Surviving Morning Sickness & Hearing Our Baby's Heart Beat at Home!

I feel a little out of touch with the world these days.  All I seem to want to do these days is eat (whatever doesn't sound completely disgusting so my stomach doesn't hurl), sleep or lay down as much as possible and make those ever frequent trips to the bathroom to pee.  Oh the joys of early pregnancy! :-)  I had forgotten how utterly exhausting making a baby can be...and how just the mention of a certain food can have me running for the trashcan to "lighten my stomach" to put it nicely.  I am pretty sure that this pregnancy has been my toughest yet as far as morning sickness goes.  It started up a little before 6 weeks along and is going strong, pretty much 24/7, with some relief in between.  Nausea is not my thing...is it anybody's???...so it's somewhat miserable, BUT all for a very good reason, so I just have to keep focusing on that!

Some key things that are helping me survive morning sickness are:

-Trying to eat something BEFORE I begin to feel sick in the morning.  Right when I wake up I feel pretty good, but within about 10-15 minutes that yucky feeling starts, so I try to head it off with whatever sounds appetizing...lately that has been fresh fruit or a glass of really cold fruit juice with ice in it.

-I am so not a breakfast eating person, but lately I've had to become one or I feel just plain awful.  Scrambled eggs, pretty plain with just a tad of salt/pepper on them have been okay to eat.  Also toast is pretty easy to eat in the mornings.

-Drinking Powerade seems to help a bit...apparently B vitamins can help ease nausea.

-Chewing peppermint or cinnamon gum.

-Eating several small snacks throughout the day...a granola bar, some fruit, slice of cheese is what I've liked lately.

-Avoiding smells that make me sick...which lately is pretty much any candle smell!  Can you believe it?!!  I run my little online gift shop and right now I can't stand to smell my own product!  So I'm avoiding them until morning sickness eases up so that I don't hate them forever!

-Getting plenty of rest.  I've noticed on nights where I haven't gotten very good sleep is when I feel the worst the next day.  So I try to rest/nap throughout the day as I can...which is pretty hard since my two little guys don't nap.  I usually have to just lay down in the playroom as they play or put on a movie to keep them relatively still so I can get a little rest.

-Not over-stressing about getting "it all" done.  My priorities on what I want to get done each day has significantly decreased.  These days I feel good if I can get my boys fed, get our school done and hopefully get a few chores around the house completed.  We haven't gotten out much to do stuff because I get so exhausted, but on those rare days when I feel pretty good we certainly take advantage of it!

So, that's how I'm surviving morning sickness and pregnancy fatigue these days!

On a very happy note today was the first day that I was able to find our baby's heart beat on my home doppler that I rented from BabyBeat.  I did this with the boys and always found it so reassuring to hear their precious little heart beats.  I got it in the mail a few days ago, but couldn't hear it right off...after all our little baby is only about the size of a raspberry!...but today after trying for a few minutes I found our baby's sweet little heart beat!  What a precious series of little thumps!  I calculated it and it averaged about 165 beats per minute!  Nice and strong!  So amazing!  Johnathan heard it too and was pretty excited!  He could even pick it out as we tried to find it again...I guess it was moving around because I kept having to readjust the doppler to find it!  It was pretty special.

This weekend we have a special visitor coming to stay {our sweet Arden!} so hopefully I will be up for doing some fun stuff...and if not, I'll just have to power through it, because sometimes as a mom you've just got to suck it up and do stuff even when you don't feel like it!!!  :-)

Happy Weekend!
*Grace*