After seeing a non-maternity version of this shirt on Pinterest (without the arrow, obviously), I could not resist making what I have decided is CLEARLY the best maternity shirt of all time. 80s reference + dance movie reference + maternity pun = WIN.
I wonder if the baby will grow up to be as easily amused as me?
For a first-time mom I sure am failing at documenting this pregnancy. Last week T posted a picture of me and my very-obviously-pregnant belly on Facebook, and I think that was probably the first the Internet-at-large had seen of me in a while.
Hey, look! A pregnant Annabelle!
I think the reason I'm not documenting much of this pregnancy here is that there's really not that much to document. I never really got sick, I don't have much in the way of aches and pains, and I can still get up off the couch/floor/bed without much strain. In fact yesterday I commented to T that it's amazing I am 17 weeks along and still feel completely normal - possibly better than normal. I know that won't last, so I'm trying to enjoy it while I have it.
The only Big News I have, which you already know if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, is that as of February 12th (when I was 16w3d) I can feel the wee little rave that Littlebit is throwing in my abdomen. S/he is most active after Zumba/Groove (dance exercise classes at my gym) or when I'm really hungry. Mostly I feel the movement in the afternoons and evenings. Last week at my OB appointment the doctor was amazed I was feeling the baby with such regularity already - she said first-time moms usually don't feel this kind of regular movement until 19 weeks or so. Overachieving fetus!
The Big Reveal ultrasound, where we'll try to find out if Littlebit is a boy or a girl, is scheduled for March 9th, when I'll be 20w1d. Right now opinions are pretty split down the middle by family lines, with my family thinking it's a boy and T's family thinking it's a girl. I've thought it was a boy from day one (at the insemination appointment, in fact), though earlier in the pregnancy I had three separate dreams and in all of them the baby was a girl. More recently I've been thinking maybe my subconscious is right and it is a girl, which of course means that this weekend I had a dream that the baby is a boy. Of course. I'm currently thinking "boy" again, but who knows.
So in short, I'm doing well - I feel good. I make it to the gym three days a week, twice for relatively intense cardio and once to work with a prenatal certified personal trainer on weightlifting. Food remains relatively uninteresting to me, which explains my non-weight gain (net down three pounds since day of conception), but my doctor is happy, so I'm fine.
So that's where I'm at - 17w4d.
HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT??
Looks like somewhere around July 26th Teryn and I will no longer be a family of two, but a family of three. Awwww.
First trimester has gone SHOCKINGLY well for me so far, other than the non-stop dry-heaving. But! I'm not puking! So I win! Or something. It has been positively KILLING me to stay quiet on this. We found out on November 15th (via blood test at the doctor's office after the home test was WRONG, but that is a story for another day), told parents at Christmas, and now it's finally time to tell all of you.
I'm pregnant. We're going to be MOMS. I've never been so excited and terrified of something in my life. It's going to be so awesome.
Dear small, downtown grocery store,
I understand that as a smallish grocery store smack in the middle of down-town Chicago that you can't carry every product I could ever need or want. Real estate is expensive and you only have so much space. However, maybe if you cut down on the dried-bean soup mix collection you would be able to stock one damn bag of dried lentils.
Sincerely,
Anne
So, how was your week? Me? Oh, I just got diagnosed with narcolepsy. No big.
(OMGWTFBBQ!)
So that happened. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (or know me in real life), you already know that I went in and had a 24 hour sleep study a few weeks ago. I had both the overnight (polysomnogram) and daytime (multiple sleep latency test) studies.
You should have seen the FULL set of wires I had overnight, but I couldn't get to my phone to take a picture of them, so you only get the reduced set of wires for a visual.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, some background: I've never been a terribly good sleeper at night. I supplement with naps pretty much every day that I'm not at work, and I always have. I remember often taking naps after school even in middle/high school. Daytime sleepiness is just something that always was, and I mostly attributed it to the fact that I'm genetically unable to sleep through the night and generally wake well before my alarm for no good reason. It runs in my family - my mom and maternal grandma were always poor sleepers, too, though they can maybe also blame their coffee habits to some degree. In my lower-self-esteem moments I attributed my tiredness to me being lazy.
But this year something snapped and the sleepiness I have always dealt with sort of took over my life. I'm always exhausted around April 15th (and for a few weeks following), but this year I didn't bounce back to a "normal" level of tired like I usually do. I was still painfully tired well into the summer. A few times in July I either left work to go home and nap or took a nap in our office "comfort room" or on my office floor to take the edge off. I was so tired it was painful. On weekend days (or vacation days) I would most often end up taking not one but TWO naps, in addition to a relatively normal 7-8 hours of sleep at night. After talking to my regular doctor and my endocrinologist, having my thyroid, iron, and vitamin D levels checked, I scheduled a sleep study per their suggestion.
