Ten weeks

Ten weeks is not a very long time in the life of a pregnancy.  It feels like I have a long time left to go. Time between appointments (4 weeks) feels like en eternity. It is hard to be in this first trimester when anything could happen.  My imagination is always thinking the worst though I know the chances of anything happening at this point are something like 5%, which is pretty low odds.

I've been feeling pretty nauseous lately. It is helping me not gain weight which I am glad for! I've actually lost a couple of pounds but I was already 10 lbs over my pre-Ben weight so no biggie, I'm sure I'll start packing them on soon.  The evenings are my most queasy feeling time. Blech.  I've been eating a lot of carbs which is probably not the healthiest but it helps settle my tummy. Ritz crackers to the rescue!

I'm weaning Ben too.  We are down to nursing 4 times a day and I'm going to start dropping one or maybe two of those in the next week.  I'm a little sad about it but it does need to be done, due to my risk of pre-term labor. Plus I'll be honest, I have zero desire to tandem nurse so it was going to have to be done well before the baby comes anyway.  More power to the ladies that do it, it's just not for me. I actually shudder to think of it, I'm a terrible person! :)

I'm struggling a little bit with some selfish feelings. This summer was going to be the summer that I could get back to "me": running, not having a nurseling, having a baby who sleeps through the night so not feeling exhausted all the time, getting back down to pre-pregnancy weight.  I had planned to take the kids on lovely adventures in the nice weather, which we should be able to do still at least but it might not be as pleasant for me as I could hope. :)

At the same time I am excited for the baby, excited for the chance at a "take home" baby and all the joys (and not, ha ha) that mothers of "normal" newborns experience.  Nursing the baby at night instead of setting the alarm to get up and pump and having to visit the baby in the hospital for 2.5 months...wouldn't that be something?  I can hardly imagine it!  Strange that with 5 children I have never had a true newborn, not even from someone else's womb.  At least not 24/7, I did care for Miss M for quite a while as a newborn but only during the weekdays.

Mr. Y is starting to get frustrated with his reading lessons. I'm not sure what is going on.  We aren't learning anything terribly exciting or interesting. For the last probably 2 weeks we have been learning consonant blends, such as sk, lp, lm, st, etc. There are a billion consonant blends I swear. But all the vowels are still the "short" vowel sounds, we've still only learned I think a total of 4 sight words. He gets so frustrated though, tears have become pretty common! I've started dividing up the daily lessons into two, so instead of doing one a day we do one every two days.  And I'm trying to supplement with other "fun" stuff. It does help. I wonder if he is getting bored, maybe?

Y and C both learned to ride their bikes over the past few weeks. It's amazing!  I'm talking no training wheels. We've had bikes for them with no training wheels for about a year and a half I think, and just encouraged them to kind of coast and practice. They'd get frustrated and quit, but then a couple weeks ago Y just decided he was going to learn to do it, and he did! Then C of course couldn't be left behind by his little brother, so he did too. It's amazing how quickly they picked it up. Of course the past few days it has been below freezing, with wind chills below zero, so there hasn't been much bike riding going on. I will be so glad when this winter is over, it feels like it is never ending.