Yes, this is a post about puke.

During my first trimester of hellish nausea everyone I spoke to said to look forward to the amazing second trimester of bliss.  My nausea did go away for an amazing 6 weeks but in the last two weeks it has decided to come back to seriously fuck with me.  Luckily, its not the 24/7 nausea I had before.  Instead I have completely random bouts of violent projectile vomiting.  Good times.  It usually comes out of nowhere and I usually feel much much better afterwards but it has been very very inconvenient.  For example, three mornings ago, I was feeling fine and I took a big swig of OJ before leaving my place.  As soon as I hot the hallway i immediately barfed all over my building’s carpeted floor.  Luckily none of my neighbors were present but it was mortifying. That night, I met a friend for dinner before going to a meditation sit.  I started to feel a little nauseous on the train but I decided it was because I was super hungry.  I ordered a big vermicelli bowl and felt much, much better after I started eating.  When i was halfway through I was suddenly hit with the most intense nausea and almost threw up on the table.  Luckily, I was able to run to the bathroom where I projectile vomited everything I had just eaten.  And I felt so good afterwards that I ate the other half of my food and was fine.

In more positive news, I’ve been socializing a lot more in an effort to do as much as I can before this baby comes.  Last night I was supposed to see a movie with an old friend and was randomly gifted two free tickets to the San Francisco opera!  The seats were amazing (5th row at about $400 for the pair) and we had a blast hanging out and making fun of the snooty rich people around us in the fancy seats.  The opera was new and was about people coming to California for the gold rush.  It was very diverse and most of the characters were people of color-which I’m assuming isn’t the norm.  It was weird and really dark and very political.  One of the main characters was a former slave who gave a long monologue about racism and being a black man after the end of slavery.  A couple (obviously offended) walked out during this and there were whispers about how rude they were because they were in the front row.  All in all, it was awesome to get to do something I normally wouldn’t make an effort to do on my own.

 

I’m having crazy pregnancy dreams almost every night.  Here are a few over the last few days:

*I’m at the most amazing nacho bar ever and I’m starving.  It has every amazing topping available and I pile my plate high with amazingness.  I bring my nachos to a large picnic table to eat but I can’t pick them up.  Every time I reach for them they seem to fall through the plate.  I make myself another plate and the same thing happens.  I wake up hungry.

*I’m super pregnant and about to give birth.  I’m with my mom in my childhood home and I know the baby is coming.  I squat down and grab the baby and it’s a toddler.  I’m super confused and mad that she is so big it’s hard to hold her.  My mom doesn’t get why I’m upset and we wrap the “baby” in a huge pink blanket.

 

I had the last four days off from work so project declutter continued.  I got really motivated after having a  cleaning person come give me a quote for a deep clean.  She was a bit appalled by all of my stuff (and probably that I haven’t cleaned the inside of my oven for 5 years).   She did agree to do it for $300 which seems like a great deal considering she estimates it will take 2 days (i swear I don’t live in squalor you guys).

I also had lunch with my now ex husband to celebrate our divorce-which became official a week ago!  So yeah things are very amicable and it’s now completely obvious that we make way better friends than spouses (i’ve been working on a long post detailing this very long story).  He seemed very happy for me and I’m sure relieved that we aren’t having a baby together.  What a huge difference a few years makes!

Here are some pictures of my progress.  I wish I had taken “before” pictures because these two closets used to be completely filled floor to ceiling:

And here is my bookshelf already filled with baby stuff:

My baby is moving a lot these days!  It really started the day after the 20 week ultrasound.  I was sitting in my “cozy” chair at work and I felt a bunch of jabs below my belly button.  It seems like such a big deal after trying to get pregnant for so long but it feels less like a kick and more like a “pop!.”  I’m also feeling lots of the flutters and bubbles that so many people talk about.  Sometimes I talk to her and try and push back to see if I can get her going but she doesn’t seem to understand the game yet.  It still blows my mind that there is a human living inside me.

This past weekend I started my huge decluttering/making room for the baby project.  I took about 20 bags of stuff to goodwill (mostly books and clothes).  It used to give me a big sense of pride to have a huge shelf of books in my living room and I would silently judge people who didn’t have any books in their homes.  Now, it just seems like a huge waste of space-which is at a huge premium in Oakland.  My bookshelf is now moving to my bedroom and will be almost exclusively baby storage.   I also moved a big corner of my living room that was dedicated to craft projects and my sewing machine.   I had big plans of doing a ton of sewing projects while pregnant including finishing a superhero quilt that I started for my friend’s baby (who is not 3 months old). With the exception of a quick halloween costume project, I haven’t touched it for months.  Now my craft supplies/sewing machine live in my front closet.  Oh how the times have changed..

The baby was less active after moving all of this stuff around so I let my brain spin out for a little while that I had hurt her in some way.  I even went as far as to buy a really cheap fetal heart monitor that didn’t work at all.  Later that night she gave me a bunch of big kicks probably telling me to chill the fuck out.  For every milestone in this pregnancy i’ve been sure I would stop worrying, but I think it just never stops.  I have a feeling this will be similar to being an actual parent.

I go to this storytelling event every so often because I’m one of those weird people that loves speaking in public.  The stories are supposed to be “spontaneous” so you put your name in a hat to volunteer before you know what the theme will be.  This month’s theme was “blessings” and i told the story of how I got pregnant.  It went over really well and it felt great to talk about infertility and single mamahood so openly.  Afterwards, a woman came up to me and said “its a girl right?”  When i replied “yes” she said she just knew it from looking at me and walked away. Ummm ok… People are so weird about pregnancy.

I’ve been getting a ton of hand me downs from friends.  I decided to try out my ergo carrier on my cat and he was obsessed and wouldn’t stopped purring. Maybe I can take him for a walk in it?

Also, I can’t believe how cute and tiny some of these clothes are:

Despite my crazy pregnancy dreams where my baby was deformed, my 20 week scan went great!  I got to see her wiggle around a lot and her tiny body finally seems human.  The radiologist pointed out her brain, kidneys, heart, etc. but the best part was seeing her profile and her arms and legs move.

Check out the big kick in this one:

Today I’m 19 weeks and 3 days and my belly is bumping! ( I’m such a nerd). The nausea is finally gone and I’m trying to do as much as I can before I get really big. The baby is the size of a grapefruit and my stomach and other organs are starting to get squished. I’ve realized I can’t eat as much at a time because I get super full. But this has been hard because I’m finally able to eat so I want to make up for lost time. Friday night I went out for a big dinner before meditation. I walked by Mission Pie after and decided to eat a huge slice of pear/raspberry pie a la mode which caused a projectile vomiting incident ( it was worth it).

“Fifty-one solo mother families were compared with 52 two-parent families all with a 4–9-year-old child conceived by donor insemination. Standardized interview, observational and questionnaire measures of maternal wellbeing, mother–child relationships and child adjustment were administered to mothers, children and teachers. There were no differences in parenting quality between family types apart from lower mother–child conflict in solo mother families. Neither were there differences in child adjustment. Perceived financial difficulties, child’s gender, and parenting stress were associated with children’s adjustment problems in both family types. The findings suggest that solo motherhood, in itself, does not result in psychological problems for children.”

A link to the study:

SMCs and Childhood Adjustment Study

I’m not really surprised by this given that single mothers by choice have to really want a kid to make it happen.  Most of us spend thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars getting pregnant which is obviously not a decision done on a whim.  I’d suspect a similar result for queer families too.  Maybe i’ll send this to my mom…