Pregnancy Journal: Week 5

This week was not really the greatest for me. All week I was filled with all sorts of anxiety and unrest about this pregnancy. I feel obsessively compelled to spend way too much time on the internet researching everything under the sun that I could think of. For some reason I felt that if I could plan everything now (and by everything, I mean everything baby related) then somehow I wouldn't be anxious anymore and I would feel more prepared. As long as I was doing something I didn't feel upset or anxious, but the minute settled down I started to feel upset again. I really couldn't pinpoint why I was feeling this way, but it was very strange and not the way that I would have imagined feeling, just having found out that I was pregnant. I was supposed to be happy and overjoyed, not scared!!!

Plus, Anthony didn't share any of my fears or anxieties so being around him was slightly irritating. He just didn't get it! To be honest, I didn't really get it either but it still bugged me :) Finally Anthony and were able to have a heart to heart about all of my fears and I realized that I needed to let go and just be. I needed to learn to trust in Heavenly Father and his plan for us and our family. Once I realized that, I felt like a large weight was lifted off of my shoulders! I also felt like thinking about more immediate things like making a doctors appointment, the first ultrasound (things that would make me more happy and excited) would somehow jinx everything and make something bad happen.

As far as pregnancy symptoms go, I've started to feel a version of morning sickness that I have a feeling is here to stay. Luckily I haven't physically gotten sick too frequently, but I have a general feeling of nausea all day that gets even worse at night. All I have really been able to eat are crackers and soup, but sometimes I get the weirdest cravings for things that I never eat usually!

Another thing I did this week was take a few more pregnancy tests for good measure :) I can't get enough of getting those positive test results! Here I am with them all:

Fort Desoto Beach

Anthony and I finally had a chance to go to the beach today! We've been wanting to do it for awhile, especially since we live so close to the coast now but with Anthony working weekends and me working during the week our schedules never seem to line up. The weather was perfect and it wasn't too crowded. I did miss not having very many waves, but that's what you get on the gulf coast :)

Anthony was able to get some fishing in:I have been dying to kick back, relax, and soak in the beach:
And what can be better than relaxing and reading a good book with this as a background?

Of course, our trip would not be complete with the appropriate amount of craziness! Anthony and I decided to take a walk to the far north edge of the park's beach to check out some cool looking trees coming out of the water. As we got closer, I laughed a little bit at an older man walking in front of us wearing a G-string speedo! I even remember thinking that this guy must feel really out of placing wearing something like that in good old America (Speedos for guys are a strictly European trend, right?). As we keep walking, I noticed a few more string-speedo wearing older men, but I was listening to music and looking for fish in the water so it didn't really register as something to be concerned about. We passed a few more groups of people before we got to the end of the beach where it turned into a protected conservation area.

After about 15 minutes of fishing and lounging, I happened to glance up as another older man started to walk out of the water. "Dang, another speedo" I thought, but as he got closer and closer to the beach all of a sudden I realized I was wrong, he wasn't wearing a speedo, in fact he wasn't wearing anything! The realization dawned on me that we had inadvertently wandered into the unofficial nudist/clothing optional part of the beach. Not only that, to get back to the clothes-wearing part of the beach we had to walk by several groups of people that I now realized would probably not be wearing any clothes. How awkward! I seriously didn't know where to look as we started to walk back. I could look at the water, but then I might run into someone standing on the beach and that wouldn't be good for obvious reasons. I could look ahead of me, but every time I caught of glimpse of one of the naked old guys I had the irresistible urge to giggle and once I started I knew I would be able to stop. I settled for looking at my feet and biting the inside of my lip so I didn't burst out into immature guffaws. Whew, what an experience! They need to post those "unofficial" beach areas on trip advisor or something!

Strawberry Picking

Anthony and I had so much fun today! We got up early this morning to go to a cub scout field trip to a local hydroponic farm. It was really neat! They grow everything in multiple styrofoam containers stacked on top of each other with a pole through the middle. They don't use soil for growing plants, but something called "growing medium" that is really light. It looks something like this:

They end up using tons of less water because they water the top plant once, and it trickles down to water all of the plants below it. They also have less pest problems because the plants are off of the ground and they don't get any bugs from soil (since they don't use soil). Lucky for us, they are also a u-pick farm! They had a large strawberry patch and Anthony and I stayed after all of the boys left so that we could get a-pickin'. It was one of the more pleasant experiences I have had with picking berries. Since the plants are stacked on top of each other you don't have to bend down all of the time to find berries! Most of them where eye level or slightly lower.

Once we got home and I started washing and cutting them up, Anthony came up behind me and started eating them. After awhile he turned to me, his mouth red from the berries and said "I can't stop!! They are too good!". They were so sweet and juicy that it made me want to buy my own hydroponic setup and start my own berry patch!

Of course, I do still have my garden that I started last March. I haven't been posting pictures of it because I am a little mad at it at the moment. The plants keep growing bigger and bigger, but most of them have yet to produce any veggies! The only plants that have been persistently giving me anything is our bean plants. The squash plants have taken up half of the entire box but have yet to give me a single squash. The pepper plant has grown to almost as high as my neck, but no peppers. Patience, patience I suppose.