I met with the sleep doctor and gave her my general background/health health history, and she scheduled the nighttime and daytime sleep tests for me. She said at the time that she didn't think I had sleep apnea/any of the more common sleep problems and did suggest that narcolepsy was a possibility, but I never took that too seriously. I've never once collapsed or fallen dead asleep while crossing the street/eating dinner/etc, so CLEARLY that was just silly. I joked about it for weeks. Narcolepsy! Can you believe it? Ha, ha...ha?
The polysomnogram test involved sleeping with roughly twice the number of wires pictured above stuck to my person, along with straps across my chest (measuring breathing effort), wires on my legs (measuring for restless leg syndrome), EKG pads on my chest, an oxygen-measuring tube thing in my nose (measuring the air coming out, not blowing oxygen in), a tiny microphone pasted to my cheek, an oxygen and pulse sensor on my finger, etc. It was not overly comfortable at first, but I did manage a full 7.5 hours of sleep. The results of the overnight sleep study were as follows:
1. I do not have sleep apnea. Yay!
2. I wake up more often than I realize, but it isn't from lack of breathing like with sleep apnea.
3. I have a lot more REM than normal.
4. I fall asleep astonishingly quickly, even with 100 wires stuck to my person.
Together all that meant was that it was a good thing we had the multiple sleep latency test scheduled for the day, because they needed more data. Had they found sleep apnea or something else that could explain the excessive sleepiness, they would have ended the test here.
The second part of the test, they daytime part, required a reduced set of wires as pictured above, plus the EKG pads. All the rest came off, thank goodness. I was required to take five 20 minute naps, one every two hours, starting two hours after waking for the day. So after waking at 6pm I had scheduled naps at 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm. Between I played on my iPad and read. For each nap I was given 20 minutes to try to fall asleep. If I didn't fall asleep within 20 minutes they would end the nap there. If I did fall asleep, they would wake me 15 minutes after falling asleep.
Because I am ME I was watching the clock and knew that each one of my naps was terminated roughly 20 minutes after it started, so I assumed I was failing at sleeping and wasting everyones time. I reported at the time that I thought I fell asleep in naps 4 and 5, maybe, but I wasn't sure. I reported "vivid daydreaming like dreaming", which is why I thought I might have been asleep, but I wasn't entirely sure (I thought I might have been dreaming while awake, which happens). The actual results were as follows:
1. I did not fall asleep in nap one, which was no surprise. I was trying too hard and was really anxious. I'm told that is pretty common.
2. I DID fall asleep in ALL of the remaining naps, in as little as 90 seconds. My average time to fall asleep, for naps scheduled every two hours, on a day following a full night of sleep was FOUR MINUTES. Woah. This was very high on the "daytime sleepiness" scale.
So, those results, combined with my self-reported "early-waking" brand of insomnia, a life-long affinity for naps, etc. resulted in the doctor coming to the conclusion of narcolepsy with bonus insomnia.
What it means: No, I'm not likely going to start falling face-first into my mashed potatoes at the dinner table, dead-asleep. The often comically portrayed fainting style of narcolepsy (cataplexy) is present in only about 2/3rds of people with narcolepsy. The other three major symptoms - sleep paralisis (waking up and feeling paralyzed for a few seconds), hallucinations/crazy vivid dreams while falling asleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness are all present for me to some degree. The excessive daytime sleepiness is my biggest problem. The sleep paralysis has only happened to me a few times and isn't severe at all, and doesn't interfere with anything. Oddly I knew what it was from a television show so it didn't/doesn't freak me out. And the hallucinations/crazy vivid dreams are amusing and entertaining far more often than they are scary/nightmares; I actually kind of like them.
For treatment we are doing two things - medications (stimulants) and sleep-specific cognitive behavioral therapy. I started the first attempt at a stimulant medication (Nuvigil) yesterday and I felt pretty darn good. I didn't get sleepy at all until near 5pm, and that was only slightly. I was alert and able to focus all day, which was spectacular. I joked that I was pretty sure I could see through walls on this drug, but really simply not being dead-on-my-feet-tired feels like a superpower to me.
Unfortunately I was also awake (FOR THE DAY) at 1:15 this morning, so there is still some adjusting to do. But I'm hopeful that since I at least felt good during the day that there is an answer that doesn't involve me needing to rent an apartment near my office for daily afternoon naps. The sleep-specific cognitive behavioral therapy we will schedule when I go in for a follow-up in two weeks. I don't know much about that yet, other than I am all for trying any non-medication treatment they can come up with.
So! That's where I'm at. Mostly I'm just happy to have an answer that isn't "you're lazy, get over it" which was my biggest fear.
This has already gotten incredibly long-winded, but perhaps I missed something. Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments. I've never known anyone with narcolepsy (that I'm aware of), and it is a curious condition. Ask away.
