Alright, so I kind of died 7 months ago and stopped posting. I know, I’m lame. But the reason why is because actually, I got pregnant again. And I was extremely morning sick, just like last time! But this time, I had a toddler running around and so it was much harder to blog. So, needless to say, I have not really been exercising and losing weight.

I’m 7 months along now, due December 21st with another little girl, whom we will be naming Willow! I’ve been kind of able to keep my weight down… only 15 (I’m at about 226, up from 211 prepregnancy) lbs gained last time I checked… though I might have balloooned… I’ve been afraid of weighing myself for the past two weeks, because I keep gorging on candy and ice cream and stuff.

I’m planning on starting “dieting” this next week though (as in keeping track of how many calories I’m eating, not actually dieting dieting.) I don’t want to gain 30 lbs again, so that it isn’t so hard to lose it all after the new little one is born.

Someone asked if I’ve tried Wii Fit Plus yet, and no, I haven’t. I’m waiting for a good deal to come around before I buy it, because I’m a cheapskate like that. I haven’t really been exercising… but I think I will try at least doing free step on Wii Fit for 15 minutes a day if I can, so that I can keep my blood pressure down and just be healthy. Tried doing My Fitness Coach a month ago consistently and got bad sciatica and so had to stop. So I’m guessing it’s best if I keep my exercising as low impact as possible.

I’ll keep you updated on what happens. Hopefully I can keep my weight down! Got a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, so we’ll see what the scale says.

So, again, I’ve neglected to update for a while. I’m 34 weeks now… only 6 weeks to go, thank goodness!

I quit my job a week ago, and have been sitting at home, relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet for now. I couldn’t stand working anymore… I was too uncomfortable and tired and frustrated all the time with my particular job. Tech support isn’t easy, even if you do sit down all day.

Anyway, I’ve been loving being at home… actually keeping the house clean and whatnot and making dinner… and not being tired all day. However, I’ve apparently got sciatica in my left leg. It hurts soooo bad. It aches all day long, and when I walk around and try and do stuff, then I get shooting pains through my whole leg. It makes me want to cry. I tried taking some Tylenol yesterday for it, but it didn’t help at all. From what I’ve read online, there’s not a whole lot you can do… besides see a PT or a chiropractor. Oh well. It sucks.

In other news, I haven’t been sick in the mornings for a while now… well, at least I feel a little nauseous, but I don’t actually puke anymore. That’s been a relief. Also, my baby shower will be happening in a couple of weeks! Yay! My sister in law who lives here in Provo will be planning that out… I’m sure it will be fun.

Also, Saturday the local lure coursing group is starting lure coursing up again! I’m so excited that spring is here and I can take my dog out to run lure coursing again! Of course, this time my husband is going to have to be the one who goes out into the field where the “bunny” goes to, because I have to limp and waddle everywhere I go now, which makes the going extra slow.  But still, it will be fun and my dog can run off some of her pent up winter energy!

Beyond that, not too much to report… I’m just getting bigger and bigger, and my hip joints hurt when I sleep on my side. Also, last time I went to the doctor, they told me I’d actually lost 2 pounds from the time I was last there. Since I weigh 260, that doesn’t bother them in the slightest though. I think I lost the weight because I had the flu… it was BAD. I was SO sick for about 5 days and had to miss work… they gave me something with codeine in it that was supposed to help, but I only took it twice because it didn’t seem to be doing anything for my cough (which hurt really really really badly), and because I read that codeine is possibly associated with cleft palate in babies… so I didn’t want to risk it. I had a silly flu shot and everything this year (like I normally do, because I have asthma), but apparently only 40% of the viruses matched the flu shot or something like that.

Anyway, while I was sick I didn’t really eat very much, and so I think I lost weight because of that. I’ll probably have gained it back when I next go in to the doctor, so I’m not worried. I’ve only gained 22 pounds so far in the pregnancy, so I’m quite happy with myself. That’s more than I was hoping to gain, but less than I could have gained. I plan on breastfeeding for a year, so since that burns 500 calories a day, I’m hoping that it will help me lose some weight after the baby is born. We’ll see.

It’s getting closer! I’m so excited!

So! I finally decided to take a picture of my belly! So here it is… me nineteen weeks pregnant… about 4 weeks ago. I feel so huge right now… and it’s only going to get bigger…

Found out last week (23 weeks) that I’m having a little baby girl! I’m super excited! We’re going to name her Sylvia Michelle (the middle name may change).  We got some really cute pictures of her on the ultrasound:

And I’m still sick in the mornings. It’s not so bad anymore, because now I just throw up in the morning and feel better during the day… Instead of how during the first trimester I was sick all day long. I guess I am doomed to have morning sickness the whole pregnancy though, which is no fun. At least it’s not so bad that I’ve had to go to the hospital or anything, I guess.

