It seems I've been here before...

Apparently about this point in my pregnancies (as evidenced by this post in my pregnancy with Keevia), I begin to reach a point of miserableness. I'm generally over the morning sickness, but still have some residual days. But for some reason the weeks between 13-16 are really, really rough on me.

This pregnancy seems to be harder than my pregnancy with Keevia. My symptoms aren't that much different, other than I think I'm more tired this time around. Maybe that's because I have a toddler? I know the one symptom I have with Bean (what I'm referring to the baby as) that I didn't have with Keevia is that I am NOT SLEEPING.

I've dealt with insomnia for years, but usually my insomnia is centered on me not being able to fall asleep. I'm used to laying in bed wide awake for hours on end. I know how to deal with that.

With Bean, I have absolutely NO problem falling asleep. None. I'm actually falling asleep faster than I can ever remember doing. I sleep fine for an hour or so, then I start waking up. Usually I have a dream of some nature (sometimes "bad", sometimes just about a show I watched or a book I read), and for the REST of the night, my brain won't 'switch off'. I have to wake up at 4:30-5 to wake Carl up for work.... usually that's juuuuust when I'm falling asleep deeply. So, I've been going to bed between 10-11 pm, and not being able to drag myself out of bed until 8:30-9 in the mornings.

I can't eat ANYTHING greasy or my stomach kiiiillls me. I have an aversion to eggs (it was fried chicken last time!) and I'm having a hard time eating meats. The texture just gets to me and I end up gagging. I'm eating a lot of nuts!

I don't have the constipation issues that I had with Keevia, although I've had some the last few weeks thanks to an Irritable Bowel Syndrome flair up. I've cut out wheat gluten for the time being, and it seems to be helping.

So far I've lost 10+ lbs with this pregnancy. I'm okay with it though, because I had it to lose and I'm eating much healthier than I was.

With Keevia my spine and body stayed in alignment SO WELL. I went over two months without going to the chiropractor (trust me, this is HUGE for me). This time.... Yeah... I'm going 3-4 times a week and I'm still in pain. My sacrum WILL NOT stay in (it's out the same way sometimes, other times its out a different way), my right hip stays jammed (both ways this morning!), and I always have a lumbar vertebrae out. We're not sure if the vertebrae knocks the sacrum out, or vice versa, or if the hip is the cause. I'm finally over the constant nerve pain I was having in the beginning of September though, so that's a plus!

Maybe this one is a boy... Carl would be happy! We have names picked out for a boy or a girl, so it doesn't really matter to me (LIES. I want another girl!), as long as it's healthy!

I really, really couldn't be happier to be pregnant, and I know it'll get better. I have such a fantastic, hard working husband, and a wonderful supportive family that I would be lost without. Pregnancy isn't always roses, but the outcome is definitely worth it!

Stangers in the Night...

If you open up my back door, this is the view you get. Lovely, isn't it? Winter is pretty bleak in these parts, but that wood you see is the GLORIOUS deck my in-laws gave us for Christmas! But anyway, that's the hill behind our house.

This is just slightly to the left of that picture:

See anything odd in this picture? It's very hard to spot. Go to the top of the post, and go right about an inch. See that? That's a pop can.

Now, when we first moved in, I suddenly noticed a couple of pop cans on the hill (it is EXTREMELY steep, and will be very difficult to get to them to remove them), I figured that the guys that put my house in had thrown them up there while they were installing the house, and didn't really think anything of it.

Over the months, the popcans began to fade in color, and I never paid that close of attention to them. Then suddenly this winter, when there was snow on the ground, I noticed a NEW pop can, on TOP of the snow.

I thought it was odd, and mentally took stock of the cans when the snow melted off. There were three that I could see.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a couple more. I counted again, and sure enough, there were five. I began to pay MUCH closer attention. I asked my husband, just to be safe, and he said he had never tossed a can up there. I watched it like a HAWK when I went out in the mornings. Two weeks ago a sixth one showed up.

Now, I have to admit this little secret. I believe in bigfoot. Sasquatch. Whatever you want to call him. Over the past 3 months, I'd been joking that a Bigfoot was leaving me presents. Suddenly, I wasn't joking anymore. What in the WORLD was doing this? We have two dogs, but the incline was too great for them to get up there.

