BBQ & Relish

June 20th

So I’m currently freaking out…

Today I found a little bit of blood in my underwear and while, yes, this can be completely normal, all I want to know is: WHERE THE HELL DID THAT BLOOD COME FROM AND WHY SHOULD I NOT BE FREAKING OUT?? To me, that blood came from, at the very least, somewhere around my baby… not, in my mind, where it should be coming from and definitely not a particularly lovely thought to mull over.

Granted, me and Jason got a little… active last night, and my mom assures me that this is the reason… but I still don’t want to see blood! Isn’t that one of the perks of pregnancy anyway? No more blood for nine months? Not so much! Of course, this isn’t the only the symptom I’ve been given faulty information on. No one ever said anything about the lack of intestinal power… and if they did, they should have taken me by the shoulders and knocked it into my thick skull. I hate constipation! Okay… maybe a little TMI… but you get my point. And I am just realizing that pregnant women don’t REALLY have weird cravings… it’s just that they can only eat a limited amount of food without chucking it back up. So once we find three things we can eat (like McDonald’s BBQ sauce, Hyvee pickle relish, and wonderbread), we just slap them all together and grind that baby down! I have to say… nothing tastes or sounds better to me right now than a good ol’ bbq ‘n’ relish sandwich. Of course after that I had to eat leftover mac and cheese, kool aid, and a muffin, so I’m sicker than a dog currently. I should have known though… baby hasn’t been all that happy with any sort of dairy product. I can’t eat any kind of cheese, no ranch, no milk, no yogurt, not even butter. And I’m so ravenous all the time, yet I never want food! And it’s not that I’m super sick or anything… it’s more like my stomache is just waiting for a bite of anything so it can spit it back out! Food aversion is what I’ve taken to calling it. However, if any of you have had any doubt… I am very hungry. My stomach has just apparently sworn off food for the time being. Or baby… not sure who to blame, but let’s hope I don’t birth an anorexic baby.

So, changing the subject, we did get around to seeing a doctor. She told us I was pregnant (shocker!), which we expected. What I hadn’t expected is the insurance issues. Luckily, I applied for Medicaid and already have a case worker at DHS (Dept. of Human Services, for the blockheads). He said as long as we get our stuff in, then I have medical insurance and we also get $200 for food every month… and we’re gonna do some WIC. Jason drinks milk like water, so we’re gonna leave out the part about me being super sick around dairy. I have two of the things Phill (our worker) asked for. The other was confirmation from UNI that Jason is a student. I’m not sure why… apparently we get more money for food if he’s NOT a student, so I guess they want to make sure we’re not… cheating?? Weird. So I just need that and then I can send everything to Phill on Monday. I’ll probably just email the first two and tell him I’m waiting on Jason. Maybe he’ll see the stupidity of it. However, the lack of insurance is why the doctor wasn’t all that informative… my parent’s insurance will cover regular doctor’s visits, but not maternity for dependents (and let’s face it… I’m not exactly a “dependent” anymore). But we have an appointment for Wednesday at the women’s clinic and either I’ll have Medicaid by then or they’ll get me on Medicaid when I get there.

I’m relying on the fact that when I get there they’ll put all these questions to ease in my head. … Yet another reason I’ve been freaking out. The first trimester is like uber taboo for pregnancy… anything could go wrong! I could have an ectopic pregnancy (I’m really hoping that pain is just gas), I could just not actually be pregnant and have a cyst (please, no), I could be pregnant with a cyst (pretty please with sugar, whipped cream, and a cherry on top, God, no), the baby could have stopped growing a five weeks just be a mass of dead cells floating in my uterus… I mean… anything could happen! I just want to know that I am pregnant for absolute sure, how far along I am, and that the baby AND SURROUNDING AREA are healthy! My mom says that she can tell baby is healthy because I tested at 6pm and got a positive, which means that my HCG count is really high, which means that baby is super healthy… or… as my mom loves to tease me… that we’re expecting twins (once again, please God, no… I swear I will never go to church again if you do). Little too much for me there… So those are the… (counts on fingers) four things that I want to know: Baby and area are in tip-top shape, baby is there, baby’s age, and the fact that there are not baby multiples in there. God help us all…