Can you believe it? I’m 12 weeks along! This is going so fast… can’t believe I’m in the second trimester already!

Unfortunately, I’m still sick. I thought it would go away, but nooooo. Of course not. I couldn’t even eat again this morning because I was so sick.

Anyway, I went in to the doctor on Monday for the 12 week exam… it was really neat in some ways, but not so neat in others. The best part (of course) was getting to listen to the baby’s heartbeat! 170 bpm the doctor said… a good healthy baby! I’m so glad to hear that, since I was afraid of miscarriage before. They say that at this point in pregnancy, the risk of miscarriage is below 5%. That’s so great! I can’t wait to find out the gender in a month and a half. So exciting!

Andrew, my DH, came along to the doctor as well… he was excited to hear the baby’s heartbeat also. Then we found out that I had to get a pap smear and a breast exam too…. Andrew stuck it out, comforting me as they stuck those metal things inside me and got some of my cells. Then the doctor made sure my uterus was the right size and that my ovaries were okay. They were, which was good. Then he poked my chest and made sure that was alright. That was too.

So I’m a healthy 21 year old. Yay me!

Poor Andrew. He probably would have rather not been there, but he was a good sport. He’s probably glad he’s not a woman. I don’t blame him.

I found out one fantastic thing from the visit… I have only gained one pound since my six week visit! That is GREAT! I was so happy to hear that… maybe I am not doomed to gain 500 pounds from being pregnant after all! Maybe my metabolism will go back to normal! So many happy things it could mean! Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep the weight gain down.

My doctor’s advice was to just follow my appetite and eat when I’m hungry and don’t eat when I’m not. Don’t just “eat for the baby” he said, just follow the cravings. He said that at over 200 pounds, I could healthily not gain any weight over the whole pregancy and my body would be fine, but not to try and diet.

I’m so happy! I hope everything continues this way!

Peace!

So I know some of you readers were following me or have come across me because I am a pregnant bowhunter. So, assuming that I have something of an audience there, I’ll tell you about my season this year.

Mostly it was great! I loved it. After my first disasterous experience with my guide, he took me and my husband to a much easier to get to spot with lots of elk. We would go up on Friday nights (because it’s hard to do it on weeknights when you’ve got work in the morning… and if you get something, you have to haul it out in the morning.) and sit at a quiet watering hole, up on a hill, behind some bushes and wait for the wildlife to come in.

The first time we went, nothing came through. But the second night, we had a herd of elk with a big six point bull come through. Since this is spike/cow only territory though, I had to leave him alone. He sure was pretty though, and having a great time splashing around in the mud. Anyway, so when they first came into the hole, I got excited and drew back… just waiting for a cow to go broadside so I could shoot (they were about 20 yards off, so easy). Buuut they were too busy bouncing in the mud, so I had to kind of let off… and let off a little quick and they heard. So the bull took off. Some of the cows stuck around though… and one came down to drink, so I took a shot.

I hit her high, but at a downward angle… and let her bound off. We waited for half an hour, then it started to get really dark, so we went to see if we could at least find the start of the blood trail… but there was nothing. We searched for an hour or two. And no blood, no arrow, nothing. We came back in the morning and searched for three or four more hours… scouring the hillside to see if we could find blood or the cow or anything… but there was not one drop of blood anywhere nearby. No arrow either. :/ I was so sad.

So we went up a few more nights… usually seeing some deer (I was too late to get a deer tag this year, sadly). And one night the same elk herd (with the six point) came back down, but there was something crunching on the hill behind where I was sitting, so that freaked them out and they took off without me getting a chance to take a shot. It was sad. No other sightings beyond that.

So it was a fun, but sadly elk-less year for me. Oh well, there’s always next year I guess!

Well, it’s been a bit since I last posted on here. It’s been hard because I’m soooo sick all the time, and so mostly I feel like moping around all day. And my hubby’s laptop died again and it’s dead for good this time. So, since I can’t very well put a desktop on my lap, I have to make myself sit in the office chair and type type type.

I’m still sick. It’s worse than ever, and now I’ve tried vitamin b6 and unisom. And neither thing has helped. I still throw up in the morning, and I still feel sick all day long. Last night I ate some ñoquis (it’s Argentine food, apparently, that my friend’s brother made) and they were really good! But then I was sitting on the couch later and teasing my husband about synthesizers, and I started laughing so hard I threw them up all over myself. Oh it was so gross. Spaghetti sauce and potato noodles all over my shorts. I cry.