Fast-forward to last week. I was attempting to find our liquid children's benadryl in the house, to no avail. I knew I kept some in the diaper bag in the car, so I sent Carl out to look for it. He couldn't find it, so I gave up on it. The next day *I* looked for it, still no dice! A day or so later, we were backing out of the driveway and I glanced up on the hill. There, about 10-15 feet up the hill, was the bottle of benadryl. NO way for me to get it down. NO way for the dog to have gotten it up there. I was SO confused.

That night (or sometime very close) I was sitting in my chair, which is directly beside a window that leads to our deck. I kept hearing scratching noises, and little thumps. I made my husband (who was clad only in his underwear) get up and look (with a lot of whining and cajoling on my part).

Want to know what our culprit was?

One of these guys.
Yeah, that explains it.

(P.S. I'm assuming that the benadryl fell out of the car, and it got a hold of it that way. Otherwise we have a super, duper smart raccoon that can open car doors. Then I'm REALLY in trouble).

Lets name him Doug, shall we?

It's not easy

It's not easy being a mom. I've blogged about inadequacy in the past, and I'm doing it again. I've been feeling it a lot lately.

I'm exhausted. Between late nights with the baby, and early mornings with the baby, I haven't been sleeping well. Keevie is sleeping through the night most nights, but I have a tendency to be a night owl, with borderline insomnia. And some nights I don't WANT to go to bed, because its quiet, I can veg without a baby attached to me, and if I go to bed I have to get up and do it all over again.

We had fleas in our house (BRAND NEW HOUSE), sooooooooooo badly. They are almost completely gone now (thank GOD), but that set me back in housework. Everything that could go through the washing machine, had to. I still need to mop both the kitchen and the bathrooms because of all the all-natural oils and stuff we used are on the floors. I DESPERATELY need to clean the bathrooms and organize them. Like, you have no idea how desperately. I also started on organizing the guest room the other day... and nope. It's not finished.

I have no decorations up in my house. At all. No pictures, nothing. We've lived there since May. It's bad enough that I've bought the paint and not painted -- I also haven't decorated at all. It's just so over my head. I know what I WANT to do, I just don't have the funds/energy/time to do so... and it depresses me. I want to love my house. I want pictures up on the wall, I want it to be pretty. I want to stop apologizing for things when people come over and just feel proud of my home.

Keevie's birthday is in 17 days. I'm having a birthday party in 18 days. My house MUST be acceptable by then.

I just... I don't know. I'm not depressed... I'm just tired. K can't quite walk yet. So you have to watch her like a hawk for falling. Plus, she wants to be right with me at all times. She won't let me wear her around the house very much, which makes it hard to do anything. By the time Carl gets home and can take care of her, I'm exhausted from wrangling her all day.

I need to quilt. And I can't. I don't have the motivation, nor do I have the time.

I love my baby girl with my entire heart. I love being her Mommy. But she is exhausting. Being a Mom isn't easy. It makes being a wife harder, it makes keeping a house clean harder, it makes LIFE harder. I love her SO much, and I feel guilty just writing this... but its hard, and it sucks sometimes. I feel so inadequate when I FINALLY get her to sleep and the only thing I want to do, or have energy to do is to crawl in my chair with a book. I don't even have energy to take a shower somedays.

It's not easy...but I'm still thankful I have her.

Insomnia... why do you bless me with your presence again?

It's 2:15 in the morning, and I am not sleepy.

I got up at 9ish this morning, so it's not as if I slept in late. I have class at 9:20 tomorrow morning...well, this morning, and I don't know how I'm going to get up. But I know if I went to lay down right now, I'd just be staring at the ceiling.

Something I may not have mentioned before is that I (as well as the majority of my family) has fibromyalgia. Wikipedia defines Fibro as...

Fibromyalgia, meaning muscle and connective tissue pain (also referred to as FM or FMS), is a disorder classified by the presence of chronic widespread pain and a heightened and painful response to gentle touch (tactile allodynia).[1] Other core features of the disorder include debilitating fatigue, sleep disturbance, and joint stiffness. In addition, persons affected by the disorder frequently experience a range of other symptoms that involve multiple body systems, including difficulty with swallowing,[2] functional bowel and bladder abnormalities,[3] difficulty breathing,[4] diffuse sensations of numbness and tingling (non-dermatomal paresthesia),[5] abnormal motor activity (i.e. nocturnal myoclonus, sleep bruxism),[6] and cognitive dysfunction.[7] An increased prevalence of affective and anxiety-related symptoms is also well known.[8] While the criteria for such an entity have not yet been thoroughly developed, the recognition that fibromyalgia involves more than just pain has led to the frequent use of the term "fibromyalgia syndrome".[9] Not all affected persons experience all the symptoms associated with the greater syndrome.

