Ode to Crankiness

I read this in a book recently. The book is Great with Child by Debra Rienstra:

Dr. Joan Borysenko proposes that this greater sympathy and perceptiveness [during a woman's premenstrual and mentrual times] have an actual biological basis. Women are in fact more empathetic during the prementrual and menstrual phases of their cycle, she argues,

"Things that may be bothering us, but that we are unwilling to confront, tend to come to light as if they are being flushed from the unconscious to the conscious so that we can attend to them."

Attending to these signals and dealing with them honestly, then, is the key to turning premenstrual crabbiness into a healthy kind of psychic "housecleaning." She continues:

"This emotional housecleaning is wrongly viewed as bitchiness or complaining, but when seen rightly and heeded, it may be a valuable stress releaser and guide to what we need to change or pay attention to so that our lives will run more smoothly. This is the benefit to feeling down. Additionally, since intuitive capacity, empathy and interdependent perception are also right-brain functions [which are enhanced in the premenstrual/menstrual part of the cycle], it follows that the premenstrual and menstrual phases of our cycle are indeed times of enhanced wisdom."

Pregnant with Crohn's

By now, you all should know about our newest surprise: I'm pregnant! I'm 10.5 weeks along and going well. I'm cranky, exhausted, and nauseous in the evenings, which I can generally control pretty well if I keep eating at least a little something every two hours.

I get home from work and sleep for an hour before my hubby gets home from work. He usually does the dishes from breakfast (!) and starts dinner, letting me rest a little longer. He's a great husband!

I'm ready for bed at 9pm, tho we usually go to sleep closer to 10 or 10:30pm. It makes for short evenings when I'm exhausted, crabby and nauseous, which is why I haven't been in good communication with many of you. ;)

My Crohn's has been up and down since getting pregnant. The first six weeks or so I struggled with diarrhea almost daily. I couldn't get stable bowels for the life of me. And you're supposed to drink a lot of water while pregnant, to build up the amniotic fluid, but drinking water gave me more diarrhea. So, I upped my probiotics to twice a day instead of once, and waited, and that seems to be working! I haven't had any diarrhea in a few weeks.

I have extra bloating and gas, mostly because of the pregnancy, I read. The pregnancy hormones slow down your digestive track so you can get more nutrients from your food (giving most women constipation), but this also creates more gas in the intestines, which is annoying to most but painful for me, because I ALREADY have more gas than I need down there.

I'm gaining weight very well and the baby is growing well, according to the two ultrasounds I've already had. The first was routine and the second was at the consultation with a high risk OB. The baby measured with a due date of 12/4/08 and the due date is 12/7/08. You want the measurement to be within five days either way of the due date, and since our babe measured on the chubby end (our assessment, not necessarily the doc's), we feel pretty good that the baby is getting what he/she needs. And I'm gaining weight elsewhere than just my tummy, so it looks like the babe isn't sucking nutrients from me, necessarily. Yippee!

The Crohn's makes me technically "high risk," but the only things they'll do differently are to have a Level 2 ultrasound for my 20 weeks ultrasound (instead of a routine ultrasound), and then have extra ultrasounds at 26 weeks, 30 weeks, 34 weeks, 38. They want to monitor the baby's growth, to make sure I continue to pass along nutrients, as that's the biggest problem for a mom with Crohn's.

So, I anxiously await the second trimester (only 1.5 weeks!) so that I can start actually looking pregnant and feeling less nauseous, cranky and tired.

Thank you for your love!