think that is no explanation at all.  Pregnancy and work are not mutually exclusive for many, but they are for me.  I remember this stage with Elsie.  I would slink into the office after10:00 am, sit green at my computer for a few hours, and run home around 2:00 or 3:00 pm, in time to lie on the couch before the nausea was so overwhelming I could no longer move at all.  Then I'd yell at my husband when he came home and go to bed early, or, alternately, pass out face-down in my pathetic plate of white rice at 5:00 pm.  My time at the office was not productive.  It merely allowed me to show my ashen face in my building every day.  I completely understand why so many women lose their jobs over their morning sickness.  Some probably lose their husbands, too.  It is all-consuming.

I am lucky to have this leisure.  I am lucky we can afford it.  I am lucky to have a husband who takes extremely good care of me when I am incapacitated and who is extremely patient with me when I lose my hormone-addled temper.  I am lucky to have a toddler who can entertain herself safely and happily for hours if I am too sick to get up.  I am lucky that I am not vomiting and I am gaining weight (despite a poor diet).  Things could be much worse.

And yet... I am ready to FEEL as though this is my 2nd trimester.  So ready!