Huh, didn't know half that stuff! I have never been officially diagnosed, but I have all the symptoms that goes along with it. Both my Mom and my Uncle have it, along with a lot of other members on my Mom's side.

So what does having Fibro mean?

It means pain. It means being or getting tired very quickly. It means intolerance to hot or cold. In talking to my Mom today, I decided on a theory... when the weather changes, our bodies can't cope as quickly. Mom and I, living an hour and a half apart, have both been having difficulty getting warm. I chill so easily it's not funny. This morning, I was asking Carl what the temperature outside was, and he responded "It was comfortable" and I go "Comfortable for you, or for me?" and he goes "I have to dress you like a baby. If I'm comfortable, you have to have 1-2 more layers on." This would make sense if I were skinny, but I am most certainly NOT a skinny minny.

Fibro also includes extraordinarily sore muscles and fibrospots (that's a very technical term coined by my mom and I). There are certain spots on your body, mine are mainly my back and legs, but Mom has them on her arms as well,that if you are touched there when you're having a fibro attack, you literally feel an electric shock go throughout your entire body. We have cats back at Mom's house, and I swear to you, they have Fibro sensors. They can find those spots and manage to step on them with ALL their little cat weight and make mom and I scream. I think they enjoy it.

Mom and I manage our fibro pain with ibuprofen and a skeletal muscle relaxer entitled "Skelaxin." It's not a muscle relaxer that weirds you out, it merely relaxes your skeletal muscles. Mom also takes a non-narcotic pain killer when her's is really bad. I seem to get a lot more joint pain with my attacks than Mom does with hers, which I think comes from my abnormally loose tendons and ligaments.

Carl and I probably conceived Peanut around October 2ndish last year. On October 9th, I "threw" my back out worse than I ever have before and took an humongous amount of pain killers and muscle relaxers in the course of the next week. I had no idea I was pregnant, and on top of Skelaxin and Ibuprofen, I took a ton of Tylenol with Codeine. I KNOW that the miscarriage was in no way my fault, but I am trying to ween myself off all drugs. When I was pregnant and had an attack, I was literally in h-e-l-l. There were many days I would come back from class and just cry. I hurt so bad all over and I was so tired I felt like breathing took to much effort. What was hardest was that I would normally pop some pills, and viola! Everything would be bearable.

I'm trying to wean myself off everything I can. I also have a skin condition, which I THINK is called atopic dermatitis. It's a build up of histamine under the skin. If my arm starts itching, and I scratch it... it doesn't stop itching, it just spreads. Very quickly this will drive you insane. Whatever is itching breaks into raised welts. I also get those raised welts from clothes and, well, anything that touches my skin, really... It is very, very annonying. Once I found out I was pregnant, I stopped taking that medicine as well... and that was also a HORRIBLE ordeal. So, I'm trying to wean myself off that as well.

Neither of these are easy. Every night I take a HUGE handful of pills, but none of them are harmful to my body. I take a prenatal vitamin, a magnesium tablet (that helps the fibro and your bowels), a soil based mineral (pro-biotic) and 8, count them 8, vegetable fiber tablets. I still have bowel issues.

Well, It's 2:44 now, and I feel a tiny bit sleepy. I'm going to take some children's benadryl, and try and get some sleep. Cross your fingers I make it up for class in the morning!

Insomnia and Sinus Infections

I think that one of the crappiest feelings in the world (other than miscarrying) is insomnia. I deal with this a LOT... but the last two weeks have been close to unbearable!!! I FREAK OUT on Monday and Wednesday nights, because I have to get up for a 9:25 class the next morning...and for some reason I don't think I'll make it. So, even if i go to bed at a decent hour, I spend the ENTIRE NIGHT drifting in and out of sleep. My brain won't shut off. I'm in this weird dream/awake thing all night long.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, to top it all off. I have a sinus infection. It's not a bad one, but the headaches from sleep deprivation and sinus pressure is about to get the better of me.

Anybody got any good remedies? I'm going to the chiropractor (who is my lifesaver) tomorrow, and she always helps. Anyone got any other suggestions?

I'll try just about anything!