Pregnancy: Week 5

This week has been crazy exciting. The reality of being pregnant is starting to sink in for both of us—we are over-the-moon! It's really hard not to tell everyone I see on the street, but I'm holding back. We made our first appointment to interview the Swedish Ballard Midwifery, which went really well. We both felt so comfortable there and are pretty sure this is where we will go for our prenatal care and delivery. It was nice to be face to face with a midwife and began to feel a lot more "real" while we were there—pregnant women everywhere!

Week 4: Baby K is the size of a poppyseed! 

While we were there, we made our 9 week appointment (I definitely had a bit of a breakdown when I realized how far away that was) to get the first ultrasound and hopefully hear the baby's heartbeat. We are moving in a couple weeks, so I'm hoping that the packing will keep my mind off of the long wait. It's hard once you've already been tainted with a million miscarriage stories and read about almost everything that can go wrong. It really is a test of my patience and dependence on the Lord. I need to be reminded right now that this is the Lord's baby, not ours.


What's Up With the Baby

This week the baby is the size of a sesame seed and “growing furiously!” What sweet words to a new mama’s ears. The baby is looking a bit like a tadpole right now (which is WAY better than the poppy seed sized “ball of dust” our Pampers iPad app showed us for last week!) and is starting to form major organs (heart, kidney, liver, stomach) and systems (nervous, circulatory, digestive). The brain is also starting to develop. It’s nuts to think all this is happening inside me right now!

How I’m feeling

My “morning sickness” has kicked in early. By the end of the week I was feeling pretty nauseous and had very little appetite. I was finding that I woke up feeling pretty crampy and then the nausea would set in. It would stick around until late afternoon and then dissipate a bit by dinner/workout time. Then yesterday, at my 5 week mark, I felt completely fine with an almost normal appetite. It seems like the nausea is constantly fluctuating.

I continue to feel crampy, which has been around since way before I even knew I was pregnant (I originally thought they were period cramps since they feel exactly the same!). The cramping usually lasts for just a few seconds and can be really mild or moderately painful. I have read that this is completely normal and just my uterus stretching to make room for the baby. The worst part is that it wakes me up really early in the morning (between 5–6am) and is pretty persistent in the a.m. hours. I find it’s worse if I lay on my side.

Perhaps the strangest symptom of pregnancy I’ve been dealing with since before I knew is a drippy nose. Around week 3 I got a cold that I thought was allergies, which ended up being just a weird pregnancy cold afterall. Since then I’ve had a constant drippy nose, which I’ve heard many other women deal with throughout the whole pregnancy. My boobs are a bit sore as well, but not unbearable.


What I’m Eating

I already have a fairly balanced diet that is 100% vegetarian, so I thankfully don’t need to make too many diet changes. I don’t, however, get nearly enough protein, so I’ve taken this on as my mission for the time being. I try to eat vegan as often as I can, which means no dairy or animal proteins, but I know that protein is so important to me and the baby right now that I've decided to bring more into my pregnancy diet. I have also read that protein can be a huge help in keeping sickness at bay.

String cheese has been my go-to for the past week. With 8g of protein per stick, I can scarf down 2-3 and get almost 1/3 of the protein I need for the day (about 70 grams in full). Lunch has been the fun one. The only thing that sounds good is Trader Joes frozen arugula, cheese and tomato pizza. So this has been my lunch for almost a week straight. Our freezer is packed with them. I figure there aren’t too many times where I will allow myself to eat pizza every day, so I’m trying to live it up! I don’t even reheat it at lunch, I just eat it cold :)

I have also been taking in my prenatal, fish oil, Vitamin D, extra Vitamin B to help with sickness and lots of gingery things. I love ginger beer, so I’ve been filling one of my water bottles with a bit of ginger beer to sip on (along with water) throughout the day. I also found some ginger Altoids, which actually are pretty gingery and somewhat helpful to take my mind off of things. Interestingly enough, even when I feel sick there are a few healthy foods that I keep thinking about...like avocados, tomatoes (like salsa), and kale salad! I've also been craving eggs occasionally, which I hardly ever do.

What We've Bought

I am beginning to feel a bit bloated in my stomach, and really have been for the past week. So I decided last weekend to get a Be Band (belly band) from Target. It's basically just a circle of elastic fabric that holds your pants up so you don't have to button them. I ordered another one from Amazon in black that arrived today. The brand is Baby Be Mine and it is a lot taller/longer than the Be Band from Target, which is great for my tall frame and soon to be bigger belly. The Be Band works great for now though and looks just like a tank top when it pokes out from under my shirt.

We also purchased a scale to track my weight. I had no idea how much I weighed, so this will be interesting to track my growth. I know I'm not really supposed to be gaining that much weight right now anyways, 1–5 pounds in the first trimester and then 1 pound per week from there out, but I wanted to have a true starting weight to work from.

We also had planned hosting a wine party long ago this week with our friends. While I was feeling pretty tired, it was so much fun even though I couldn't really drink. I ended up just having a small sip of each wine and skipping some of the food pairings that weren't safe. I even made Frickles (fried pickles) for our food pair!

Need to catch up?

Pregnancy Posts:

We're Having a Baby!

How We Found Out