My hubby’s been really sweet though. My mom was telling me that my dad used to come rub her back while she would throw up, and so my hubby decided to do that to me. It’s really sweet, though I don’t know how he doesn’t throw up too. I would.

The foods that I seem to be able to hold down right now are chocolate milk, yogurt, Lay’s Potato chips (any of the sour cream varieties), and Hot Pockets or similar. I guess it’s a good thing that chocolate milk and yogurt are daily occurrences now, because they give me lots of calcium. And since I’m in my 10th week, I think I read that calcium is needed right now. But I can’t remember for sure.

I’ve got a dog show on Saturday, but I can’t help but wonder if I was out of my mind to sign up for it… my dog is not trainable right now… she is being a big butthead, really. She just came out of heat too, and I think she’s either pregnant (an accident!) or going through a false pregnancy (I sure hope so…). And her nipples are all saggy and she looks gross. We’re not going to do well, so I wonder if it’s even worth going… the show’s clear up in Farmington, which is an hour drive from here, and she shows at 9:10 am. So that means we have to leave at like 7. Bah. But I spent 25 dollars on it and 35 dollars next day express-ing a show lead to myself.

So I’m a little disgruntled. And work sucks too, because they don’t seem to understand how really sick I am, and so when I miss work they get upset with me and tell me I’m not getting the promotion they’ve been promising me for 5 months now. Stupid. I feel like quitting, but if I were going to, I’d want to work from home… so I need to find some sort of legit work from home job. And I don’t think they exist, because I can’t find one anywhere. Sigh. What will I do with myself?

Some one save me.

Ugh. This morning sickness is still so bad. Yesterday I found myself eating yogurt and pickles for lunch because that’s the only thing I could choke down. The yogurt seems to settle my stomach down and the pickles… I don’t know. But they taste good right now. I’ve never felt that the old adage about “pickles and ice cream” was realistic, but it seems to be. Except… I can’t make myself eat ice cream. And it makes me sad, because I love ice cream normally.

I feel sick all freaking day long. Ugh.

I have been browsing all over the internet though and have picked up a couple of remedies so far for the nausea.

Ginger – I got some ginger herbal tea. It’s disgusting. I tried choking it down at night and just couldn’t handle it. I gave up and feel bad for wasting 4 dollars. I also got some sort of Ginger Gum, made by Sea Band…. this seems to help a little bit, but it’s dang strong when you first bite into it. Not my favorite thing, but it did help supress my nausea yesterday. It didn’t help too much this morning though.

Crackers – I ate like 100 of them, and I still threw up afterwards. Does not work for me.

Anti-Nausea Wristbands – I just bought some today from Rite-Aid. I’m wearing them right now. My hands are turning purple… so I’m not sure I put them in the right place… maybe I’m just cutting off circulation. On the plus side, I don’t seem to feel sick… just light-headed. But, I also drank a nesquick chocolate milkshake and orange juice, and that might have settled my tummy down.

Unisom – My doctor told me to try taking 1/2 a pill of unisom before I go to sleep at night, and it should help take away my morning sickness. I’ll try it tonight and see what happens.

Vitamin B6 – Doctor said to take 25 mg a day and it should also help me not feel sick. :/ I’ll try it if unisom doesn’t work.

Now I’m drinking pickle juice. It’s great. What a weirdo I am.

I hope something helps my nausea.

So, besides my Friday excursion, I’ve been doing alright. The bleeding/discharge has stopped now, so I feel a little more like I’m going to be alright. The bleeding never really got bad, it was just a little bit of it and never any tissue, so I think I’m okay. I feel more sick as time goes on (a good sign, I think), but today I had to come home early from work because I felt like I was going to puke if I stuck around too long. I had my husband give the message to my manager, while I sat in the breakroom and tried to control my breathing so I didn’t upchuck everything right there. I didn’t eat anything really this morning, besides like two gummy worms and some water, so I wasn’t sure what my stomach was threatening to get rid of, but I felt so gross.

I had to tell like three customers to hold on for a moment, while I put the mute button on and gagged and hoping my stomach wouldn’t decide to give up now. At lunchtime, I just couldn’t handle it anymore and I had my husband drive me home. As soon as we got home, I ran down the stairs and into the bathroom and threw up all of the water I’d had that day. It was the worst throwing up experience ever. Ick. After that though, I felt better, but I went to bed, finished reading Harry Potter 7 for the second time and slept for an hour. It was great.

I sure can’t wait until this morning sickness goes away though. It’s so bad. I don’t know how people get through it for 6 or 7 or 8 or more kids. But they say that it kind of peaks at 8 weeks (which is where I’ll be at tomorrow) and then goes downhill from there, though it doesn’t always hold true for everyone, of course. I sure hope it’s true for me. Bleck.

