Bizarre, but I'm glad!

I had a VERY interesting thing happen to me yesterday. After dinner, Justin and I were watching a movie. We took an intermission break, in which I went into the kitchen to take my empty hot chocolate mug to the sink. When I turned on the kitchen light, the first thing I saw was the bag of carrots I had bought at the market earlier in the day. Seeing the carrots, my first thought was, "Man, a carrot sounds GREAT right now!" So I washed it and ate it whole. It was delicious.

This is bizarre for two reasons: First of all, as many of you know from one of my previous posts, I've been having an aversion to raw vegetables since I found out I was pregnant. This is seriously the first raw vegetable I've eaten in 5 weeks. Why in the world did I suddenly see the carrot and want it? No idea.

The even stranger thing, though, is that I don't even LIKE carrots! I don't know if I've EVER just eaten a whole carrot like that. I can most of the time eat baby carrots, which are peeled and sweeter, but I prefer even those dipped in ranch to mask the taste. Justin doesn't like carrots either, so I usually don't even buy them. I'm just making a pot of beef vegetable soup tomorrow, and that definitely needs the carrots in it. Of course, just writing this post is making me want another carrot, so I may end up having to go BACK to the market to buy more carrots for my soup!!! :)

I am VERY glad to have suddenly desired a vegetable again, because I've started gaining more weight that I want to this early in the game. So hopefully I'll be able to start eating a little healthier and stop those pounds from packing on quite so fast! Yay for carrots!!

"How's the Baby?"

Do we ask this in America? To somebody who's only 10 weeks pregnant? People keep asking me that here, and I'm stumped at how to answer them. I know, I'm supposed to say "Fine, thank you." But really, how am I supposed to know how the baby is? I haven't seen it or talked to it. It's not big enough for me to feel it move yet. So I finally told one of my Moldovan friends that we don't ask that in America. We ask a pregnant woman how SHE is, because that is something she knows very well and would more than likely be happy to tell you about. Am I wrong in thinking that's a strange question? I won't actually know how the baby is until it's born, when I can see it and hold it in my hands. Until then, we're all just guessing, aren't we?

I'm also already getting friends wanting to touch my belly. Talk about feeling violated! I know to expect that when you're further along and your belly is big - I've heard you'll have complete strangers want to come up and put their hands all over you. Um, no thanks. However, at this point, all they're getting is a big handful of my fat roll, which I had long before I was pregnant, thank you very much. I'm not saying anything to my Moldovan friends about it, because I don't know how that would translate and I don't want to offend them. But I fully expect to ask Americans to please not touch me without asking first. Here, there is no such thing as personal space, so I guess this is just part of it. And since I'm clearly not showing, it's only my friends who already know I'm pregnant who are touching me, so I'll just live with it. But goodness gracious! Nobody would walk up and grab my stomach before I was pregnant, so why is it ok to do it now?! Alas, the things you just can't prepare for... :)

Already?!

OK, so I knew that most people don't really start to show their pregnancy until 4-5 months. What I did not know, however, is how soon I would start to FEEL a difference in my clothes! I'm sure I don't look any different, but my belly is already getting bigger! Last week, I even started having to unbutton my jeans when I'm sitting down because they're just tight! What?! This soon?! I was only at 9 weeks when this started! So I'm starting to get a little concerned about being able to keep wearing these clothes for the next 2+ months that we're in Moldova. When I'm standing up/walking around, my jeans still fit fine, but when I'm sitting, they're starting to get pretty snug. So this will be an interesting adventure. I do know about the rubber-band-through-the-buttonhole trick for wearing jeans that are a little snug. So hopefully that will last me! If not, I may need to recruit somebody to send me a couple of those belly band thingys. We'll see! Regardless of how my clothes are fitting, though, it sure is making it a lot more real to me that there's a baby growing in there, since I can clearly tell I'm growing!!!!! :)

Please tell me I can blame it on the pregnancy!

OK, so does pregnancy make you clumsy? I'm not usually a klutz, but I've had two disturbing incidences in the past couple of days, and I'm concerned I'm really going to injure myself or someone else! Two days ago, I was walking down the street, and I just fell down! My foot slipped into a pothole or something, but I totally staggered for like 10 feet and then went sprawling. It was embarrassing! Thankfully I wasn't hurt more than scratches and bruises. But I guarantee the people on the street were thinking "It's WAY too early in the day for that lady to be so drunk!" No, I'm not drunk! I'm just pregnant! It's a good thing no cars were coming, because I totally fell into the middle of the street.

