“What goes up, must come down.” That saying certainly applies to my mood, especially during pregnancy when a woman’s hormones are going crazy!
My last post on how pregnancy is going so far was a mostly positive one, and I think I had written it on an ‘Up’ day. Today was a bit of a ‘Down’ day, continued from a couple of days ago. On Friday, I had noticed a considerable shift in mood. The day started out well, I walked our dog before it got too hot out, I went to breakfast with a good friend, and then I met my MIL to do some furniture shopping. All in all, a good morning. But as the day wore on, and as the sun grew more intense, I started feeling more and more overwhelmed by everything. I had chores and errands to do that weren’t laborious, and I had the rest of the afternoon to do them, but for some reason, it was difficult for me to get the motivation up to complete them. One chore that really held me up that day was meal planning; my project was to come up with a dinner plan for the evening and meal plans for the weekend and then go shop for groceries, but lately I’ve been feeling uninspired by my cooking, making the task of meal planning extremely draining, frustrating, and disappointing. Eventually though, I settled on a few meal ideas and finished my errands, but not without some tears.
I don’t remember much of what yesterday was like, but in the evening, the Lion and I drove up to LA to have dinner with a couple of friends. It was a really good time, but we ate a lot of rich and heavy foods* (friend entrees, bread and crackers, ice cream, and presumably inordinate amounts of sugar), and we didn’t get to bed until almost midnight. This morning, we slept in until 9AM, and I woke up with the makings of a headache already in place. My headache today has waxed and waned, but it has been noticeable enough for me to consider today to be a ‘Down’ day 😦
I consider myself very fortunate to not have had constant morning sickness or heartburn during pregnancy (though I’ve heard heartburn can begin in third trimester…), but these headaches are certainly a contender for causing discomfort, annoyance, and generally being day-ruiners!! Since I don’t want to take any medicine during pregnancy, I try to combat these headaches with quiet time, massaging my temples, Chinese medicinal oil (/eucalyptus oil), and short naps. These methods help me get through the day, but they don’t cure the headache. Oh, another method is early bedtime. Speaking of which…
*During this pregnancy, I’ve noticed that when I overload on sugar (eg, a bottle of soda at our July 4th dinner) or gluten (eg, a bowl of leftover udon noodles for lunch), a headache will develop almost instantly. And this constant heat does NOT help.
A House Rises 