During week 13 I went back to work after my sabbatical. I went back on a Wednesday which made it slightly less painful, though it was still hard. The fatigue was going strong and I was generally exhausted from nearly three weeks of travel. As my sister pointed out, at least I had pretty nails.

Then the magical fourteenth week happened. I’ve spoken to many women who said they woke up one day and felt normal again. I never believed them and then it happened to me. It was amazing. I woke up one day during the fourteenth week and and I just felt… normal. Like a human again. Have I mentioned it was amazing?

I started prenatal yoga at 13 weeks and I love it. It’s not a ‘tough’ workout, but stretching and focusing for 75 minutes once or twice a week has really been a great outlet. I haven’t met many women yet due at the same time, but I’m hoping as we get closer more will start attending. I also started walking more, especially around Green Lake with Alfred, and doing Barre3 prenatal workouts online. I feel really good when I workout and eat well. I don’t when I don’t. Funny how that works.

At the end of week 15 my brother and sister and their families came to visit. I realize now that I never posted about it. I am so excited that next year martian will have all these older cousins to play with and learn from. Watching Maks and Alfred become friends made me so excited for martian to arrive and to watch Alfred with him or her. 

I have no idea what happened to my pictures of Avery and Benji. This is the only one I could find, which is Joey and Britt dealing with a blowout outside of one of the open houses we visited. Having three kiddos two and under in the house for a weekend was so much fun and yes, definitely eye opening. We’re in for a wild ride and I’m so excited about it! Greg is very excited as well, and armed with a dust buster.

Around week 14 I bought the first (and still, at twenty weeks, the only) baby item. If martian turns out to be a boy this is what he’ll come home from the hospital in because I’m obsessed with it. And honestly, at the rate I’m accumulating baby gear, if martian is a girl she’ll probably come home in this as well.

Martian is definitely growing! My 16 week appointment was quite uneventful, which is always a good sign. I heard the heartbeat for the first time outside of an ultrasound. We also got word that our blood tests did not show any markers to be concerned about.

Weeks eight to twelve were definitely the physical low point of my pregnancy, though I wouldn’t say they even came close to being bad. I’m so thankful I didn’t deal with much morning sickness. For a few weeks I would get queasy in the afternoon, which went away once I ate dinner. However, the fatigue. Oh. My. Gosh. I did nothing all day, slept all night, and still woke up feeling like I’d run a marathon the previous day. It was rough.

I’ve shared a ton of pictures from these weeks as they coincided with my sabbatical. The first week was four days of in-class sessions for my NTP program, including my midterms. That was exhausting. I came home every night barely able to speak. Adding mental fatigue to the physical fatigue nearly put me over the edge; two days of recovery later, I was mostly ready to start traveling.

This is also the period during which I had strange food aversions. Coffee didn’t sound good at all (I mostly drink decaf, even prior to pregnancy) and “hunks of meat” were gross. All the steaks and pork chops I saved in the early part of the year for summer grilling are still in the freezer. Eggs were my best friend. There were days where I ate them for all three meals.

In a strange twist, dairy wasn’t an issue at all in my first trimester. I’m willing to admit I enjoyed a few lattes. Spoiler alert: this does NOT hold true in the second trimester. My thought is that my dairy issues didn’t actually go away. During pregnancy your immune system is less reactive so that you don’t turn on the baby. I’m not positive and haven’t had time to research, but I’m guessing that immunity starts to return once the baby is established as not being a bad foreign invader. So now all cells are back on board to attack at the earliest sign of dairy entry. There is one member of the family who might not be super thrilled. This is the face I imagine he makes when he thinks about losing his only child-hood. He followed me around like crazy the first few weeks of my pregnancy, and did the same thing with the first pregnancy as well. It’s interesting because he is WAY more into Greg than me normally.

Right before we left for Jamaica, Greg and I went in for our twelve week appointment. This one included another ultrasound as they did a few tests to help us understand if we needed to be prepared for anything at the time of martian’s arrival. In just four short weeks martian went from being a bean to a little human. Here s/he is chilling out, arms relaxed behind the head. Seriously, whose kid is this? I doubt either Greg or I spent much time relaxing in the womb. People keep joking that we’re going to get a little Type A. But I think the joke will be on us and martian will be a little artist. There is nothing wrong with artists, clearly, just funny to think about ending up with a child with a completely different personality than we have.

I took a few belly pictures even though there isn’t much to show here. It’s fun to watch the progression each week. After week twelve I recruited Greg as weekly photo photographer to save us all from 30 weeks of mirror selfies.

Other fun memories I have from this time are starting baby name lists (no, we’re not sharing), announcing to more friends after the twelve week ultrasound, and getting to see all of our family in person after the big announcement. My twelve week appointment is also the time I said, “I’ve only gained five pounds!” and Greg replied, “Really?”. He’s since learned the proper way to respond to pregnancy weight gain announcements.