Comparisons

This afternoon I gathered up my courage and went back to my blog archives to read some entries from my last pregnancy in order to compare experiences. (I don't know about the rest of you, but reading accounts from past pregnancies is like experiencing war-time flashbacks. Bad.)

There is no doubt that as of this moment, I am having my easiest pregnancy (barring our first, which was not a viable pregnancy). Compared to this time in the pregnancy last time around, I am much more stable, much more functional, much less sick.

Why? Well, there's the diet I'm doing, there are the idiosyncrasies of individual pregnancies, could be a gender change of baby, and could be the fact that I think I'm taking more Diclectin than last time. Or a combination of any of the above.

My reading confirmed my vague memory that my NVP peaked at around 10 weeks before plateauing and then starting to incrementally improve (I wish it would clear up quickly, but it never has.... always an inch-by-inch process). I noted in an entry last time at 12 weeks that I could definitely see that I was on the upswing. That's good news, and I hope it stays this way for this pregnancy.

My plan, if I can hold on another 3 1/2 weeks, is to stay on the VLC diet through the end of the first trimester. Can I hold out? Not sure. It's worth it not to be throwing up, but it is extremely difficult with only a handful of food choices.

Once I hit the magical 13 weeks, my first non-low-carb meal is going to be a vegetarian burrito, and we'll see where it goes from there! Either it will be fine, or it will be a crash-and-burn (or somewhere in between). But either way, I should be stable enough to handle it without catastrophe. I will report in then. Let's see, by the calendar that will be August 2nd, so mark your calendars! I can't wait.

That's if I last until then.

One of my goals with this pregnancy is to gain less weight than I did last time..... but I suspect that I am going to be carb-binging once the restrictions are gone. I have a long list of things I want to eat, and they're mostly simple carbs! (Lemon bars, bagels, waffles, frosties, apple pie, fruit cobber, etc.) I'll have to keep an eye on that!

One difference between my first and second times through NVP was the amount of weight gained. With my first, I lost so much weight initially that I only gained 25 net pounds. With my next, having the HG under control, I (more than) doubled that. And frankly, carrying that much extra weight made for a much harder end-of-pregnancy, not to mention leaving behind an extra 20 pounds that was impossible to lose (only lost it when I did the first bit of the very-low-carb diet). So I'd really prefer to keep it more reasonable this time....though, as I say, it may be harder than it looks.

Okay, off to do something! I'm really blogging to keep my mind off of myself, because right now I feel absolutely horrid. So "doing something" will probably translate to "lying on the bed staring at the wall." Oh, well.

Love to all!