Things That Make You Cry When Pregnant

So I had heard your hormones and emotions run wild when you're pregnant, but I just figured it was over the usual stuff that a woman might cry at like movies, the loss of a pet, a sad book etc. My mother never gave me any heads up to the absurdities that will make you cry when they should make you laugh, angry, or cause indifference from you.

I've been pretty even keeled this whole time. I'm not bitchy and don't throw temper tantrums. I might cry at a tear jerking movie, or at a commercial that talks about planning for your future. I'd say that's not too bad. But I wasn't prepared for the random moments that caused set me off in hysterical, sinus draining, crying fits.

1. Road Rage. Several months ago, I witnessed a potentially dangerous episode of road rage between two jackasses about 100 yards in front of me. One probably wasn't paying attention and almost ran into the other but corrected himself. The other decided to get aggressive which lead to 2 pissy, pitch fittin drivers acting like dumbasses. Luckily I was far enough behind them to avoid running into this disaster, and when I saw them pull over as if they were going to lay the smack down on each other, I was relieved I was at my exit and continued on.

Normally this would just piss me off and I would be cussing their idiocy. But instead I freaked out and started crying hysterically the rest of the way home. I could not stop crying and blabbering at what jerks they were to put me and others around them in danger by acting like fools. How in the hell could they NOT know that a pregnant woman was a mere 100 yards behind them? Insensitive bastards!!!

2. Puking in Your Lap. Now I know that you're probably thinking this is not such a strange thing to make you cry hysterically even when your not hormonal. But this wasn't my first time to throw up on myself while stuck in the car. Yes I said stuck in the car. While driving down the highway. The first time it happened was about 10 years ago. I got some stomach bug that caused it. But I didn't cry. I stayed rational and logical. I merely contemplated whether or not I should stop at the ER on my way home or not. I knew in my gut it wasn't serious so I continued driving the 20 minutes all the way home.

This time I thought I was well enough past my morning sickness which had been very routine to this point and always at home. It'd been a week and a half since I'd thrown up. Well this one morning I woke up an hour earlier than normal not feeling very well. My stomach was burning and I just generally didn't feel very good. Well I had smoothie for breakfast and went on my way to work. I started not feeling well but being on the highway in the left lane didn't give me many options for pulling over. So I started making my way right. I made it there and just as I was about to pull over... well it was too late. Logically I pulled off and turned around to head back home. Though irrationally emotional, I balled the whole way home which took a good 10-15 min. The difference between this time and 10 years ago, I had someone waiting at home to help me. Ten years ago I got home got out cleaned myself off, took a nap in the tub, got up feeling better and cleaned my car. This time, I didn't have to clean anything but myself, but I still couldn't stop crying about it.

3. Scooping Dog Poo. So this is what convinced me to post on this topic. Today I was cleaning up after my dog in the yard, which was way overdue for cleaning. Now I've got 5 1/2 weeks to go, or less if I'm lucky, so I'm feeling large and not so mobile. Bending over is getting harder and harder so I'm using one hand on the pooper scooper and the load is getting heavy. On top of that, any activity like this now exhausts the hell out of me. I'm half way done and starting the other fence line and suddenly I realize there's a pile I missed that I didn't see when I got there. So I start scooping that up and I keep finding more and more in the same basic area. Initially this is perplexing to me, but I keep scooping before I discover there's a freaking giant hole in the bag. What's going in is now falling out every time I lower to scoop, so I've been rescooping the same poop for the last minute or so. Which is a giant waste of valuable energy.

Under normal circumstances that would have made me laugh, but I was already exhausted from the other side of the yard and the bag was so heavy and there was so much poop to scoop, and to top it off now my bag had a hole in it and I was going to have to get a new bag to finish the job and a new bag just to put the original worthless bag in. Which I might add was going to require more energy to be exerted. So I started crying ridiculously out of frustration. Not cool. Not cool at all. Especially since it makes me feel like I sound overly dramatic. Which is a quality I generally despise, or at least find incredibly annoying. None the less I'm crying like a nut job and my dog is worried enough about me that she keeps checking on me and actually gives me the frisbee to throw to her rather than insisting I chase her for it. It's about time my dog feel sorry for me and play with the frisbee right!!