Have you ever done something that you though was going to be totally awesome, and then it turned into a total nightmare? Well… that happened to me last Friday.

Being the sort of ‘odd’ female that I am, I enjoy archery. Archery’s one of my favorite things to do. And I like to go bowhunting, although I haven’t had too much luck with that ever. I’ve been hunting since I was 12 years old and haven’t ever gotten a thing. But I don’t care… what I love about bowhunting is hiking into the beautiful mountains and sitting in nature for hours on end while you wait for something to happen. It’s a wonderful experience and I love it.

Well, I live in Utah these days, and I don’t know too much about these here parts… so I found myself a guide. Someone who knows where to go to go hunting around here. And hunting season opened last week. So, I went out on Friday to go hunting, fully expecting it to be really easy and fun, like it normally is.

I have never been more wrong in my life.

We went up Diamond Fork Canyon, and it was pretty, though the road was really narrow and had lots of turns and the guide drove really fast, which freaked me out a lot. But it was okay. I didn’t get carsick or anything. Anyway, so we get to our destination, get out of the truck and proceed to hike down a fairly vertical drop. It wasn’t bad. Then we crossed a really fast river (scary!!!), but not so bad. Then I realized I should probably use my inhaler (I have asthma), since so far the journey was a little strenuous. It wasn’t too bad though. So, we went up, found out the place we were going didn’t have any water anymore and then it got dark and we started back home. So far, it hadn’t been so bad. A little hard, but I was doing just fine.

So it starts getting dark. And we’re doing okay… downhill trip all the way now. We cross the river in a different place this time. In the dark. And it’s deeper here. I was so scared I was going to fall in and be swept away… it was really freaky. But we got across just fine. And that’s when the nightmare started. Apparently, we were about a mile in some direction of the truck. And the guide hadn’t been to this part before, though he knows his directions, and so was sure he could get us back. So, we start climbing a nearly vertical hill. This is where it’s bad. It’s dark. And when you’re clinging to plants and climbing up them, you can’t really have your flashlight out to see what you’re grabbing. I grabbed several stinging nettles, nearly slipped into the water like 3 times, and this is really strenuous, so my asthma starts acting up. I’m clinging, literally, to the mountainside, hanging onto plants and desperately hoping that I get to somewhere where I can stand and use my inhaler. Luckily, my husband is fantastic and kept watch over me… he helped me climb up that treacherous mountainside (which took me like 30 minutes or so).

But don’t think it’s over yet… oh no, now we have to go across the mountainside. At this point, we’re following an elk or deer trail, on this pretty much vertical slope, with all sorts of bushes and tree limbs grabbing at me. I’m already scared that I’ve probably killed my baby by climbing up the mountain, and I still have to stop every ten minutes to breathe. I easily lost my footing several times, and grabbed several more stinging nettles. Not to mention, I gathered like 500 little burrs all over my clothes… that was quite annoying. So we continue on, in the dark, for quite a while. My husband is smart enough to carry my bow for me (I’d have lost it somewhere otherwise). And it’s not so bad. But then we have to go up again. ARGH! Grabbing roots and branches and hauling myself up again is no fun. Then we go across the mountain again, and we get into a thick thick set of pine trees. Oh. My. Gosh. I have NEVER hated something SO MUCH in my life. There is so much deadfall and underbrush in these trees that I fall every five minutes, stabbing myself in the leg and side with dead tree branches… spiderwebs are everywhere… I’ve got dirt in my shoes and the bushes are scratching my ankles…. oh it’s bad. And so slow.

And then my husband says he can see the road! Except… it’s on the other mountainside… not the one we’re on, but the one directly across from us. I pretty much died then. I still can’t breathe, I’ve got stinging nettles in my hands, scratches, burrs, bruises and I’m about to break down and cry now. We have to go DOWN again? And then back UP? And we’re still in the stupid pine trees. I just didn’t think I’d make it through this nightmare. And I couldn’t believe I had wasted all that time climbing up this stupid mountain, to have to go back down it and up another mountain.

Well, I made it somehow. It was bad. A fairly decent slope downwards (at this point I decided to slide on my butt where I could… and it worked pretty well, despite the deadfall.) but a horrific vertical slope again, up to the road. Luckily, my husband was behind me, pushing on my bum to get me up to the road. And I made it somehow. Our guide, being chivalrous, offered to go get the truck and come back and get us. I was fine with that. I just lay there on the roadside and breathed and felt like dying. I was so glad it was over. I ached everywhere… I was still cold from that stupid river, and I had thorns embedded in my hands. It was bad.

