For Kate

I haven't posted in awhile but I have a good excuse -- nothing seems to be going on pregnancy-wise! Which isn't really true, the baby has grown from a plum to a peach to a lemon since the last time I wrote, and formed teeth, approached normal proportions (its head is only a third of the size of its body now), and started sucking its thumb and breathing amniotic fluid. Amazing!

I feel and look as utterly unpregnant as ever. You know those birth-control pills that let you have only four periods a year? I always thought those were a terrible idea because if you did accidentally get pregnant, you might not know for a couple of months. When you're doing your best to not be pregnant a monthly period is wonderfully reassuring.

Now that I'm three and a half months pregnant I feel more strongly than ever that I could never be comfortable with that particular pill. I am (was) religious about taking birth control exactly as prescribed, at exactly the same time every day, etc., and therefore I always had perfect confidence that I was protected. And while I could recognize certain pregnancy symptoms (tiredness, sensitivity to smells) once I knew I was pregnant, they surely wouldn't have been strong enough to make me suspect pregnancy if I were trying to avoid it. Can you imagine blithely carrying on with your life, only to discover one day that you were a third of the way through a pregnancy? No thank you.

For a few days about a week ago I had a string of mild to terrible headaches and I was worried they were related to the pregnancy, coming as the did around the beginning of the second trimester. Thankfully, they have been gone for four straight days now and I think they must have had another cause: either not eating enough, not drinking enough water, getting too much sleep over the holidays, or being off my regular workout routine (only working out about three times over two weeks).

I had welcomed Cokes back into my life around Christmas but I don't think the added caffeine was directly contributing to the headaches -- but I do think that every bottle of Coke I drank probably represented a bottle of water I didn't drink. And that probably left me a little dehydrated, which is bad news for headaches. This week I've gone back to water, juice and tea, plus am back to my regular sleep and workout routines and am trying to eat more every day, and it seems to be working.

That's all I've got for now. We go back to the doctor on Tuesday, I think just to hear the heartbeat again, so maybe I'll have more to report then, if not before.