(no subject)

[rivka]

I've gone back and made a bunch of entries visible, dating back to the last week of July. They are probably only of interest to the pregnancy-obsessed.

Oh my God my new maternity bra is the most comfortable undergarment I have ever put on. I never want to take it off. They'll have to pry my cold dead fingers from it. Frighteningly, it's a size 40E, and I'm told that it will probably only fit for a little while. That may not seem like a frightening size to you, but keep in mind that so far I've been losing, not gaining, weight with this pregnancy. I can pull the waistline of my slim-fit jeans out two inches, but my tits are like zeppelins.

Some of the prenatal labs they drew on Monday are already back. I am HIV negative. I don't have antibodies to toxoplasmosis - but fortunately, person-to-person infection is very rare. (I don't have cats.) I do, thank God, have antibodies to cytomegalovirus. When I did my dissertation research, I interviewed the parents of a child with congenital CMV infection. She couldn't speak, see, or hear, and had little voluntary control of her muscles. Because I could be exposed to CMV through contact with my patients, the image of that child has haunted me for a long time.

Getting eight hours of sleep a night really does seem to help keep the pregnancy symptoms manageable. I just can't do the six-hours-a-night-all-week-and-make-it-up-on-weekends thing anymore.

Comments

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Color me pregnancy-obsessed - I went back and read all of your pregnancy entries. Oh, I remember those days! I loved being pregnant - I'm really going to enjoy reading along with yours. Smack me if I comment, advise or reminisce too much.

Can't wait to see you and give you a great big hug! I'm so excited and thrilled for both of you.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I lost weight early in my pregnancies too, so I recognise the sense of weirdness.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Would it help at all to point out that in my pregnancy experience eventually no one, including me, noticed the Boob Bonanza because the Belly made them seem less menacing and more to scale?

And a big 'oh yeah!' on the maternity bra. Putting on my first one was a near-religious experience.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh God, comment all you want. I love having people to talk to about this. Sensible people, I mean, not like the ones on the Babycenter boards.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for making the previous entries available. I was enjoying them yesterday but didn't want to say so here because I wasn't sure if you'd made them completely public. :-) So: yay!

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

"wasn't sure" = in the middle of something else and didn't go back to skim for little lock icons


:-p

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I'm equally pregnancy obsessed - and so pleased to finally have someone on LJ to obsess with!!

Stay away from the nasty on-line pregnancy communities out there - most are horrid. The LJ ones, while not great, are acceptable, and not just festering puddles of self-induced guilt and shame. For the most part. :)

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Avoid babycenter like the plague - those people are scary! I think you'd probably like the mothering.com message boards - that's my primary online hangout for parenting stuff.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

www.mothering.com has excellent boards, if you're looking for something outside of LJ.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!! I'll have to check it out tonight after work!

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

And in terms of LJ communities, I'd recommend pregnantwomen if you want to get away from what I'm sure are large amounts of teenage angst in pregnant.

oldermoms is for moms 30 and over (not that 30 is old, but given LJ median age...) and is a similarly angst-free zone. You could join now for a sneak peak of what's ahead!

[ailbhe]

Maternity bras were alright, I guess, but *nursing* bras are the best! I've never worn underwire, so maternity bras weren't a revelation to me, but something about a good nursing bra is incredible.

Unfortunately I only have two of the fabulous ones and three inferior ones. The fabulous ones are no longer sold in cotton.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. There were days I slept 16 hours. No kidding.

[ailbhe]

OK, I'm obsessed, as the comments in your inbox will tell you.

Can you feel it in your tum yet? I felt that I couldn't breathe as deep down as I used to, as did radegund, long before bumpiness showed itself.

I also drank champagne at least twice during my pregnancy. Not, I think, in the first 12 weeks, but I don't remember.

I'm so glad it was so easy for me to quit smoking.

how'd I...

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

I was about to ask how I missed this bit of information and then realized how busy I've been...oppsies.

So consider this a belated CONGRATS! and best wishes for you and the baby.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Huh. In New Zealand "maternity bra" _means_ "nursing bra". They don't sell different ones for pregnancy here.

(Since wearing maternity bras I've never EVAR worn an underwire, and if I have anything to do with it I never will again.)

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I am not pregnancy obsessed, but reading the entries made me smile.

Nursing bras.... Oh yeah, those were great.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Gulp. I just looked at the CMV link. I was CMV negative for my first two but had been exposed by the time I had my third. (I knew mainly because I was no longer a "preemie donor" at the blood bank.) Perhaps its just as well I didn't know what it could do. I knew about toxoplasmosis, however, and became fanatical about avoiding cats, probably much more than I needed to be.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Technically, these are nursing bras - that's all they were selling in the "Motherhood Maternity" outlet store. They have fold-down cups, which would lead me to salacious thoughts if my nipples didn't hurt so much.

I'm just calling them "maternity bras" because I'm not actually nursing.