Ahhh...my first post EVER. Feels kinda weird, like I should warm-up with some stretches or something before laying it all out there. At the same time, as the first post, I feel like there's a lot to catch up on so maybe I should just spew it...First, this blog is dedicated to Amy who, due to her location in Africa, is unable to be a regular part of my cranky pregnant life (lucky her). As her first pregnant friend, she has requested that she be kept in the loop and up-to-date via a blog. As a tech-phob, this was a difficult request to process. Let it also be known that I have the first sonogram pics and would like to upload them but have yet to figure it out because this website doesn't accept .tifs. If anyone knows how to convert, please pass it on.

As of tomorrow, I'm 8 weeks pregnant. I'm not sure how much education Amy is looking for, but according to the literature, the embryo is about the size of a pinto bean right now. Yummy! Just kidding. Beans do not sound at all yummy right now, but I am starting to get my appetite back. After 2 weeks of eating oatmeal, toast, bananas, smoothies, and Wolfgang Puck canned vegetable soup (don't ask), I'm actually craving raw veggies again. I had to go to the store this afternoon because everything in the fridge had rotted during my food strike. Hopefully the "food aversion" (which is apparently normal in your first trimester) is over because if there's one thing I hate, it's a picky eater. The other problem with food aversion was that my blood sugar kept dropping and causing me to get super dizzy and nauseas. There was little warning too--I would go from fine to ready to pass out in a matter of minutes. The only solution was to preempt the starvation by eating nonstop (as a result I now have a "food baby"). But when all food is gross, trying to eat nonstop was a real conundrum.

How 'bout another lesson from the literature? Apparently the baby's organs are in place but aren't yet fully formed (the second part of that seems like a big fat "duh" to me), eyelid folds are forming as is the tip of the nose and the ears, and it even has elbows on its stubby little arms!

In other news, I'm fighting the first cold I've had in a long, long time. Apparently developing a baby puts your immune system into relaxation mode (which ensures it doesn't "reject" the fetus as a foreign substance). Normally I start popping my Nelson's homeopathic pillules at the first sign of sickness but I got a little paranoid this time around and refrained from popping anything...I'm guessing the homeopathy would have been fine since all it does is introduce a small amount of the cold into your system to jump start your immune system (and at this point I have a large amount of the cold in my system), but I'm paranoid and taking the safe route.

One last comment and then I think I can wrap this up: I read something that really freaked me out last night. "Studies show that women who consume as little as one to two cups of green tea a day within 3 months of conception and during the first trimester double the risk of a baby with neural-tube defects. The culprit is the antioxidant in green tea--it inhibits the activity of folic acid." Ahhhhh!!!! I'm a pretty avid drink green tea drinker. I mean, I stopped drinking the caffeinated version the second I found out I was pregnant, and about a week later I stopped drinking the decaf because it just isn't the same, but I have been drinking 2 cups a day for years now!! So definitely within 3 months of conception and also for the whole first month of pregnancy (because I didn't know I was pregnant until I was a month in). This is a good reason to use proper protection until you are ready to conceive! An example of a neural tube defect is spina bifida which afflicts nearly 4000 babies born in the US every year. This makes me wonder about the neural tube defect rate in places like Japan where green tea drinking is more common (or is that just a stereotype?). Anyway, my mom assured me that I'd be fine and reminded me that women were giving birth long before there were books (this, ironically from the woman who has so far bought me 6 books and 2 magazines on the topic). So if you're pray-er or a good-wisher or a positive-thinker or just a finger-crosser, maybe you could use your good thoughts and wishful thinking toward hoping I have a healthy, non neural-tube defected baby.