13, 14, and 15 weeks

 Interestingly, my symptoms seem to continue to improve as long as I'm caring for myself physically AND emotionally. My nausea decreased significantly after I sort of broke down to my support group around 11 weeks, and it comes back the worst when I'm overwhelmed and rundown and haven't taken the time or space to acknowledge my emotions. Being semi-comatose in front of Netflix is occasionally still necessary, but mostly it's copping out now. I'd be better served by sleeping or journaling or doing some gentle movement.

Even though I'm so grateful I haven't had bleeding for 6 weeks (!!!) now, I'm still anxious. I'm not feeling movement nearly as frequently or as reassuringly as I did around 15 weeks with previous pregnancies. A friend recently lost her baby at 22 weeks for no known reason. Miscarriages seem to abound right now and, yeah, I'm more anxious about it. I started taking baby aspirin because even though my doctor told me the latest research on MTHFR showed that aspirin was not significantly helpful, I feel like I keep hearing that COVID causes blood clots, and the vaccine causes blood clots, and somehow maybe even vaccine "shedding" causes blood clots, and I just... wanted to feel like I was doing something. Previously, I felt relief after the first trimester, but this time it all seems to be fair game: tragedy can happen at any time.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that others' tragedies aren't mine to carry. I deeply empathize and yet I can know that right now, that isn't my season. I can care for my loved ones and walk through this with them if they want me to, but worrying about it happening to me won't ward off the worst. (Yet even though I'm writing this on a Sunday, I know I won't bring myself to publish it until my appointment on Tuesday.)

So here we are. The last few weeks have been such a welcome reprieve. The fatigue and nausea only really act up when, like I said, I'm not taking care of myself. If I run around like crazy one day, I'm in bed the next. So I'm working on finding a balance to run this race with endurance. I'm excited to slowly start being productive with second trimester reprieve, but I know I can't afford to go overboard with trying to do it all! My decisions now are caring for my current self AND my future postpartum self.

Hmmmm let's see. Most noticeable symptoms are round ligament pain, nasal congestion, nose bleeds, and still some insomnia. But overall I'm in that weird space where I only feel and look a little pregnant, so on good days it's actually easy to forget for a moment. At Noah's birthday party, I jumped rope for a minute to show him how it's done, and about 4 lines into the teddy bear jumprope rhyme realized it was a very bad idea for my bladder! But shoot it was fun for a minute there.