4. Accidentally Deleting all of the Pictures From the Computer. Pregnant or not, I logically know that it would take a LOT to permanently delete pictures from my computer and that whatever I had done was not likely permanent. However when I went to the recycle bin I could not find them as I expected. So what do I do? The only thing that obviously solves all my problems. I start to cry as I frantically try to find them. When that doesn't work, I call my dad the 'computer expert' crying that I somehow deleted all of our pictures and can't find them anywhere....can you help me????? Of course while I'm on the phone with him I go back to the recycle bin and take a slower look and find them. But they were not as I would have expected to find them. Then of course I get mad at computer technology for deleting my pictures without even selecting them all and hitting the delete button. Stupid technology, what good is it if it takes over and does what you don't want it to do???

5. Crying. Since it's against my personality to cry irrationally, crying in the above described circumstances results in more blathering, snotty, frustrating, crying. I don't really know what else to say about that. It's not very attractive at all, which is why most of the time I try not to cry around my husband. Especially since logic tells me it's stupid to cry about these things and pride tells me it's a sign of weakness. All of that goes out the window, understandably so, when one is growing a baby.

So that's my crying list. I'm sure there are a few more I could add that are not nearly as entertaining. Be warned ladies, if you haven't experienced this, you will find yourself crying over things that seem more ridiculous than spilt milk.

The True Meaning of "Pregnancy Glow"

So growing up I heard about this "glow" that you get when your pregnant. I don't recall whether or not it was specifically explained to me as this look of joy and happiness that you get knowing that your offspring is growing inside you, but somehow that is what I always interpreted the meaning to be. I've even gotten the comment a few times myself.

Here's the thing, until recently I've been fighting pretty regular morning sickness either first thing in the morning or in the afternoon/evening. So I didn't feel like joy and happiness was oozing from my face. That leaves one other option which gives a whole new meaning to "glow." My face broke out like I was 12 or 13 all over again. I was humiliated. Then and now. I thought I left 13 back in 1991! Mom did NOT warn me that my face would look this bad. And all the magazines and Internet articles that said your skin never looks better than when your pregnant LIED! Can I sue them for mental anguish or something like that? At least when I'm not pregnant I can treat it with drugs that work. When you're pregnant, they don't let you use the stuff that works so you just have to 'deal' with it and hope it clears up before you die. Even better before you deliver. I'm still waiting, though it's a little better than when it was at it's worst.

I ooze oil when my face is out of control despite the assistance of makeup. I have so much oil on my face, BP needs to dispatch a clean up crew to help. (sorry for the lame joke...not really!) So I assume any "glow" that I had or even still have at times is due to the light reflecting off of the oil field on my forehead. That's the only possible explanation I have for anytime I glow since I can't bring myself to utter the words "I've never felt better in my life" to describe being pregnant. That would be a big fat lie coming from my mouth.

So there you have it...Pregnancy Glow is a polite way of saying 'how old are you? 13?!?!' or 'your skin is terrifying! But I can't look away!' or 'Thank God my skin doesn't look as bad as yours!!' I'm sure I could go on and on, but you get the point. Pregnancy Glow, no matter how well-intentioned, is not a compliment. Unless you're one of the lucky few that not only didn't get sick but never had better skin in your whole life.

How to Get Knocked up Like a Sorority Girl

So in the event that any of you have been wondering where I've been, I've been puking my guts out and sleeping and generally feeling motivated to do as little as possible including write. Lucky you, I'm back!!!

Yes, I'm knocked up....Half-way through and just found out it's a girl! So the next several posts will be dedicated to all of the awkward crap about pregnancy my mother didn't tell me about. The puking I expected. That was about it.

So the first part to having a baby is actually conceiving. As many of you know it's not nearly as simple as going off birth control. Though my mom seemed to be under that impression. Apparently that's how it worked for her. Off a couple a months then BAM!!! What she didn't take into account is that she was in her early 20's, I'm waited until 31 to 'stop preventing.'

Anyways so I was so good that I only consumed adult beverages during the week that confirmed conception failure. Several months passed and still no luck. I decided that maybe I ought to try tracking my temperature, because this option is much cheaper than buying an ovulation kit. Plus I didn't want to lose money if it didn't work. So I started tracking my temperature. I get up at 5am during the week for work. The weekends I sleep until at least 6:30 or later, but you must take it at the same time everyday. That sucked big time. To top it off, I got sick sometime during month 2, which screwed my normal temperature way up for a week. So I gave that up. I decided it was more work then I was willing to do that early on in the 'not preventing' process. I figured I'd pick it up again if I got closer to a year out and wanted to have information to take to a doctor.

So back to the adult beverages and the title of this post. Some time later, I was about to go visit some friends and my week of confirmed failure was about to start in a couple of days, so I did invest in an 'early' pregnancy test and used that as my confirmation and peace of mind that it was ok to have a margarita or two. So I didn't worry about it and had a great time with them. Not a sorority girl amount of a good time that could get me arrested for walking around in public, but enough.

