8/14/2006

August 14, 2006

It appears, much to my relief, that my morning sickness is not nearly as bad as I feared. I had awful days Thursday and Friday last week, into Saturday morning. I was keeping nothing down, and unable to drink much (any) liquid. By Friday night into Saturday, the issue had moved lower in my digestive tract than my stomach (if you catch my meaning), and I was up half a dozen times overnight emptying what little food and beverage my body had, and then some apparently. Saturday morning, I got on the scale, and saw to my horror that I was weighing in at a number I haven't seen since college--137. 140 is a pretty hard lower limit for me when I'm healthy, and a week ago I'd inched closer to 142-143. My weight doesn't fluctuate much normally, and I think the lowest I've seen in about 5 years on this particular bathroom scale is 139.8. Basically in a matter of 2 or 3 days I was down 5 pounds, which is a lot when you're worried about sustaining another life on what you're eating. I was beginning to worry that I would end up on an IV in the hospital from dehydration--I was a little fuzzy-headed, but not dizzy and no headaches yet. It was probably just a matter of time at that rate.

Sometime around mid afternoon, I was able to keep down one of Charlotte's pedialyte popsicles. An hour later I had a little less than half a cup of ice cream. An hour after that I had one of Charlotte's kid-sized yogurts. Things stabilized. I was able to sip on ice water. We were invited to the baptism for the son of some friends, and managed to make the 5pm mass and dinner afterwards. When it was time to eat, I found I could actually eat a plate of food--not french fries either--they had a nice array of salads (lettuce-based, chicken salad, one with various beans and corn, fruit salad, one with veggies and slices of meat). It was all very healthy, yummy food and actually felt really good. This is stuff I wouldn't have touched when I was pregnant with Charlotte (when french fries, red meat, and ice cream reigned supreme).

Sunday I didn't get sick at all. I had plenty of queasy moments, but also plenty of nearly-normal times and kept all the food that I ate. Today is more of the same so far--queasiness and excess saliva, yes. Puking, no. Charlotte had a stomach flu a couple of weeks ago, followed a week later by bad diarrhea (blowing out several diapers while we were out of town--not fun), and I think it just took longer to hit me. Morning sickness + stomach flu = really bad. Here's hoping I don't have any more of this. Ever.