Pregnancy Fog – where did January go?
When the heck did it become February…..and yes, I realize February is almost over too. Perhaps I should just call this one ‘where the heck has the year gone?’ instead.
When we found out we were pregnant on January 1st, I had no idea how MUCH pregnancy would really affect EVERYTHING. I mean, obviously, I knew things would change and my body would change, but I really had no idea of the overwhelming emotional, physical and psychological effects that would happen so soon. I seriously don’t even remember January. I found texts and messages from friends back in early January that I don’t remember reading much less responding too. I have a list of things I said I would do for people, or get back to them, that I never did or even thought about again. All I can remember of January is that I found out I was pregnant, I went to real estate school, I was crazy sick and miserable and somehow, through the grace of God, I passed real estate school. And if I didn’t have the completion certificate and license to prove a few of things, I may not remember or believe they happened either.
I always swore I didn’t want to be ‘one of those people’ who bitched and complained their whole pregnancy. I wanted to enjoy it and revel in it and be thankful for what was finally happening. But seriously, then I actually got pregnant and realized this is NO FREAKIN’ JOKE and I am going to whine and complain if I want to! NO ONE prepared me for how crappy I was really going to feel. Even seeing my pregnant friends have morning sickness, vomit and then go on with their day somehow made this seem ‘easy’ or at least less inconvenient. It is NOT EASY or FUN or even pleasant!
If you scroll through a pregnancy book and see a list of symptoms during the first trimester, you will have the checklist of everything I have dealt with the past two months. Nausea. Extreme exhaustion. Constipation. Leg cramps. Stomach cramps. Breast growth and pain and soreness. Oh, and did I mention emotional as a 16-year old going through a break-up with PMS?!?! I mean, it’s a text book pregnancy and I don’t know if I mean that in a good way! No one ever told me my poor boobies would feel like knives were piercing them. Or that I would go 5 days with out going poop and feel as though my insides were going to pop. Or that I would randomly get leg cramps that would wake me from a dead sleep. Or that if my husband even thought about touching my chest, I would slap him. Or that I could seriously sleep 10 hours each night AND still need a 3 hour nap every afternoon. Or that EVERYTHING I attempted to cook would make me gag; nothing would taste good to eat; my body would reject my favorite foods; or that I could live on PB&J and water.
And I have only made it to week 11.
I want to say that I am HAPPY I am pregnant – we have tried for this baby for more than two years, BUT I also want to say that I never knew it would be this hard. Pregnant ladies – it is ok to tell the truth!! It is ok to be real about pregnancy. It is ok to NOT enjoy these EPIC changes happening to our bodies and not being able to comprehend what may happen next. It doesn’t mean we love our babies less, it just means we are normal and honest and freaked the heck out.
Ok, I have to go take my 10 hour nighttime nap. And prepare for my new night time ritual. The newest symptom of the week hit two nights ago – round ligament pain. Yeah, it happens every night now, as soon as I try to get comfy on the couch or lie in bed. Imagine a knife slicing open your lower belly with a quick slicing motion. Scares you to death, hurts like hell and then just aches for an hour or so. But don’t worry, it’s a perfectly normal part of a text-book pregnancy!
Homemade Laundry Soap – First Try
I have a LOT of catching up to do regarding the pregnancy, but first I promised I would share our experiment with homemade laundry soap. Shane and I want to use fewer chemicals with the new baby (in our food, cleaning supplies, products, etc.) so making our own laundry products seem like a good place to start. Plus, we have no jobs and no money, so we need a few cheap ideas to stretch every penny we find on the streets. I went to my favorite honey hole for ideas……Pinterest, of course. There are an overwhelming number of recipes and ideas there……I just clicked on a few until I saw what looked to be an easy recipe from someone who had tried a few processes out first. Blogger, One Good Thing by Jillee, gets all the credit for the directions. I dang sure didn’t re-invent this wheel!
(and as I found out today, I am SO far behind the 8-ball on making my own soap. I was ‘bragging’ on Facebook how we were doing this today and I got crazy-feedback from these die-hard mommas who have been doing this for years. Yah to me for catching up!)
Here’s how it goes down –
Ingredients:
- 1 bar of Fels Naptha soap (could also use Ivory, or Dr. Castille’s Baby Soap) ($1.19)
- Borax powder ($3.50)
- Washing Soda powder ($4.00)
- (All of the above were at Publix)
- Empty milk jugs, water bottles, mason jars, OJ containers, whatever (we ended up with 3 gallons worth)
Directions:
- Grate the soap (we used our cheese grater)
- But in large pot and add 8 cups hot water. (I read a LOT of reader comments on the blog. Consensus was to use a stainless steel pot, otherwise you could corrode your non-stick linings, etc. We used our soup/shrimp boil pot.)
