Getting huge - and new symptoms...

I'm including pictures of myself and I have to admit - they're a little misleading. When I look in the mirror, I sort of feel like I'm much more enormous than these photos portray. Perhaps it's the black top I'm wearing. Either way, included are photos from Week 23. We have been taking photos of my growing middle almost every week since we found out we were pregnant but alas, until this week we were using my Sony Cybershot, whose memory card appears to have become corrupt. My middle isn't the only thing that's growing - thighs and butt are filling out (oh joy, as if they weren't full to begin with), my feet have gone up a whole shoe size (another "side effect" they don't tell you about until it's happening - and it apparently is most likely a permanent size increase - goodbye one million pairs of shoes I have!), and my bras don't fit anymore (the ONE good thing that's happening to my body image!). My doctor is zeroing in on whether my hands, feet and ankles are swelling - this is how he will know I'm O.D.ing on sugar - and so far I am still slender in these areas. Even if these are the only areas...

As Isabella grows, she pushes all my other organs sort of out of the way - to the sides (there goes my waist), down (there goes that bladder), up (here comes the stomach) - wherever they will smoosh. The fun part of this is the acid indigestion that results from not only her tendency to make room for herself, but also some stupid hormone that relaxes all my tendons, ligaments and muscles to make expansion possible. This hormone that apparently is smart enough to make pregnancy growth possible, has not found the intelligence in the millions of years of evolution to localize its "relaxation" effects. So as Isabella shoves my stomach up into my chest cavity to reside next to my heart (there has to be some clever thing I can say about the way to my heart is my stomach, but I can't figure it out right now), this dumb hormone makes sure that the valve connecting my esophagus to my stomach is pretty much defunct.

So all my stomach contents are free to roam back up, including that insanely corrosive stomach acid (I'm surprised they haven't invented a chemical or biological weapon using this as the main ingredient). I thought I had experienced debilitating heartburn the one night I woke up in the middle of the night and indulged in a slice of plain wheat bread - only to suffer the most excruciating pain that I had ever felt, for hours. I think pregnancy teaches you to take each bout of mind-boggling pain and think to yourself, "No, it could get ten times worse. You can't imagine it now, but you'll figure it out shortly." Because that heartburn session that lasted a few hours and disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared was nothing.

On a Wednesday night I ate dinner, well, at dinner time. A bajillion hours later, I went to bed (okay at like midnight), feeling full which was something I was becoming used to - feeling absurdly full hours longer than logically necessary until in a split second I was suddenly ravenous. Somewhere in the wee hours of the night I was woken up by - prepare to be grossed out - vomit coming up my throat of its own accord. No retching, no clenching of my stomach to push that half-digested substance up the wrong way. Just a slow oozing feeling, complimented by a sharp feeling that my throat was being burned from the inside out. I went to the bathroom and allowed this mass to complete its backwards journey. The rest of the night found me in and out of bed.

The following night, I had a meeting for work followed by a baby shower for a coworker. I got home about 11pm, and fell asleep almost right away. Oh no, sleep was not to be had. I was in and out of bed again just like the night before, awakened in the same manner, until 4am. After the fourth or fifth journey from the couch (I migrated to spare Alex the disturbance), I had to wonder - what is possibly even left in there? Water, it turns out, didn't help either. That was violently rejected as well.

On the Friday of this particular week, by 9pm I was feeling this familiar sensation of my insides having a life of their own. I knew that occassional vomiting is normal even past the first trimester, and that heartburn was something I was supposed to expect as Isabella claims more and more space in my insides, but this was getting a little ridiculous. After some internet searching, I found the excuse to call my doctor (I hate calling my doctor). "What do you think?" I asked him, at 10pm (he was clearly sleeping prior to this) after describing my experience to him. "I don't know," he replied. "Go to Kapiolani. You probably at least need fluids." I suppose expecting a diagnosis over the phone was a little bit of a stretch.

Alex was at work, so Mom and Nick took me to Kapiolani Medical Center. We arrived at 11pm. Nick went to sleep in the car - a wise idea since we weren't seen till 2:30am. Gosh, good thing it wasn't anything serious. When you're pregnant, they don't even deal with you in the E.R. at all - they send you straight up to labor and delivery, just in case. I think there were about four women who came in in labor, and went straight to delivery, while I was there. My friend Kat was there, had been there since Thursday in fact, and was in labor. I wondered where her room was.

When we were finally seen, they immediately hooked me up to monitors, and we got to listen to Isabella's heartbeat for a while, as well as listen to the sounds of her jumping around inside me. Boy was she active! Bumps and jumps and turns and twirls, all over the place! Clearly, she was unphased by my gastric activities. Finally they hooked me up to an I.V. at about 3am (it took them one very painful failed attempt, followed by a second very painful successful attempt - my veins were collapsing a little, indicating that indeed I was dehydrated) and administered one liter of fluid. It was the weirdest sensation I have ever felt. I could literally feel the water going into my body - room temperature water in an air conditioned hospital is considerably colder than body temperature, especially when your body is stressed. I got cold and shivery - but if you touched me, you would think I was warm. In fact, my body was still warm. But I felt cold. After much coaxing from my Mom, I accepted a warmed blanket and quit shivering. After the I.V. was finished (very quickly - less than an hour), I was instructed to drink another liter (I still hadn't peed, another indication that I was definitely dehydrated), and then given crackers to eat to see if I could keep them down.

After I got discharged at sunrise on Saturday morning, Mom and Nick took me and Alex home (Alex had come right after work), and I went to bed shortly after. I didn't throw up but I could definitely feel those crackers trying to worm their way up. What gives? I thought.

Luckily at my regular appointment the following Tuesday my doctor confirmed - it seems I have serious acid reflux. She pointed me in the direction of an over the counter remedy called Gaviscon, since Maalox had proven to be ineffective. So far the Gaviscon is pretty amazing (tastes awful), as long as I don't eat after 9pm or eat more than perhaps one and a half cups of food at a time.

My theory is that this is nature's way of making sure I don't get carried away "eating for two." What a rip off. :P