jeans blues

I haven’t been able to wear my jeans for six weeks. I miss them. Or at least the idea of them.

I have been watching the Gilmore Girls today, and now I want nothing more than to be able to put on jeans and look young and sexy and go drink a glass of wine with my girlfriends, or go to an ivy league and wear boots and short skirts and read books and hang out by the coffee cart. But I can’t put on jeans, I can’t have a glass of wine, I can’t even have a sandwich (not supposed to have any deli meats), I’m tired of being hungry all the time, I’m bored of all foods, and my girlfriends don’t live here, and I’m never going to be young and sexy again, and I’m never going to go to Yale or get my PhD. Instead, I’m just going to get a fat face and swollen ankles, and then for the next thirty years (ok, I realize it’s for the rest of my life, not just until they move out), I’m going to be mom. I don’t feel like a mom.

weeks five and six

Heading into my fifth week, things got kind of rough. I went on a camping trip and couldn’t even drink a beer! I couldn’t eat the fancy quesadillas our friends brought (no soft cheeses, girls). And no cowboy coffee for me. (Sure, the books say you can safely have 300 grams of caffeine a day, but then they all say we should give it up anyway, just to be 100% safe. Doublespeak and guilt trips: that’s why I avoid the books.)

A more serious note: I started having cramps. I’d read that mild cramps were pretty normal, and I’d had some, right around the time when I found out I was pregnant. For a couple of days I’d felt like I was about to start my period.

But these were worse. These were curl-up-on-the-floor-and-try-to-breathe cramps. They lasted for 15-30 minutes, and would come on several times a day. Twice I caved and took acetaminophen. I was scared. I’d never heard of anyone having cramps this bad. Was it a bad sign? Was I going to lose the baby?

They subsided after a week. But the fear remains, in the first trimester. It leaves me unwilling to get excited about the baby; I don’t want to get attached until I know I won’t lose her. But twelve weeks is a long time to put your heart on hold, to remain emotionally uncommitted to a baby inside you.

That baby is the size of a lentil now