And then tonight, I totally set dinner on fire. YES, ON FIRE!!!! We're talking 2-foot-high flames coming out of the skillet. Who knew stir-fry could be so dangerous? The thing that scares me the most about it is that I panicked. I had no idea what to do. Thankfully, Justin was on hand, came quickly at my screams, and calmly took care of the situation. It doesn't take a super-genius to think that if you have a fire on a gas stove, the first thing you should try is eliminate the source of the flame. Turn off the burner, Joni! Duh! (This picture is not my stove, but it closely resembled what mine looked like - minus the danger of nearby curtains catching ablaze...)

So I'm just a little nervous because I still have 7 more months of this to go. Will I suffer from this fuzzy-headedness the whole time? Will I regain better control of my limbs? I seriously doubt that one, because the bigger I get the more awkward I'm sure I will be. So I just need to recruit some serious prayers that God will protect me with His angels and that I'll trust Him to do so!

Bizarre Changes in Food Tastes

So you always hear about how pregnancy totally changes the foods people like/dislike/crave. I wondered what was going to happen with me, and I'm totally surprised so far about how it's been!

1. Sweet Tooth is Gone! Before pregnancy, I had the world's biggest sweet tooth. I could eat anything sweet or chocolate any time of the day or night. Shockingly enough, now it just doesn't sound good. If I do happen to eat some, I do usually enjoy it. But a little bit is enough, and it's very easy for me to overdo it on the sweets now and make myself sick. In fact, the medicine I'm taking to lower my bilirubin levels is a VERY sweet syrup, and some days I actually have to gag it down! I hope the sweet tooth stays gone even after giving birth! That would be great for my diet! :)

2. Just Say No to Raw Veggies! Many of you know that I used to eat salads all the time - LOVED them! My friend Kristy and I would go to Subway every week and I would get a tuna salad, the highlight of my week! Even here in Moldova, before getting pregnant, I would cut up tomatoes and cucumbers and make a salad-type thing every day for lunch. Now I just cannot stand the thought of a raw vegetable. I had to throw away all my leftover tomatoes and cucumbers. Before I get any motherly lectures, I'm eating plenty of cooked vegetables, AND I'm taking my multivitamin. Just don't ask me to eat a salad. Gag!

3. Hand Over the Fries and Nobody Gets Hurt! My strongest cravings have been for warm, salty things - namely, french fries. In fact, twice now I have been moved to tears by my deep longing for McDonald's fries. Is this pathetic or what? Before pregnancy, I really could not tell you the last time I ate a french fry, and even longer ago that I specifically went to a place just to buy some! But they are the joy of my soul now. I'm trying to enjoy them in moderation and find other things that will fill that craving - popcorn is a good one, and cheese toast! Yum!

So those are just the most notable changes in my tastes so far. Weird!!!

Conquering the Fear

Well, I'm now 9 1/2 weeks pregnant, and I've been wanting to revive this blog to share with friends and family about my experiences. However, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it, and I can tell you the one reason: FEAR. I have been so afraid of losing the baby or something happening, that I couldn't stand the thought of getting on here and sharing all these exciting things, just to have to get back on in the future and share the sadness. But God has really been dealing with me in that, and here's the new attitude I'm living by:

If God wants my child to live, then absolutely nothing can harm it.
If God doesn't want my child to live, then neither do I.

That second part sounds kind of harsh, but not when you look at it with a correct view of God, namely that He is good and loving all the time. He is never spiteful or mean. Absolutely everything He does has a purpose, and in His Word, He promises that purpose is good. So He can be trusted with the life of my child, and I have determined that I just will not worry. Period. I worded it the way I did above, because this concept doesn't just apply to my pregnancy, but I want it to apply to my attitude toward parenting in general. There is no guarantee that my child will live to reach adulthood. That is in the hands of God, and He knows best. As a chronic worrier and someone who always imagines the worst for every situation (Example: Justin is 10 minutes late getting home from work? He must be dead in a car accident. *rolling eyes*), this is a really big deal for me, and I'd appreciate everybody's prayers in this. But I have a bunch of things I'll be posting about my pregnancy, so check back often and share the joy of the experience with me, and NONE of us are going to WORRY about ANYTHING!!! :)