When to Tell … Fatigue … Pickles & Ice Cream

One of the first decisions you have to make upon finding out that you’re pregnant is who you should tell and when. There are two basic camps: spread the joy right away or wait about 12 weeks. The rationale for waiting is that you won’t have to later spread the word that you are not expecting after all in the case of a miscarriage. With Colum, Ed and I decided to tell our parents and siblings right away, but to wait until the end of the first trimester before letting the rest of the world in. One problem with that approach is that the news is bound to leak, which was okay. More troubling, perhaps, is making excited new grandparents keep such a big secret for nearly two months. This time around, then, we decided to just tell everyone right away and cross the miscarriage bridge if we came to it. I did keep it a secret at my Saturday night job for a good 10 weeks, though, just to be sure. The truth is that I’m just not very good at keeping big news to myself. I’ll keep someone else’s confidence, no problem, and love to keep secrets (like the sex of the baby) from myself, but I can’t imagine not telling my close friends and family about a pregnancy. With my first pregnancy (and baby) I really did think there was a single best way to do things. With enough reading and critical thinking I was sure I could figure out what that best approach was. Now I realize that rules like “Wait 12 weeks before telling” are not for everybody. Don’t get me wrong, though, I still have some strong opinions about what is best for my baby. I’m just a little more open to being proven wrong.

I thought for sure I’d be blogging about this pregnancy non-stop. (That was another reason to share the news right away.) But I was so completely immersed in a fog of fatigue and, let’s face it, stupidity, that it’s been a record-setting six weeks since I’ve posted here. I don’t remember feeling this tired with Colum and I probably wasn’t. For one, I would sleep in as late as I wanted during the first trimester. (I was working nights as a bartender.) And I was drinking caffeine! Colum’s pregnancy was a surprise, so I had to pretty radically change my lifestyle in a hurry. I wasn’t a particularly heavy drinker, but after quitting smoking cold turkey and then dealing with a bar full of drunk university students at 2:30 am, I really did miss those couple of drinks. So when I read that a moderate amount of caffeine had no demonstrable harm on the fetus, I decided that I’d sacrificed enough thank you very much. This time, though, I came across a new study that links caffeine to an increased risk of miscarriage. Add that to my mother’s conviction that coffee caused one of her two miscarriages, and her uncanny ability to be way ahead of the rest of us, and I thought I’d better skip the joe this time around. The haze is finally starting to lift from my frontal lobes, though, and I feel like myself again. Here are some tips for anyone still looking to beat that pregnancy fatigue, but I really think you just have to wait it out in the end. It’s time to gear up for an ultra productive second trimester to make up for lost time and the impending sluggishness of the third trimester.

My other symptoms have been pretty subtle. A bit of queasiness when I forget to eat and some breast tenderness. I’m actually in a bit of awe again at the dramatic breast changes that happen during pregnancy. Last time, I had stretch marks on both breasts after three months and went from a pre-pregnancy 32 B to a 36 DD when my milk came in. I put on a good deal of weight in general, but still. This time there was only a three month window between weaning Colum completely at 18.5 months and getting pregnant again. So I guess I thought all the duct work would still be in place and ready to go. Guess again. Having just nearly returned to my pre-pregnancy size, my breasts are quickly swelling up again with all the weird tugging and tingling sensations that entails. Also, my right nipple is extremely itchy and I haven’t read about that symptom anywhere. My belly is also quickly adopting the pregnant look now that all those pesky abdominal muscles that kept it reigned in for so long last time are nice and loose. I have had some constipation and seem to want to eat a lot of fresh fruit and veggies. I’ve also had hankering for salty cured meat, and ice cream, and pickles. But not together. I must say, though, that Colum has really come around to enjoy a “spicy” (as he calls it) dill pickle as well.