Eight Weeks

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Today marks my eigth week of pregancy (since getting a new EDD of 02.02.10 last week). Here's what the Little Being looks like:

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New this week: Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby — about the size of a kidney bean — is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.

After seeing our baby on the ultrasound last week it's all the more real. Mr. Divasaur is hilarious, he keeps the u/s pic with him and looks at it daily. Sort of a replacement for the HPT+'s that he looked at daily until now. I think it's really cute. He's wanted to become a daddy for a while and he's SO excited that we're on our way to becoming parents.

After 8 Weeks my breasts are less tender and I haven't had any morning sickness in about a week and no nausea for about 5 days. I am hoping that sticks! I have developed some weird itchy patches behind my knees that I am treating with topical Benadryl Cream and hoping to get an appointment to see my GP for it ASAP. That said, I am still having food adversions and my fatigue has been overwhelming. In fact, part of my job requires me to to represent our company at national seminars and conferences for musicians and music educators. They happen about once or twice a quarter. This week I am in D.C. for "Music Week in Washington" and I am just wiped out.

Yesterday I had plans to meet some of the girls from an online chat board I visit and felt so bad that I needed to cancel our plans at the last minute. That is very unlike me. But I had gotten to my room to change and get ready to head out to meet them and just felt like I had been hit by a truck. I could barely stay awake. I tried to rest up for 30 minutes and it only progressed. So I had to cancel and felt just awful about it. I ordered up some room service (begged them to deliver items off the kids menu since I didn't want "adult" hotel-style sauced up food)...I got chicken fingers, french fries and a lemonade. I was starving but was almost too tired to eat.

One thing I have learned on this trip is that I need to prepare better now that I am pregnant. When I was out of the country last month for work I didn't know I was pregnant. But I remember feeling tired and hungry all the time. Some of that I chalked up to jet lag and being "off" my regular schedule. But in retrospect, some of that may be due to being knocked up. Lately I am used to snacking about every 3 hours and being on the road makes that really difficult. Case in point, I had breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch as Noon and dinner at 6:00 p.m. No snacks in between. So I guess that's part of my energy drain. Add that to this being my ninth straight day of work in a row. And an hour time difference between here and my home town. And just the energy drain of being "on" for a conference. Sunday night I couldn't sleep until Midnight and last night I made up for it by sacking out at 7:30 p.m.!

So I have to have a better plan for next month when I have a training seminar in Detroit. Unfortunately most hotels attached to conference centers don't have grocery or even convenience stores nearby for guests. So it's either vending machine snacks or restaurant food. I have to be sure I bring some granola bars, trail mix and find some fresh fruit on-site. Normally, I just power through these events, eat on the fly, rest when I can and recover once I get home. But now that I am pregnant that strategy just won't work. I have a month to come up with a new one. Until then, I plan to just do the minimum I can, eat as well as possible and rest up this coming weekend when I get home.