Posts Tagged ‘sickness associated to pregnancy’

So we’ve crossed the first trimester threshold. The morning sickness has retreated a little bit. The appetite has returned a fair amount. YET.

Wifey can still hurl with the best of em, but she isn’t as timid or fearful about things that could potentially make her sick as she was just a month ago. I still find humor in almost every aspect of her pregnancy because nothing is a small problem, everything is the end of the world, even if it’s right there on the page in front of me as being a normal part of a twin pregnancy.

Round ligament pain, mucus, sore back, nausea, headache, irritibility, you name it, she is still trudging uphill through 8 feet of snow barefoot through it all.

She still has hang ups on things that could potentially make her gag, and I’ve come to appreciate the newer ones and some of the classics.

Here is our first SECOND TRIMESTER list of WHAT WIFEY HATES PT. III!

1. ANYONE’s breath, still
2. Our garage. 
3. Fresh cut grass
4. Cheap motorcycle exhaust
5. MSG, Aspartame & High Fructose Corn Syrup, still. (Read about MSG here!!)
6. The smell of Pasta Pickups “these smell like dog food”
7. Dogfood – we dont have a dog, but if we did, its food would make Jules gag
8. Word combinations to be published later. (this is classic I assure you)

Never a dull moment. But at least when she’s popped she can look back and laugh (or hit me that I’ve documented it) and hopefully tell a few other freaky deeky preggo broads that it’s ok to be a complete freak as far as smells are concerned.

photo credit: Lord Jim

photo credit: NickStenning

*NOT OUR DOCTOR’S PARKING SPOT – A MERE REPRESENTATION*

Well on July 8th we saw our general practitioner for the first time for this pregnancy.
The “prenatal visit” they tell me.

I don’t really remember all that poking, prodding and depressing conversation when we were there for our first child.
It seemed besides the initial excitement felt on our end and our continuing worry about managing a house with twins and an older brother, we have a truckload of bigger things to worry about.

Most importantly is the first 12 weeks. If the twins survive to 12 weeks inside the womb, their chances of survival make a huuuuge jump. If you were talking with your hands, you go from “weeeee chances” before 12 weeks to “yay chances” after 12 weeks.
So rather than convincing Julie to take a complete bedrest and avoid work altogether, our doctor put it out there that regular life and activities can continue but to put EATING, DRINKING FLUIDS and REST at the top of the list of things to do today, and tomorrow and for the next 4 weeks.

What I also thought was a pretty cool thing to say, our doctor made the comment that the prenatal vitamin CAUSES NASEUA, so in this case, since Julie has already been to the ER for dehydration and a nice little “HEY YOU’RE HAVING TWINS” moment, fluids and foods outweigh the necessity for the prenatal horsepills. So if you have to choose between pukey pukey and yummy yummy slurp slurp, go for the yummy slurps and foresake the pukey.

In addition to some simple counseling about the safety of our unborn twins and encouraging Julie to take the Zofran in case of emergency, we were also informed that we would no longer be seeing our general practice doctor for the remainder of the pregnancy. “I do singletons.” The doctor told us.

In a bizarre and morbidly blunt tone he said: “If you happen to lose one, then you’ll come back and see me.”

Coming from a family where the law of attraction and the belief that positive thinking is quite powerful, I don’t care to harbor such negative ideas, but I appreciate the sentiment.

The doctor continued to tell us that he WILL be in the delivery room, but not as quaterback as he was during our son’s birth.

So we learned a few things:

• Our due date is now February 16th, 2009
• We will be seeing a team of OBs (three to be exact) so on the day of delivery we will have an OB that knows all about Julie’s vajayjay and the state of our twins’ health
• This pregnancy is considered High Risk, so we will be going back to see our High Risk doctor from Julie’s last pregnancy on a regular basis

p.s. I always wanted to use vajayjay as a post tag! HAHAHAH!

photo credit: Evil Erin

One of the things Julie has been suffering with consistently since week 4 is morning sickness. Morning, day and night sickness, that is.

In Julie’s case, the mornings and evenings are normally the worst, with the afternoon being generally acceptable, although mildly at best. We’ve been told that extra B6 (30mg minimum) is a great place to start to help treat the nausea, but what do you do when you can’t even bring yourself to LOOK at the water you would need to swallow the tablet?

When Julie left work the second time she called her doctor and he gave her a script (IMAGINE THAT!) for a drug called Zofran.
Of course, on the RX label it says “DO NOT TAKE IF YOU ARE PREGNANT.” Julie read that and was afraid of the potential side effects on the baby (we got the drug before we knew about the twins), but in the ER the nurse practitioner said that the FDA had categorized it as a Type B and that it was generally safe and no one would test the drug on pregnant ladies, but in those that HAD used it their weren’t any complications or negative effects on the fetus.

Julie has taken it twice since we found out about the two newbies, but only after prolonged periods of nausea and hunger did she break down to use it. It definitely helped, but any alternative to using drugs has to be better than taking something that isn’t documented as NOT hurting unborn children.

MORNING SICKNESS FREEDOM!

While looking for more information on the subject we came across Morning Sickness Freedom. In this book we read about a set of pressure points that work immediately, a method for avoiding chemicals in the foods you eat that can increase the chances of feeling sick to your stomach, breaking down the contents of the prenatal vitamins that pregnant women take that could be the source for some of the vomiting, and also some exercises that cut down on reflux and increase bloodflow.

A lot of the books we found on Amazon didn’t seem to focus on the specific 6-12 week period during the first trimester where things seem insusrmountable, but Mary Kinsey focuses JUST on the timeframe where morning sickness is most profound.

This summer she is selling the book for about 30 bucks, but I’m told it will go back up to 50 bucks sometime soon.

I’ve learned so much on a subject I was not at all comfortable researching for my wife initially, but when your partner in life is puking her guts out morning, noon and night, you gotta step up and find some stuff out as soon as possible. Three lives depend on it.