Ew, that smells gross.

Along with pregnancy can come a really useful useless superpower.  The super sense of smell!

But it doesn't seem to work for everything.  I still can't smell the litter box down in the basement when Jen claims she can.  But I can smell the disgusting deodorizer the steam cleaner used when he recently cleaned our living room couch.  And cat food! BLECH. Normally it doesn't bother me.

I don't think it's so much that my sense of smell is any better, I think it's just that scents that are usually background smells that don't make much of an impression suddenly do.

When I was pregnant with Nate, Jen once came home to find a plug-in air freshener, which had been in our living room, out in the entry way.  I may have thrown it there.

This time it's perfumey fragrances again but also the cat food.  And one night a couple weeks ago the smell of fresh bread combined with being a little hungry as I tried to fall asleep made it nearly impossible for me to actually fall asleep.

I'm 12 weeks pregnant now, so I'm hoping that the feeling sick and super sense of smell will start to diminish.  I cannot complain at all because I still haven't had to vomit and I don't feel too sick most of the time. And I've found that sparkling beverages are a pretty good cure for me.  So I'm drinking a lot of soda water. :) But it will be nice to not feel sick at all.

On another note, I finally had a totally sciatica pain-free day yesterday! I realized as I was doing my Saturday morning yoga class that the few poses that used to bug me were no longer painful! VERY exciting.  It's been nearly a year since the pain started.

Tuesday we have a 12-week ultrasound.  This baby is already more well photographed than Nate was and we still get the 18- or 20-week ultrasound as well.  That'll be the one when we find out if it's a boy or a girl, so you have to wait longer.   We've started talking about some names but aren't going to really start fighting over our favorites until we know.  It'll make it easier to settle on a few then.

Ugh, I might just throw up on you right now.

By now you may have heard (especially if you've been pregnant or had a spouse that was pregnant) that "morning" sickness is a misnomer and that icky queasy feeling can hit at any time of the day.  The severity can vary greatly from women who never feel sick at all to those who have to be hospitalized to get IV fluids because they can't keep anything down.  I feel very lucky I'm somewhere in between.

I have not yet had to vomit.  Through either of my previous pregnancies.  Sometimes I wonder if I'd feel better if I did though.  I am generally totally fine in the morning.  I might be a little hungrier than normal when I wake up, but I grab a banana before I go to work and have a bigger breakfast at work. And I'm usually totally fine after that.  It's after lunch that I don't usually feel so hot.  Queasy. ALL AFTERNOON.  Actually, the last few days I've been okay in the afternoon but then feel really queasy after dinner.

I just asked a friend at work who I knew had vomited a bit while in her first trimester if it made her feel better. She said it did but then she had a really narrow window in which to eat something immediately afterwards. She got a little reprieve for a short period of time.

I just felt really sick.  I was thinking about heading up to bed (because in the morning I'll feel fine) but then I was also a little hungry and decided to make scrambled eggs.  They were delicious. And now I feel better.

I think I feel a little sicker this time around.  Should we do a pool for whether people think it's a girl or a boy before we get the big ultrasound when we'll find out?  The old wives' tale is that if your symptoms are the same, you'll have the same as the last one, if they're different, it's the opposite sex. Now, I've heard stories disproving that, but so far I'm a little sicker.  Supposedly if you're real sick it's more likely to be a girl.  Again, old wives' tale.  We're going with it's a girl because I'm feeling a little sicker. :)

I have a confession to make...

I'm pregnant!

I know, I know! About two years ago I promised transparency around our IUIs and everything. But we did 6 cycles over 8 months and it didn't work. And you know what? It was kind of annoying. :) Sorry, but it was! If I didn't blog about whether I got my period or not, I got IMs and Facebook messages asking if I was pregnant yet.

So we decided late last summer to give it one last go and I found a doctor close to us and we did 2 unsuccessful cycles using the same donor we used when we tried almost 2 years ago. The doctor was telling us maybe it was time to start thinking about other ways (besides IUI) of getting pregnant but I didn't really feel like going through IVF and we knew there are a lot of children out there who need families.

We were ready to go the adoption route and had even called DCF in Massachusetts to get on the list and get the ball rolling to adopt an older child but then decided to switch to a new donor and give it just one last try.

And what do you know? It worked! So now I'm 8 weeks pregnant. I know, I broke the 12-week rule.  But like I said in that original transparency post, we waited till 12 weeks and had a miscarriage at 17 1/2 weeks with our first pregnancy, so why bother waiting? I'm excited and impatient and so I want to tell everyone!

Plus, I'm having so many fun 1st trimester pregnancy symptoms that I thought it might be fun for some people to hear about it while it's going on instead of the "well when I was in my first trimester I ... blah blah blah" from someone 20 weeks pregnant.  I'll share some of those another time.  To tide you over until then, I give you:

The Top Ten Signs that Lauren is Pregnant

Her sweet tooth has totally disappeared.
She constantly says “I’m starving!” 
She makes scrambled eggs at 9pm. 
She goes to the bathroom every hour.
She eats cheese and hummus for snacks instead of yogurt raisins or MMs. 
She starts browsing maternity clothes websites constantly. 
She starts eating a ton of watermelon.
She says “no” to a glass of wine.
She cries at commercials and at E.T. even when she’s just listening to it from the kitchen as it plays in the family room.
She tells you.


It's a baby ... something ....