We got home on the day failure was to be confirmed, I was mowing the lawn and my back snapped and started hurting. Failure wasn't confirmed that day but my back continued to hurt. I suspected that failure hadn't happened, but as I only had 1 pregnancy test left, I didn't want to take it until my body was really ready to pass it, because again, I'm cheap, and I really really didn't want to spend the money on a new box if I didn't have to. So I waited for about 5 days before I took it again, which was exactly 1 week after I took the first one. I passed!

So moral of the story. Don't stress yourself out by trying to do everything right to get pregnant. Relax and have fun with it. And for pete's sake don't keep drinking after you confirm you're pregnant. Oh and secondary moral, don't believe those commercials about the pregnancy tests working early. It's a trick to get you to buy more tests! I should sue for false advertising, but they covered themselves with a disclaimer on the box.

Awkward Quandry of the Day

Why are big sunglasses considered fashionable when big regular glasses from 1980-1993 still aren't considered fashionable?

I got my first pair yesterday and today while wearing them on my walk today, I found myself feeling like I was in 3rd-8th grade. They feel heavy and awkward and I'm constantly pushing them up my nose while they are constantly weighing me down.

My big sunglasses aren't nearly as big as the ones I see everyone else wearing. How do they do it without going insane? If I had to wear them all day, I'd get angry like I did with my glasses growing up. I remember throwing them across the gym floor once or twice they made me so mad. Good thing I don't wear my sunglasses all day and it's also good that I only paid $10 for them.

Youtube is Not Always Your Friend

Ohhh what's more awkward than having a wardrobe malfunction caught on video? Having it placed on youtube. Nonetheless I laughed hysterically enough to post it. Hope you enjoy.

Facebook is Like Reliving Highschool All Over Again

My mother obviously couldn't have taught me this because she isn't even on Facebook. Which is really probably a good thing. I resisted the "social networking" frenzy as long as I possibly could out of the principle of the matter. Mostly because My Space dominated the market and it seemed like something for musicians, teenagers, and child predators. I wanted nothing to do with it even after Facebook entered the scene. But then a year ago my curiosity got the better of me and so I gave in.

Immediately I got friend requests from people I knew in college all the way back to people I knew in elementary school. Which, since I moved around more than most people I know, I had lost touch with many of them so it was pretty neat to touch base with them again after all these years.

In case you haven't figured it out, I hated most of high school except my freshman year. Well suddenly I'm facebook friends with these people who somehow contributed to this awkward time of my life. And before you know it you're "friends" with a bunch of other people you knew at some point in your life either because you drunk friended them (like drunk dialing) or sober friended them because you talked yourself into the nerve to send them a friend request. Or they did the same to you.

So I saw no facebook etiquette for how to handle a new friend. I thought it only polite to at the very least say hi on their wall or even email them to catch up. I genuinely cared too. I found out it was like being in high school all over again where they find it amusing to just ignore my "hello how are you." And they sent me the request!!! Why would you friend me only to ignore me. Or accept a friend request only to ignore me. Trust me if you didn't care enough about me to keep up with me until now, my life is not nearly interesting enough to ignore me on facebook.

Then there are those that just send you a friend request because they want numbers. So if they ever ran across your path or went to the same school as you, they send you and 100's others requests. But they never bothered to get to know you ever. I'm not convinced they really knew my name. They just saw me in a school group they are in or something like that. So what do I do? I just say no. Lots of friends don't make you a super nice and genuine friend and person. That's not to say I'm super close with all of my facebook friends, but I do know that they knew my name or I knew them and we've all had some sort of interaction be it have actual classes together or actual conversations no matter how short.

That said it's here to stay and it's a much better forum than most of the other "social networking" forums and who knows, maybe it will result in a job someday when I need or want it. Also I find it to be the only way some of my friends communicate anymore. I still prefer email and am glad some of my closer friends also keep in touch that way. Needless to say, I no longer feel like I must make some form of communication with with a new friend. But I always always respond, if someone wants to know what's up with me.

Happy New Year!!!

So I've never been big into resolutions because often people seem to make them about things that involve changing habits or lifestyle that they don't really want to change. But in keeping with the theme of this blog, I've decided to spend less time worrying about my crows feet and gray hairs that I can't keep up with, and spend more time enjoying getting them.

2010 is going to be a great year and a great start to another great decade! Perhaps that's because as I get older, I do less awkward things. Or perhaps it's because I care less about embarrassing myself.

Hope you all have a fabulous year!