We got home at about midnight that night… and then I was exhausted… but I couldn’t sleep because I hurt all over and my chest ached. So I got up, got the computer out and made sure that Tylenol was safe to take while I was pregnant, and took some. Then I finally slept. And I slept pretty much all Saturday long as well.

Honestly though, this was the worst experience I’ve ever, ever had in my 21 years of existence. I will never do that again.

One good thing I found out when I went into the doctor last Friday to get my blood taken to see if I was in the normal hormonal range for 6 weeks of pregnancy, was that I only weighed 234 pounds. This is exciting. When I went to the doctor a few months ago, I weighed almost 250 and wanted to die. But this is great! I was like, wohoo! I lost 15 pounds somehow! And I don’t know what I did! It was exciting. And then I remembered that I’m probably going to gain it back during the pregnancy and I was sad again. It’s not fun being this heavy and pregnant. But, then again, I am 5′9″, so it’s not like I’m waddling and unable to fit through doorways. I just have some… extra… meat on me. I can still fit in bathroom stalls just fine. I think it’s mostly my firm buttocks that make me weigh so much .

I am so sad that I am so large though. I really have a self image issue, but who wouldn’t at this weight? I’m 21! I shouldn’t be fat, I should be hip-hopping and sexy… and I wasn’t fat for a long time… but see, here’s the story.

I’ve had depression for a really, really long time. Since I was like 13 or 14. And so they’ve had me on the generic Prozac from 14 on up to 20. And I always kind of hated Prozac, because I felt like a robot. It was hard to cry, it was hard to feel happy… it was hard to be anything but “normal”. And I hated it. Unless, I didn’t take it, and then I had emotions… they were just… depressed, upset, crying, hating the world sort of emotions. I had also heard it was a bit dampening to your libido. So anyway, a little bit before my husband and my engagement was official, I went to the doctor and said “I don’t like Prozac because (all the reasons listed above).” So he gave me Celexa to try. At this point, I was a slim 170 or so, which is about where I’m supposed to be weight-wise. I was sexy, I was hot. I attracted all the boys from miles around. It was great!

Well, I had took this Celexa for a couple of weeks… and suddenly I had gained 10 pounds. I was so confused! What? Why was I gaining 10 pounds before I was to be married? Anyway, so I went back to the doctor, who was also confused, because Celexa is not supposed to cause weight gain. So he put me on Lexapro instead, just a month or so before my wedding. And this seemed to work alright for the time being, and then I sort of forgot about it while I was getting married and stuff. And before I know it, four months later, I’ve gained 70 pounds. What the heck was going on with me?

Well, it turns out that Prozac is an appetite suppressant, while Celexa and Lexapro are both neutral appetite things. And so that’s why I was gaining weight. All of a sudden I was HUNGRY! ALL THE TIME! EAT EAT EAT! HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPO! Anyway, the new doctor took me off of depressants entirely, and I seem to be fine now, which is great! No more drugs! But I’m still heavy, because having no medicine is also a neutral thing.

It’s sad though. Especially after I just married my husband.

I mean, he’s great about it. He still says he loves me just as much, despite the fact that every once in a while I burst into tears because I hate the way I look… and I know that he does really love me. He’s the best husband ever. Really. I’m so glad I married him, because he’s just awesome. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I can’t believe I was so lucky.

He also says he doesn’t care at all about my physique, which was hard for me to believe at first… because how could a -man- (this emphasis is to imply how lots of men that I’ve met only care about looks) love a peacock that’s suddenly morphed into a whale? But after a few nights talking about my weight and me crying and him crying because I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t care, I finally decided to believe that he really didn’t care. That he did love me, despite my weight. It’s good to know this, because I need the support. Being fat is so depressing.

The thing that really gets me now is that I weigh so much more than him (70 pounds more). I just don’t think it’s fair (even though he doesn’t care) that he can have a practically perfectly formed male body and I’m flobbing around all over with stretch marks on my belly and pimples on my face (still! at 21! Ugh). I feel like I’m getting all the benefits or the world is unbalanced or something. He looks so handsome, it’s hard for me not to look at him all the time in awe. It just doesn’t seem to be fair to him. He should be able to have tall, slender, sexy wife to match him, so they can compliment each other as the perfect pair. I just feel like people look at me and him and say “How the heck did -she- rope -him- into marrying her?”. But I guess I shouldn’t care. Because we do love each other ever so much. :/ Hopefully someday I’ll get over it.

Sad.

Oh well. I have to wait until the pregnancy is over to lose any more weight. So I’ve just got to stick it out for now.

Good luck me.