Expecting and the Unexpected

There are several things I expected from pregnancy after hearing about it and reading about it from so many others. As it turns out, most of them have not been true for me, or at least have manifest themselves in ways I did not expect.

EXPECTED - "Morning sickness" and nausea
THE UNEXPECTED - While I have a generally contstant feeling of "blah", I rarely feel more sick in the mornings. Usually I start feeling the worst in the early evening time. Also to my surprise, I have not thrown up once (sorry to all you other ladies who saw nothing but the toilet during your first trimester)! The closest I ever come to throwing up is when I brush my teeth. My gag reflex has become hyper-sensitive and I can barely make it through brushing without dry heaving.

EXPECTED - Cravings
THE UNEXPECTED - Maybe this comes later on in pregnancy, but I haven't really experienced any cravings. There are things that sound better to me than others, but I haven't yet had that feeling of "I absolutely MUST have ____ right now!"

EXPECTED - Food aversions
THE UNEXPECTED - I thought foods that were generally "big offenders" (onions, tomatoes, etc.) would be the ones that would not sound appetizing to me. I never ever ever would have thought that I would have aversions to things like toasted almonds or smoothies, but I do! I absolutely love whole toasted almonds (we had just bought a big bucket of them at Sam's Club before we knew I was pregnant) and home-made smoothies and would never have imagined that they would sound absolutely disgusting to me while I was pregnant! Maybe it is because I ate a lot of them during the first two weeks of my pregnancy. All I know is that I can barely even think about a toasted almond without gagging!

Also along with food aversions, I never expected that I would actually develop allergies to certain foods. I am pretty sure that I have developed an allergy to dairy, at least milk and cheese. This has been really hard because I eat cereal almost everyday and I LOVE cheese!

EXPECTED - Sensitivity to smell
THE UNEXPECTED - I really haven't been bothered too much by smells. I have noticed that the smell of coffee in the break room at work really bothers me, but that doesn't really surprise me as I have never really liked that smell much any way. The worst offender thus far has turned out to be Jayson's body wash! Before I thought it smelled delicious, like you were standing in an evergreen forest. After pregnancy I could barely even walk in the bathroom because I could still smell it emanating from the body scrubber hanging in the shower. Thankfully I have a very sweet and understanding husband who was kind enough to change shower gels for the next few months.

In relation to smell I have noticed that my sniffer has become "super-sonic" (as Jayson put it) these days. Like I said, I am not really bothered by many smells, but it seems like I can smell EVERYTHING!!! A few weeks ago Jayson was brushing his teeth while I was in the shower. We have a dark curtain on our shower so I couldn't see him and I didn't know that he was even in there. All the sudden I got a huge whiff of mint and asked if he was brushing his teeth. Sure enough he was. He was amazed that I could smell it all the way in the shower, it is almost like I have a super-power!

EXPECTED - "Inexplicable weepiness" (as one of my pregnancy books called it)
THE UNEXPECTED - I thought you were supposed to be an emotional basket-case when you were pregnant, but generally I really don't feel like I have been that much more emotional than would be normal for me. There have been a few expections. A couple weeks ago I watched Mary Poppins and I was full on bawling for the last 15 minutes of the movie!!! I have also teared up a couple of times while watching a car commercial on TV :)

EXPECTED - Clumsiness
THE UNEXPECTED - I imagine my clumsiness will increase as I get bigger, but what I have noticed is that I cannot seem to type anymore! I always considered myself a pretty good typist; quick, without many mistakes. Now it seems that I can't type a single line without using the backspace button at least once. Not only is my typing clumsy, but my spelling has become terrible! So I apologize if there are any glaring typos in this post, I will use spell check but that doesn't always catch them all.

Congrats if you made it through this whole post, sorry there weren't any pictures to spice it up!