- Bring to slow boil and stir until all soap is dissolved. (Another caution from blog readers – the boiling soap is strong-smelling. We cracked a window and turned on the fan and even my super-sensitive pregnant self was fine, but just a warning for you.)
Boiling Soap
- Add 1 cup of Borax and 1 cup of Washing Soda.
- Bring to boil, then take off heat.
- THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT – let cool slightly before transferring to your PLASTIC jugs. We dumped a semi-boiling concoction into our OJ bottles and they started to melt!!
- Here is where I deviate from the recipe, because of said ‘melt down’ experience. We went ahead and filled our empty containers 1/2 way with warm tap water and THEN added the melted soap, in equal portions, to temper the soap mixture.
He doesn’t know the container is about to melt!
OK, here is another lesson learned……..we followed the recipe and filled 2 OJ gallon jugs with the mixture. Within MINUTES, the soap solidified! We dumped it all back in the pot, added another 1/2 gallon of water, stirred it up and then put it into 3 jugs, each a gallon each. Jillee had said if the soap was too thick to only use 1/2 a bar of grated soap, but we had no way of knowing it would be. She also advises that the mixture may separate or try to solidify after some time, but she just shakes it up and maybe adds a little more water as needed.
I’m Melting! and solidifying!
So with that, we washed out first load of clothes – a mix of our clothing – with a single 1/2 cup of the new soap. We are adding white vinegar as fabric softener (in the dispenser) until we mix up some fancy homemade fabric softener concoction, but that was it. Clothes came out smelling like, well, smelling like clothes. Nothing fancy, but nothing yucky or weird either. I don’t need my clothes smelling like a ‘spring meadow’ to think they are clean! If you DO need that, Jillee suggests you can add 3 tablespoons of a product like Downey Unstopables (scent booster) to each gallon of soap. Gives it a touch of color and scent. You could also scent with essential oils, but we are actually going to work on making a fabric softener with some essential oils to maybe add some scent and control our hard water and static.
I’ll update you again soon on our status and how we feel after we wash our bedroom sheets – the ultimate test of a good wash – but so far, so good, and SO cheap! ($3/gallon!!)
I have a good excuse……
Why, yes, I have been MIA in blogging for awhile now. It’s not like I don’t have anything to share……I did get knocked up in December!
2 lines = a baby!
Oh boy, oh boy! (or girl!) Shane and I have been trying to conceive (TTC for us fertility challenged folks) since we got married October 2010. Honestly, we ‘gave up’ in August 2012 when I lost my job, and my insurance, and we just didn’t have the energy for charting, calendaring and taking expensive medicine…..nor did we have the money. We had tried several rounds of Clomid over the past two years, but it didn’t work and we knew we were in for a big of a longer challenge. So, we decided to take a break, not think about it, get jobs, get insurance and try again in a few months. Well, God had other plans! It seems we just needed to slow down and take a break to make things ‘work’ better!
Fast forward to Jan 1, 2013. I had been SO sick with a terrible cold – I mean not leaving the bed for 4 days, surviving on sleep alone. I had slept through New Year’s Eve and finally arose on the 1st. And in doing so, had a bit of a moment of clarity, realizing I felt horribly nauseous and that didn’t seem so cold-like. I glanced at a calendar, realized I was a few days ‘late’ and casually grabbed a pregnancy test. You see, I went through about six months were I peed on a stick every month hoping it would be positive…..convinced I was late and pregnant. I should have bought stock in Clear Blue. Imagine my shock and disbelief when the damn thing came up with TWO lines. I had to read the box three times to make sure I was seeing things right. I promptly went back to bed and just starred at the ceiling.
Shane came home from visiting my Mom and Dad (and getting some germ-free fresh air) about half an hour later. He had no idea…….I heard him in the bathroom, and yelled in, ‘Hey, I left something on the counter, can you bring it to me??’ I heard him move a few things and then say, “What is this? Oh MY GAWD!” and came running with the freshly-marinated stick in his hand. I was still in shock and am not sure I managed to muster much compared to his enthusiasm. You see, I had just spent four days in bed and wasn’t sure how I even managed to aim for the stick in my current state.
Oh, I have so much to share, and I am sure this blog is about to get busy. Maybe I should change the name to Our Purdy {Pregnant} Life for awhile. I apologize now if I get too graphic or blunt, but let me tell, this pregnancy has NOT been a cakewalk so far. Honey, we have some catching up to do!
Our Purdy World 