13 Weeks: Alien Invasion

Sometimes it feels like my body has been invaded by aliens. I'm not even talking about the weirdness of having a tiny little person existing inside of me! All these hormonal changes are truly wild.

Best I can figure, pregnancy is like going through puberty again at warp speed. All sorts of things are growing in new places, and growing bigger in other places. My moods are all over the place. Body image is perpetually confused. Tempers are short. Everything (good and bad) makes me tear up. Hunger can overtake me out of nowhere.

Other things... just change. Like tastebuds. I feel like a totally different person sometimes. Here we are in the midst of winter squash season, something I usually embrace. Yet the though of eating cooked squash right now makes me gag a little. Instead, I want things like cucumber and onion salad, sushi, green smoothies, cold cereal... things I rarely crave even in the warmest months since I'm so cold-natured! It's weird.

Also, sometimes I cannot drink enough water.

Other times, I wake up feeling completely drugged, like someone slipped me some Valium in my sleep and I'm still hazy when I get up. My grandma Ginny empathized with me over this fatigue at Thanksgiving. It was so fun hearing her talk about being pregnant all those years ago!

I'm not the world's greatest sleeper, but getting up at 4am and being unable to fall back asleep is also something new that's getting old really fast.

You would think some caffeine could fix that. I love good black coffee, but right now even the smell of coffee makes me turn up my nose. My Grandma Schekirke empathized with me on this one-- she's a coffee fanatic. Except when she was pregnant back in the day.

I don't have a bump yet, but my belly button is suddenly much shallower and tighter? It's weird. I'm not used to seeing the bottom of my belly button.

Also, I'm generally a clumsy person but lately I drop everything! It's like my hands just don't work half the time.

Basically, this baby is already starting to change everything and I love it... most of the time.

Thankfully, one thing has been conspicuously absent the past two days-- nausea!!! I'm practically euphoric that I don't feel like vomiting every waking moment. I still have some food aversions, and nausea does still sneak up on me from time to time, but it's a night and day difference from last week. I feel like myself again in some ways!

With this week behind me, just like that, I'm out of the first trimester. This pregnancy thing is starting to seem a lot more real (and not like one long bout of the stomach flu). I'm getting really excited to meet whoever is growing in there. He or she is already the size of a small peach this week!