Coffee or no?

Ugh. I quit coffee just as I got pregnant, and it was surprisingly easy. I had tried to quit before and had terrible withdrawal that included depression, headaches and just general misery. This time I did not have any of that, which surprises me, because while I was working on my Masters in Joburg I was living off coffee and very little else.

Recently I have been suffering mild headaches, and I am blaming pregnancy. They are not very bad, and I should not really complain, but it does get a bit draining when they occur every day. I read that caffeine seems to help. So today I made myself some Nescafe, the caffeinated kind. It is ok to have a bit of coffee in pregnancy.

Now I am feeling not so good! All shaky and weak and anxiety has sprung from nowhere. I am not usually an anxious person. Blegh. My mild headache is gone though. Can't win in this game - headaches or anxiety? Maybe I will alternate.

A lemon in the oven.

So blogging world, I have been hiding again, for no other reason than absolutely nothing interesting has been happening in my life. Until now I guess.

After a miserable two months in Johannesburg slogging day and night in lab with no time to cook or exercise and lots of time for stress, I came home and immediately fell pregnant.

Oops.

Just kidding! If there is one thing I can safely say I am good at, going by my 14 year relationship, it is birth control. We clearly had that down. I can happily vouch for the wonders of condoms because the minute we put them away I got knocked up. But this was all well planned.

I feel very lucky and grateful to have fallen pregnant with such ease. At my age fertility is  in decline and I know many people of all ages who battled for years to fall pregnant, if at all. And even that one month was stressful! I cannot imagine doing that again and again. Living by the clock, what with calculating ovulation and timing the deed, and then two week waits, and then the countdown for miscarriage risk at each week of pregnancy and then in my case a 12 week wait(!!) to actually see if there was really anything growing in there or if it was all my imagination, I was stressed and tired of watching the clock. Now I feel like I don't have to worry about time so much until the baby needs to come out, so that is a relief.

I had very mild pregnancy symptoms at first, no morning sickness, just some nausea and an aversion to vegetables and meat. Only dairy products and carbs seemed to go down ok (Nik Naks are my saviour).  So much for the healthy pregnancy diet I am supposed to be following.

Now I am in the second trimester (baby currently the size of a lemon) and I have thrown up twice! And I thought things were supposed to get better from now on. And I have hectic shortness of breath. We walked around the block the other day and I had to sit down and rest I was so puffed. I am a bit worried about this actually, because I know many women can exercise just fine during pregnancy and can do more than walk around the block. I mean, my body has produced up to 50% more blood and is straining the heart, but I am not sure that this is a normal level of breathlessness. Apparently pregnancy can suddenly bring to the fore heart problems that went undetected before. Please don't let that be the case.

I am also now having lots of uterus stretching pains which are not agonising but last all day and get to me after a while. And then there is my back. I am not really showing or anything but all the stretching is causing back pain already. Oh boy, I can't imagine how painful it will be by the end.

I am already missing the easy times of the first trimester.

I am so inexperienced in all things baby, have never changed a nappy, have had almost no interaction with babies whatsoever. I am pretty terrified. But somehow I will have to manage, so here goes.