Why So Tired...?

First, I shall answer a couple questions I have been asked repeatedly.

1) Do you think it's a boy or a girl?

Sigh. You guys. Did you not catch the "I'm crazy, I'm convinced there's two" statements littered across the last two months' blog posts? I think there's one of each. If I had to force myself to admit that there was one baby, I would tentatively guess this is a boy. (I did feel that Amelia was girl way back when.)

2) Are you hoping for a boy or for a girl?

I honestly don't get why so many people's immediate response to finding out that I'm pregnant has been, "Oh, I'll pray for a boy!" or something to indicate that I want a boy now that I have a girl. I think I'd prefer a girl, and maybe have a boy next time. The reasoning for this preference is dumb: first, I honestly cannot think of a place to store tubs of boy clothing in our current apartment--I had enough problems finding a place for all the girl stuff we have; second, I cannot for the life of me think of a boy name I am completely satisfied with. Which leads into...

3) What are you going to name the baby?

NO IDEA.

4) Uhhh... name ideas, then?

If it's a girl? Most likely Abigail Joy.

If it's a boy? Wo unto us, for I have no idea.

5) Uhhh... very, very tentative boy names, then?

Oh, I don't know. Henry? James? John? Jack? Thomas? William? I am not really completely satisfied with any of these. And James has not been much help in selecting names either.

6) What if it's twins? What would you name them?

Uhhh. I still don't know? If I needed two girl names, Abigail Joy... and Adella Katharine. Probably. Less certain about that second one. If a boy and a girl, Abigail and... perhaps Henry. Abigail and Henry sound kind of nice together, yes? Two boys? Definitely no idea.

7) Why all the A names?

I just happen to like them. 'Tis purely a coincidence.

8) Not making up names?

No, I'm not.

9) Just for kicks, if you had to make up a name, what would it be?

Seriously? Under what circumstance would I have to do so? I don't know. Alloria? (A quick Google search tells me I'm not the first person ever to come up with that. I guess I'm not the most creative person ever.) Don't hold me to that. Especially if it's a boy. Because then I'd for sure have no idea what to name him. Probably something I'd have to write an apology letter for. ("Dear son, I am sorry for naming you that. In my heart, I knew it was a mistake...")

Now, for the rest of the blog post.

Still very tired.

You'll be glad to know that I actually went and got my blood drawn for thyroid function tests yesterday. Hopefully all I need is a dose adjustment on my thyroid meds to make me feel a bit better. Hmm. Speaking of which, I should probably plug in my phone and turn it on so that when I get the call with the results, I'll actually know about it. I let my phone die a few days ago and haven't bothered with it since.

The thing is, if I had to predict the results of the blood test, I'd guess that, if anything, they'll have me decrease my dose... but I am far from sure. I find it much, much harder to pick out hyper/hypothyroidism symptoms when I'm pregnant because everything changes. Many of the symptoms which I have been attributing to just being pregnant just happen to also be the same things to watch out for if you're hyperthyroid.

The only thing that doesn't really fit in is how tired I am. Although fatigue can happen when you're hyperthyroid, it is more common during hypothyroidism. That's been especially true for me. More common with hyperthyroidism is difficulty sleeping, and I am hardly having that problem.

My next prenatal appointment is on Tuesday... April Fool's Day. If my thyroid labs come back as I suspect, maybe I'll ask them to check if I'm anemic or something.

I have no idea what else could be possibly going on, so if it's not a thyroid or anemia problem, I'd just have to assume "I am simply tired because I am pregnant" and that's all there is to it.

And then the little crazy part of my brain adds, "It's 'cuz there're two of 'em in there. Little buggers." I had nearly succeeded in convincing myself that there is only one, but honestly, being so tired is beginning to re-convince me otherwise. Clearly there is no other explanation. And it certainly doesn't help that I'm also half-convinced I have already felt the baby move, even though I didn't feel Amelia moving until something like 18 weeks. Seriously, I should not be feeling a singleton moving already. It's a wee bit early for that.

Perhaps I will not be entirely convinced there is only one baby until the 20-week ultrasound. I just keep finding something else that could mean twins and it is just too much. I sincerely hope I am not this crazy during subsequent pregnancies.

Love and zzzzzz...

Jenna and Baby Delta

Nearing the Second Trimester...

Only a week and a half until I hit the second trimester. Woohoo!

Theoretically this means the nausea will be completely gone any time now. In any case, it hardly bothers me at all right now.  And headaches? Those have become more infrequent now, too.

The big, big problem is... Drumroll, please...

Fatigue. As in EXTREME fatigue. I sleep--not kidding--something between twelve and eighteen hours each day. I often get twelve hours of sleep at night and then I take a four hour nap in the afternoon, and heck, I might even have a second nap sometime.

This whole shebang is reminiscent of when I had uber thyroid problems in college. The thing is, I'm relatively confident I'm not low thyroid right now. If anything, I'm nearing hyperthyroidism right now. And if that's true, I shudder to think how tired I'd be if I were truly hypothyroid. Ugh. Theoretically, I'm supposed to go get my blood drawn for my monthly thyroid function tests. Problem is, I'm so tired that I haven't managed to roll out of bed and go.

James has been home for the last week or so break for "spring break" (i.e. reading "Words of Radiance" and playing the new Diablo III expansion...), so I've been all right. It's been fabulous. He and Amelia will hang out, and then I can snore myself to high heavens without worrying about Amelia getting into massive trouble.

However... he says "spring break" is over. As in, "I should really start being responsible and doing my job again". So, he's going back to work/school/whatchamacallit tomorrow.

I have no idea how I'm going to manage.

