10 weeks + 1 day

I'm writing this post at 6:30am so you know I'm not a happy camper. I woke up to pee and wasn't able to go back to sleep. I've been up for about an hour already. I gave up on actually going back to sleep and decided to just wake up, post an update on the blog and head to the gym early.
I didn't think I had a lot to update on until I thought about it this morning. Here it goes:

Total Weight Gain: 7 lbs. No, I'm not having twins. I've surpassed the suggested weight gain for the first trimester. I'd like to believe that the weight gain will taper off during the second tri and then pick up again in the 3rd tri but I think that's wishful thinking. So far no one outside of my mom and my sister have commented on the weight gain (as Nick points out, my family always comments on weight, even when nothing has changed). My mom already bought me some creams/lotions to prevent stretch marks.

Symptoms: I'm very grateful that on some days I can almost get through an entire day without thinking I'm pregnant.

• The runny nose is not a problem except for mornings.
• The nausea is pretty much under control. Sometimes it gets bad at nights but I think that's partly due to eating dinner late and the vitamin.
• The ACNE...annoying! I'm baffled by this symptom. I was always under the impression that birth control pills trick your body into thinking you're pregnant. While I was on the pill, I never had any breakouts. This tricked me into thinking that I would have great skin during pregnancy. Wrong! The bad thing is there's nothing that can be done about it. While doctors say you can use acne topical solutions as long as they don't have salicylic acid, what's the point? It's hormonal so unless the creams will balance my hormones out, they won't work. Therefore, I'll bypass the risk of putting unnecessary benzoyl peroxide or other chemicals in my face.
• The bloating is better this week since I've cut back on the junk food. Notice I said "cut back" and not "eliminated".

Food: Food is my friend! A couple of days ago I thought about the foods that don't look good to me/make me gag vs. the ones I enjoy. It occurred to me that I have not actually thrown up once since I've been pregnant (I've never been able to throw up so this doesn't surprise me). I only feel like throwing up when I don't eat often enough. Sometimes I don't eat as often as I need to because nothing sounds good. Then I realized how this is just a mental challenge. Try to follow me here. The food itself is not causing a physical reaction. Therefore, I can control this. I decided that it's best to eat something even if it doesn't sound good and I think makes me gag rather than go hungry and be nauseous/miserable anyway. I don't know if this will make sense to you. For example, last week I was nauseous in the morning and I couldn't think of anything that sounded good. I had Nick cook scrambled eggs for me b/c I couldn't stand the thought of looking at raw eggs. Even thinking about eggs right now makes me gag a little. However, once he cooked them and I ate them I felt so much better b/c the nausea was gone. Now, scrambled eggs are on my good list even though the word "eggs" still makes me gag. This week I tested this even further- I cooked my own eggs. It's all mental- like running a marathon. Just get through the bad thoughts/pain and the end result is good.

Anyhow, here's a list of foods that have been consistently "good" in my list and I can eat no matter the time of day (hint: have at least one of these if you invite me to your house):

• Grapes
• Fresh Pineapple chunks
• White rice and red kidney beans
• Slightly burned scrambled eggs w/ham and cheese (the new addition this week)

Foods that have not sounded good:

• Chicken by itself (not in soups)
• Meat
• Yogurt/Ice Cream/Milk (although I was able to have 2 glasses of Ovaltine milk this week already)

(Post-posting note: after writing the portion of the blog you see above, I dry-heaved 3 times and felt like crap all morning. I'm still not able to throw up- I really tried this morning. I guess the nausea is not completely under control as I mentioned earlier. After reading this post, I must apologize for the random thoughts and poor writing. I was out of it)