Moods and Cravings

Most of my cravings and food aversions left at the end of the first trimester. The first 6 weeks of pregnancy were nuts. There was one week of only roast chicken, then a week of only fried chicken, then a week of pizza and red sauce, then several weeks of everything seeming disgusting!

I'd been introduced, earlier in the year by one of the Perry sisters from the singing group Perri to red velvet cupcakes, which are chocolate cupcakes in disguise w/some coloring and flavoring. I hate chocolate cake, but somehow love red velvet. Go figure.


A particularly strong craving for red velvet cupcakes was cured by a so-so cupcake that just made me say, "enough!" I'd had 2 before at this place called Yummy Cupcakes, which I found through internet research at midnight one day after a particularly strong, specific craving. Yummy Cupcakes got great reviews and is only about a mile or two from us, in Burbank, so it could've been dangerous being so close. But this third cupcake was just solidly OK, and did me in for those, so no more chasing that sugar high.

I did however, last night, have a craving at 10pm for tortilla soup. I'd had a good one at a generic chain restaurant called Islands, but they close at 10pm on weeknights. So I looked in Google (thank God for google) and typed "tortilla soup Burbank" (not in quotes - if you put something in quotes in google, you get instances of the EXACT phrase only) and found out that in addition to Islands, Coral Cafe has a good chicken tortilla soup.


I went on their website and it's open 24 hours, so I called and ordered us 2 tortilla soups to go. Mark got a cold in the middle of the week, so I went and picked them up. (I love night driving anyhow - the roads are open and all the signs are lit up! Lovely!) The place is 5 minutes away, the soup was $3.50 and Mark and I thoroughly enjoyed the late night snack. The only thing was that the soup didn't have avocado in it, which I consider a bit of a deal breaker, so I vow to learn to make my own chicken tortilla soup. I found a bunch of recipes, but I think I draw the line at frying my own tortilla strips.

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As for moods, I was moody yesterday. Not having had any PMS for several months, I'd sort of forgotten how it felt to be irrationally, inexplicably cross and spent part of the day trying to diagnose what was up until I remembered: Oh yeah, I'm pregnant, probably moody and not really pleased at the moment-for no reason at all. For most of yesterday, no one could do any right and I had a permanent frown on my face. I tend to be naturally happy, so it's extra distressing to me to be not so happy and since I didn't know why, I couldn't really solve it or talk myself out of it. I settled on reading a book and that was about as good as I could get.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a couple of blowup moments during these last four or so months, but they were all in reaction to something displeasing. They made sense. Yesterday, I was just crabby Patty for no reason. And when I thought about it, I'm pretty lucky if this is just now hitting me at almost five months pregnant. In general, it's been a mild-ish pregnancy. I've had weeks where my ribcage felt like it was going to split and weeks or stretching pains, but in general, not too bad.

A friend of mine who's a Tina Turner tribute singer had a pregnancy so bad, that I thought she was dying (I didn't know she was pregnant, nor did she for a bit) of some mystery illness. She actually LOST weight for the first few month. So bad was her pregnancy, it's taken her four years to get enough amnesia to want to try for round two for another baby. Wish her luck - I want my kid to have some local playmates!

Itchy Stomach

Took it really easy for the first two days post amnio. Didn't leave the house on Monday and stayed either in bed or on the sofa. I heard a horror story from a friend of mine who made the mistake of cooking dinner on the same day as amnio, started leaking amniotic fluid and got rewarded with 6 weeks of bedrest! I prefer prevention, so I was a big, fat couch potato, loaded up with the final 2 Sookie Stackhouse (Trueblood) novels, a couple of other books and some DVDs from Netflix. Mark was a pretty good caretaker too. He made me a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and cooked dinner.

But the next day or so, my stomach started to itch. And although it felt topical, it was so itchy and burning that I started to worry. I removed the bandaid, tried Neosporin and hydrocortisone alternately. The itching woke me from sleep on Wednesday night, so I called the doctor on Thursday finally. I was a little annoyed when the lady said, "oh it probably has nothing to do with amnio." I said, "it most certaintly has something to do with amnio, it's itching for about a 3 inch radius from the injection site." She put me on hold, talked to the doctor and said that they thought it was an allergy to betadine, since they spread it far around the actual injection site. While she's yammering, I look it up and see a couple of buzzwords that say bingo! Shellfish allergy=allergy to iodine and sometimes betadine. They forgot to ask me, and lathered me up w/betadine so I went back in, and they told me to get some hydrocortisone (didn't work, already) or Benadryl cream.

I bought it and all is well. Welts are almost gone and not much itching. And most of my amnio tenderness is gone as well. We're heading to 19 weeks folks! This seems to be flying by.

18 weeks and It's a Boy!

(Photo at 17 weeks)

We've made it to the 18 week mark already and little baby Martryce (just kidding) is doing great. We went for an amnio and ultrasound yesterday and got lots of new pictures of the little GUY. Yep, it's a boy. The doctor is 99% sure. He said girl when he saw this view during the ultrasound:

If you look at the top and turn your head to the left, you'll see two skinny legs extended and what looks like nothing in between. However the baby flipped over several times during the ultrasound and we soon saw a lil' bobbing thing that stayed present for the rest of the ultrasound. So he recanted and told us 99% - this is a boy. So now the name negotiations begin. I've been rooting for Miles, but we'll see what Mark does and doesn't veto.

Morning sickness is pretty much a thing of the past. I've started getting tired again though. And Mark got a little preview of the vegetablized wife who can't do anything yesterday after amnio because you can't lift anything heavy or do much standing for at least the next 24 hours. So he got to cook and walk the dogs. Max pulls like a sled dog, so I think that qualifies as heavy lifting. The healing seems pretty close to done. I could only sleep on the opposite side that the needle went through yesterday, but most site tenderness is gone and I feel some muscular pain every now and then. I'll be good as new by Wednesday. Within a week, we get back 100% accurate test results of the baby's gender. Mark already took a blood test, so the baby's not in danger of sickle cell anemia, which my family carries the trait for. My aunt has the full-blown disease, but only me and another of my sibs carries the trait. Coulda sworn my mom said that Pam and Damone carried it, but I guess she was wrong because I got a positive when it came back. But Mark's free of all of it. Yippee - good choice of mates. I guess I'll keep him.

Ultrasound pics look pretty creepy, but I think I can make out a decent amount of the baby's face and some body traits to think that he already looks somewhat like his father and he's only half done. The forehead shape, the leg shape look like Mark. That's all I could make out so far. This pic has the baby lying on its side, face turned towards us with a hand over its ear. Mark said that he's listening to his ipod in utero already.