Let's see. Is there anything else interesting? Uhhh... I don't know. Oh, I brought a box of cookies for my class of eight-year-olds on Sunday, and I put it, along with all my stuff in my classroom during sacrament meeting. And the doom! I walk in afterward and find three-quarters of the cookies gone! Dooooooom! We have a cookie thief... And I totally let the pregnancy hormones take over and I burst into tears...

Anyway, that's about it. Just general tiredness and doomage and such.

Love and all that mooshy, squooshy stuff,
Jenna and Baby Delta

P.S. Can you tell which movie I just watched a few days ago?

Crazier Than Ever

Well, the good news is that I am nauseous less often and seemingly less severely, though this morning I'm not sure that's the case. I feel awful.

I often feel as if I've been run over by a steamroller. I'm so exhausted all the time. I literally find it difficult to do more than sit on the couch staring into space for hours at a time... of course, I am occasionally interrupted by Amelia insisting that I read her this or that book (for the umpteenth time). I need naps during the day, and if I don't sleep at night, I'm an utter wreck the next day.

Inside my brain, things have gotten... interesting.

I feel like a witch. I don't ever recall raising my voice so often and for so little reason. For whatever reason, I am getting "touched out" much more quickly than before. Sometimes when Amelia pounces on me (for the umpteenth time) I find myself leaping away like a yowling cat, exclaiming, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" And then I lock myself in the bathroom.

Maybe part of it is that I am, for whatever reason, quite sensitive to body heat right now. Our thermostat is down all the way, and I still require air blowing on me in the night to keep cool. And at times during the day, I have to pull out a frozen fruit bar to cool myself down from the inside. So, unfortunately for Amelia, cuddles are much less welcome right now.

And then there are the migraines... I can't figure out how to make them go away. And I also can't figure out what's triggering them. I thought maybe dehydration, or hunger, or heat, or fatigue, or all of the above was triggering it, but I am at least one of those things all the time, whether or not I have a headache... Migraines make me grumpy. Very much so.

Of course, that's not all. I am having way more panic attacks than I am used to. I sometimes feel completely irrational. I often find myself thinking, "Seriously? I'm seriously having a panic attack about this? This is so stupid!"

Take, for instance, the twins obsession. I know (or at my frontal cortex knows) that if I actually am pregnant with twins (that's unlikely, says my frontal cortex) that that's fine, all will be well. My frontal cortex also likes to remind me that I have no rational reason to be so convinced there's more than one in there. It also also likes to remind that my pregnant sister-in-law is also somewhat convinced she's got twins too, and she doesn't seem to be off her rocker. So, concludes my frontal cortex, I just need to stop feeling crazy, and that's that.

I had an ultrasound yesterday. Kind of.

The midwife agreed it'd be a good idea to peek inside so that I'd be less anxiety-ridden. But... well... maybe if I only knew as much as the layperson does about ultrasound, maybe the ultrasound actually would have convinced me there was only one.

But then again, not only did this particular woman seem to have very little expertise with ultrasound, but I'm almost certain she hasn't ever personally dealt with anxiety and panic attacks of this sort before. If she was trying to comfort me, she probably shouldn't have said "Well, I'm very bad at finding twins. And they like to hide at this age. Sometimes twins are obvious, but just as often, they're not."

And I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking two-dimensionally when we did get an image on the screen. She just took the transabdominal transducer and put it over my belly, turned on the machine, didn't move it once, and said, "Well, I only see one." She printed the image and then turned the machine off.

I wanted to shriek, "You didn't rule out twins! You didn't rule out ANYTHING!" (Well, maybe she ruled out monoamniotic twins, but that hardly counts.) I wanted to yank the transducer out of her hand and do the procedure myself. Either that or demand she pull out the transvaginal transducer, but I had a feeling she was even less skilled with that. (Invasive? Pshah. She just did a bimanual exam AND a Pap smear. And both of those suckers hurt. Transvaginal ultrasound would have been NOTHING!) She didn't scan across the uterus once. For all I know, there is another one hidden in there, and the edge of a second gestational sac was just slightly to the side of where we were looking.

But... I didn't shriek. Nor did I grab the transducer. Maybe I should have. Surely she has encountered absolutely insane pregnant women before, so surely she would have forgiven me that small misbehavior.

"So, feel better?"

... "No. I was sure I would, but..." And then I burst into tears. Fabulous.

While I got dressed, I examined my feelings and discovered, contrary to what I should logically be feeling (a small measure of relief), I was instead even more convinced that there are indeed two and I was angry. Furious with myself. I so badly want to feel like my normal, rational self. Instead, I seem to be growing more and more irrational by the day.

I got dressed and went home. I was tired. I'd been in the office for an hour and a half (wrangling a hyperactive toddler at the same time) and I just wanted a nap. I got a call when I got home and discovered that the midwife had meant to come talk to me some more, so then I felt even worse.

Ugh. I cried a lot yesterday evening because I felt so... unstable and irrational and just plain panicky and even a little bit actually crazy. I don't actually care about there being one or two babies right now; I just want to having my thinking brain back--the one that is actually pretty good at neutralizing irrational feelings like these ones I'm overwhelmed by.

I almost feel like I'm convinced the sky is falling, and I'm angry at the sky for not showing any evidence of doing so BECAUSE THE SKY IS FALLING, DANG IT. That's just crazy.

Mentally, I didn't feel anything like this when I was pregnant with Amelia. I mean, I suppose I wasn't so stressed back then. I did just move back to Oregon, when I didn't want to... at all. And there's no sunshine. And there's no family here. And etc., etc., etc.

In the meantime, I'm going to... try and convince myself there is only one kid in there. Maybe I'll feel more sane that way. After all, it is much, much, much more likely that there really is only one baby instead of two. Once I make it to the second trimester, I'll start calling Baby Delta by his or her dinosaur name: Microraptor.

Love and steamrollers,
Jenna and Baby Delta