My first symptoms

I have been really lucky in terms of what symptoms have presented themselves and which ones haven't.  Everyone is different, but here is what I've been experiencing.

Fatigue - from the day this all started, I simply don't want to do anything.  I honestly don't know if I'm too tired to do anything, or if my laziness has reached epic proportions.  I don't want to do anything but surf the internet and channel surf from my comfy couch.

Lack of patience - I'm cranky.  Anything that even remotely irks me is being confronted and addressed when I would usually just ignore it before.  Now for those of you who DON'T know me, that seems perfectly reasonable.  But for those who DO know me, you're asking yourself right now "you mean she thinks she normally holds something back???"  I'm not shy about things that bother me and I snark as a matter of course.  But now, it's even more severe.

To quantify this - as I mentioned before, I have a pottery shop on Artfire.com.  I'm a regular in the forums.  It took me about 10 months to get to 1000 posts.  In the last month, I've added over 300 more to my post count.  Soooooo, yeaaaaaaaah.  I'm having even more trouble than usual keeping my mouth shut.

No deep breaths - I'm often trying to take one of those deep breaths and I just can't.  I'll have to work a little bit to get that nice breath that you can feel hitting your lungs just the right way.  I had to give a mini speech to teach a small group of people what to expect on a video shoot and I found that I had to stop several times and just try to breathe.  I didn't have enough air to talk in a monologue for very long.

Morning sickness - This is where I get to say neener neener neener to most pregnant women.  I haven't had morning sickness yet!  Wooooottttttt!!!!  I've gone head first into the toilet once - because I woke up to a coughing fit so severe that it set off some dry heaves, but otherwise, I'm vomit free so far.  Notice how I won't tempt the gods and keep adding "so far" or "yet" to each sentence.  My mother got through 2 healthy pregnancies (2 pregnancies, 2 children) without morning sickness so I'm hoping that's genetic and indicative of what I'm going to experience.

Nausea - My nausea has been very minor, but it is there a little bit.  I get a bit carsick more often.  I've put an open garbage bag on my passenger seat just in case I suddenly need to vomit.  Figure I can just turn and vomit in the bag making clean-up relatively easy.  This hasn't happened yet, but I'm prepared.  And we have a bucket next to the bed too.

My tastebuds do a 180 - I'm a pretty typical American fat woman.  I daily enjoy a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks.  Too many of my meals are provided by McDonalds.  Pretty much the only decent food I eat is whatever my husband freshly cooks for dinner. 

I simply cannot tolerate my old diet anymore.  I am not actively attempting to alter my diet for my pregnancy, my taste buds have done it for me.  Anything that's processed, or contains a lot of preservatives, ugh, it just tastes blechy now.  I can taste every chemical in my food.  My white chocolate mocha?  Bleh!  It just coats my mouth with the oily, chemically, cloyingly sweet badness.

I'm obsessed with food - Not that I want to eat it, I just can't stop thinking about it.  The first several weeks, the last thing I wanted to do was eat.  Nothing was appealing at all.  So my obsession was with trying to figure out what the hell my new palette would be able to tolerate.  I would eat about 3 bites of a meal and I was done.  As the weeks go on, it's getting a little better.  The last 2 weeks, I'm starting to actually EAT which is probably a good thing.

Robo-nose - Yup, I've got pregnancy nose.  This is a bit of an issue with 4 indoor cats and a lot of litterboxes in the house.  I'll walk into a room and walk right back out and announce to my husband that a cat laid a bomb and he needs to take care of it.

I'm not allowed to touch litterboxes while pregnant.  I'm so milking that as long as humanly possible!  But I digress.

Bathroom breaks - I tend to hit the bathroom more frequently than most people anyway.  But now, I'm thinking of just putting a tv in there, and nice recliner around the bowl for comfort, and setting up shop.

Burping - I'm like a frat boy.  At least 4 belches accompany every meal.  The only vomit I'm dealing with is occasionally a burp will bring a little up into my throat and coat my mouth with that distinctive vomit flavor.  I keep hard candies on me to combat that because there's no warning, it's a surprise every time.

My stomach feels funny - When I stand up after sitting, I kind of feel like I have to re-strech my stomach muscles because they want to stay in that pinched sitting position.  And when I lay on my side, it feels like my insides are sitting very heavy and just kind of hanging off of my body with no support.

Nipples - Wow.  I've always had one inverted and one kinda regular but small.  Well, they're both alive and trying to make a break for it now!  The regular one is now bright and alert all the time and seriously seems like it's trying to leap off my body.  The inverted one is now basically normal.  And anything brushes against them is very noticed and I'd prefer that it not happen.  And boobs that they're attached to are a little sore, but nothing major.  Until my 17lb cat decides to snuggle on me and steps on one with all of his weight.  Ouch!

Sex - there are some issues.  But that's going to be it's own post.

While I realize that's a long list of symptoms, for the most part, I'm feeling pretty normal.  Nothing is so severe (other than the laziness) that it's interfering with my normal life.