5 Weeks (and one day)

Hello, Loyal Blog Readers,

What would you all like to hear about? How about a completely self-absorbed account detailing every nuance of my emotional and physical state? Yes, I thought you'd enjoy that. There isn't really much else to write about at the moment, anyway, because school hasn't started back yet and I'm mainly just hanging out and emoting and gestating and whatnot.

Wow, as I sit here trying to write this, I'm realizing how out of practice I am at this blogging thing. Last semester was a killer; it was just so hard and I wanted to give it my best shot, and I tried to eliminate distractions from my work (like this blog). This semester needs to be easier. I hope everyone is telling the truth when they say Analysis II is easier than Analysis I?

Anyway, here's the State of the Nebiverse:

It has been six days since I found out I was pregnant, and they have been very cool, unique, different kinds of days. Telling people has been fun- though deciding who to tell right away has been a little tricky. Many suggest waiting until the end of the first trimester to tell such news, given that the risk of miscarriage so early on is fairly high. I decided a good rule of thumb is to only tell people now who are close enough friends that I would also tell them about a miscarriage (sorry, I think that grammar was off somehow...?); but that's still a fairly large number of people. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to tell my professors and students when I start back to school in a week and a half; or shall I wait through those awkward few weeks of weight gain later on when they will start to wonder? I just told the math department secretary because I knew she'd like to hear some good news. Maybe I shouldn't tell my students at all; just let them watch me get big and pretend like nothing's happening. Anyway, I also have been disappointed in my rather dramatic lack of ability to come up with witty/creative WAYS to announce the pregnancy. "By the way, I'm pregnant," is rather blunt, isn't it? But I guess it gets the job done. The only creative announcing so far has been the pillow we got my parents that says "Grandchildren Spoiled Here," which was cute, and at least a small improvement over the direct statement of the facts.

Physically? So far early pregnancy has been fairly good to me. The only symptom that has been somewhat troublesome is pretty bad abdominal pain, mainly at night, but improving my diet has helped. (Lots of fiber, small regular healthy meals, going easy on desert.) Jordana said she had the same kinds of pain in early pregnancy so that made me stop worrying about ectopiccy. (Is "ectopiccy" a word? It is now.) I bought a new digital scale to track my enlargement. This morning I weighed 141.4 lbs, which is not bad (for me), being just half a pound into the "overweight" category (going by BMI). I think I lost 10 lbs last semester because school was stressful and I didn't take time to eat lunch a lot of days. I would kind of like to not gain more than 30 lbs with this pregnancy, but I'm open-minded. We'll see how it goes (and how long I can keep up my new healthy eating habits). :-)

Emotionally? I'm very Happy (in case you couldn't tell from the last post.) It's interesting, though, because a friend said "You're not quite as ecstatic as I thought you'd be," given my baby-crazy hysteria that has come and gone in the past few years. Last spring I had Baby Fever badly, and that's when I decided I wanted to go off birth control, which we did in Septemeber. But then I got rather distracted with school, and I think I'll still be rather distracted by school until I'm done in May. I'm not really spending hours gawking at stuff on babiesrus.com or reading name-your-baby books. But the happiness comes in little bursts. :-) Gradually I'm starting to feel more of a connection with this little person inside me. It's funny because before getting pregnant I would have told you I wanted to have a girl first, and I still think it might be easier to parent a girl first, but now that this baby is real instead of just an abstraction, I understand what people mean when they say "Girl or boy doesn't matter- as long as our baby is safe and healthy." I'm trying to trust God completely about the health of our baby (it's hard not to read too much on the internet) and with our future, which I've been thinking about a lot lately. We're probably going to be moving (across the country? OUT OF the country...?) right around the baby's due date. I'll write more about that sometime later.

Anyway, I guess the only other thing to report at the moment is that I am having a brief fit of (for lack of a better name?) "Forever Young-ness," in which I express my (very slight) mourning over the loss of young adulthood and childlessness by 1) getting a "cool" haircut this morning (it is ear-length!!) and 2) looking a little more critically at my (mostly rather dumpy) clothes. I went clothes shopping today with no luck. Perhaps it is psychologically discouraging to realize that anything that fits today will likely not fit in 3 months? But today I am wearing the only shirt in my closet that the people from "What Not to Wear" might (*MIGHT*) consider sparing if they went through my wardrobe- so I feel at least minimally Cool. Also, I'm still drinking coffee. :-)

More next week,
Love, Neb