Hormones

According to the Oxford English dictionary, hormones are defined as: "a regulatory substance produced in an organism and transported in tissue fluids such as blood or sap to stimulate specific cells or tissues into action". I'll tell you what, as the pregnancy progresses, my hormones are busy at work giving me erratic mood swings!

Yesterday a co-worker observed the o.j. juice boxes I had on my desk and said to me, "You should be drinking better juice than that". Under normal circumstances I would have shrugged this comment off and not thought about it again. But oh no, being pregnant and 'hormonal', I started a huge internal monologue about whether my juice was of good enough quality. It wasn't fresh squeezed, but it had no additives, so what was the problem? Again, keep in mind that this is not a fully normal person thinking! I sat at my desk stressing about my juice choice to the point where I welled up with tears! Lisa (whom you will hear loads about) looked at me and said, "You're not crying about the juice comment, are you?!" Embarrassed and emotional, I nodded and headed off to the bathroom to squeeze out a few more tears in private. Dork!

See the thing is, as most expecting parents experience, I am scared to death that I'm not going to make the perfect choices and am somehow going to be a crap parent.

I remember my Mom telling me a story from when she was pregnant with me. She was in the kitchen trying to figure out what to make for dinner, to no avail. My Dad thought the kitchen was awfully quiet, so he went to the kitchen to see what was going on. What he found was my Mom facing the oven, crying. When he asked her what was wrong, she wept, and said she couldn't figure out what to make for dinner! This story was quite comforting when I was getting over the orange juice incident!

My waistbands are getting a bit tight and my boobs seem huge, but my fingernails are growing faster and stronger than ever before. I think I'm in for a whirlwind of activity and changes - I'm looking forward to it all.

- Allison