Ahh, my back!

For the past few days I have been experiencing what it is like to have a bad/strained back and I never appreciated how not-fun that is. I never realized just how much I use my lower back until this week, which is ALL the time. (In case you didn't know, like I didn't). So, I have become a pretty lazy person this past week. No working out, really no activity that requires moving more than sitting and lying down unless it was something I HAD to do (like my calling, work stuff, etc...). Not being able to work out is also making me a little crazy. I swear that my jeans are tighter and my legs are flabbier. Unfortunately I can't think of really good cardio exercise I could do lying down in bed while reading a book and having Anthony bring me food. (Because that is all that I have wanted to do all week).

You would think that I pulled something lifting weights or doing something that made sense when it comes to back pain, but I have literally done nothing to cause this! All weekend I didn't feel well with headaches and side effects from my medication so I just vegged out, watching movies and cross-stitching. On Tuesday morning when I got up to get ready for work, my lower back hurt like the dickens and I assumed that it would just go away. Here we are on Friday and it still hurts! The only thing I can think of that I did was Monday night at 3am our car alarm went off and I jumped out of bed from a deep sleep to find our clicker and turn it off. (No burglars, just an evil, hateful alarm that doesn't like human beings to get a good night's sleep).

This morning it was so much worse, that I ended up getting pointers on lower back stretches from a friend at work. We were quite a sight, side by side on the office floor doing different positions and stretches to try to find a way to convince my muscles to let go. Now I am trying to get up and do some stretches every hour and it feels like things are getting better. Hopefully I will be 100% soon!

Cub scouts has been going well. We had our first den meeting on Wednesday and Anthony and I attended our first round table last night. The previous den leader said that one of the cubs was so upset when he found out she was leaving that he wanted to quit scouts! But, after Wednesday he told her never mind, because we were "fun" :) You can't get a better stamp of approval than that!

I bought my leader uniform on Tuesday night and they were having a sale on skirts for women leaders since they are being discontinued. I tried it on without the shirt and it seemed fine, so I bought it. When I got home and put it on all together, I looked hideous! I showed Anthony and he did a double take and then started to laugh! His theory is that the boy scouts were trying to make the women leaders look as hideous as possible to minimize any cub-crushes. A few days later I went and bought some olive-colored pants to replace the skirt, again shopping without the uniform shirt. I was so pleased with myself and sure that I had fixed the problem. I got home, put the pants on and showed off to Anthony just how cute they were. After putting on the uniform shirt: BAM, instant hideousness. Anthony couldn't help laughing at how much I hate that shirt. It has a supernatural ability to make me and anything else I wear with it look seriously ugly. Not cool!

New Callings

Anthony and I both have new callings in our ward! A little over a month ago I was called to be a primary teacher for the 5 year olds so I have been learning and experiencing primary for the first time (as an adult that is). It has been a wonderful experience so far, but definitely an adjustment. I am loving all of the wonderful things the children say and do and I feel good learning how to teach and nurture the children. It helps me feel that much more excited and confident for when Ant and I have our own children to teach! However, it is a little disappointing to not be able to go to Sunday School or Relief Society anymore. I've had to make an extra effort to read the lessons on my own time and I've been reminding Anthony to make sure to give me a good report of what I missed after we get home from church.

Then, a couple of weeks ago Anthony got released from his calling in the Young Men's and was called to be a primary teacher too! So I had to let him off the hook as my Sunday School insider and we are holding our own little Sunday School at home after church :) He is going to be teaching the next class up from me, the 6 & 7 year olds. He was so intimidated! He has never had to teach young children before and I think he felt really out of his element. I keep telling him that he is going to be great! He is just one big kid himself, so I know he will find a way to relate to his class.

At the same time, Anthony and I were called to be den leaders for the cub scouts in our ward. This was definitely unexpected for me! I kept thinking back to when my mom was a den leader, and I guess I always pictured that as a "mom" calling because they know so much more about what they are doing. Still, I am really excited to get to do this together with Anthony and learn something completely new. Our first cub scout meeting that we got to observe was a court of honor, and let me tell you it was a culture shock! There are so many different terms, ceremonies, songs, that seem so foreign as an outsider that it was almost funny to me how much I didn't understand. Not to worry, I am sure I will be an insider in no time :)

Work is going great for me, same old same old. Anthony is suffering through his women's health rotation :( He says that he doesn't mind doing baby stuff and he thinks that it is neat when he gets to measure a pregnant belly to confirm how many weeks along the mother is, or feel limbs and the baby's position from the outside, but he really doesn't like and feels uncomfortable doing...other stuff. The good news is that Anthony has the option of doing half of this semester at another location if he isn't interested in women's health as a specialty (can you guess who signed up for that ASAP?). He is going to be doing the other half of his rotation at an urgent care clinic and he is so excited! He is going to try to get evening hours when doctor's offices are closed so that he can see the most interesting of cases. The gorier, the better for Anthony!