Week 10: Ups and Downs

Ups

1. I've been feeling a lot better this past week. What little morning sickness I had should really have been called evening sickness. It would start on the way home from work, when I assumed my body was possibly just worn down from the day and in need of dinner. While food helped, I still never felt spectacular and often ate a piece of toast to keep something in my stomach until morning and went to bed early. Finally, I feel a lot more like myself. I have moments, where such as when you're getting over something like food poisoning and the sight or smell of a certain food gives you flashbacks or makes you wonder whether you're really over the illness or just being paranoid, but for the most part, I feel good and my energy is back up again too.

Downs

1. Being pregnant isn't the only culprit behind my complaint that I wish my social life were more active. Getting married, moving to the suburbs and working longer days at work (although, those longer days do give me every other Friday off) were slowly contributing to the decline in my social life long before I became pregnant.

I had to quit my soccer team, Hansa, mid-season, which aside from losing out on great exercise, (when an opponent is running towards my goal with the ball is the only time you'll see my otherwise slow stride pick it up a notch, or two, or three) meant I also lost a weekly social opportunity. I've been playing with some of these folks for five years and now that we're getting older and have added relationships, demanding jobs, mortgages in far-flung neighborhoods or towns to our list of responsibilities, the weekly soccer match is the one time we reliably get together.

Living in Stillwater so far away from my friends has also made having an active social life difficult. Some of my friends probably thought I was pregnant long before I actually was because I rarely drank since I'm no longer in walking or biking distance of friends' places or the bar or restaurant where we've met up. But with some advanced planning, I was able to make it work. But that took a lot of energy to always be on the go and that's been in short supply the last few weeks. When it's 8:00 p.m. and I'd rather be in bed, I haven't even been trying to make plans with friends, even on weekends. When I get to work at 7 a.m., post-work plans are also difficult because by the end of the work day, I'm desperate for a proper meal and some downtime to reenergize.

I hope though that now that I've been feeling better, I'll have more energy. The coming of spring will also help, since once the weather turns warmer, the sun begins to provide a desperately needed dose of vitamin D and the trees begin to bud, (which won't be until May) Minnesotans tend to burst out of hibernation and we become more cheerful and physically active and wonder why we would want to live anywhere else.