Still invisible, but getting very tangible

Weeks 4-5: Speck is barely pea-sized, but already commandeering much of my body, including all kinds of systems and side-effects that nobody tells you to expect (or that you think may track with being big and unweildy). For example, my nose now runs steadily, leaving me feeling stuffed in the night, irritating my throat, etc. (And most of my best hopes for decongestants are Forbidden!) Similarly, my finger and toe nails are growing faster, requiring me to cut them notably often (every ten days?), grunt.

Most surprising to me, given that my size hasn't changed at all, is that I get out of breath after a single flight of stairs -- and this in someone who regularly goes up and down 3-4 flights at home, commutes on a subway, etc. In fact, I sometimes find myself breathing heavily after I get into bed. Apparently there's already been a radical increase (20-30%!) in blood volume which makes everything a lot more work for your respiratory system, even this early. yay.

Unrelated to the physical changes, I continue to have what feels like a personality truncation. Not just that I've ceased to function at home (yay for Spouse and home-cooked meals!), but it seems like my usual reward wiring has been altered. For example, a goofy but addictive online computer game that I've played every day for the last year and a half -- sometimes even when away on vacation -- is suddenly too much, despite the introduction of a heap of intriguing new content. I fiddle around a little bit, and then stop playing entirely for several weeks. This was a game that I used to have to keep myself from playing (e.g., at work), and now I have no interest. This same strange rewiring of rewards will soon generalize to food issues . . .

Update: I forgot that my thermostat really went crazy around this time -- especially prone to feeling flushed and sweaty around bedtime, but periodic cycles of body temp just sitting in the living room in the evening.

The invisible weeks

Week 1: no really. No idea I was pregnant yet, but during our visit to the in-laws on the Cape, I could barely motivate myself to do anything other than flop on a comfortable couch with a book. (Tour? Beaches? whazzat?) Signs of things to come...

[On the flip side, I had cramps and even some spotting, so became convinced that we weren't pregnant.]

Weeks 2-3: positive test! holy moly! Really tired now -- coming home on the early side and just flopping on the couch. Even more notable on the weekend: lists of Things to Do lie on the counter as I sit glazed in the family room, capable only of reading a novel or watching stupid TV. This is in no way like me, but even turning on my computer seems too hard, as does making any sort of plans for the day, upcoming vacation, or anything else. (This is pretty much a description of mild depression, for me a clear effect of progesterone, which is ramping up now.) Everything is let slide, by necessity.

Update: I should clarify that the weeks listed on this first post are weeks post-fertilization, and thus are phase-shifted from the dating that OB's use (which is dated from your last period and thus adds two weeks to the total). I'm not exactly sure when I transitioned, but probably somewhere in the period between "two weeks" and "six weeks" I shifted to the more common method of dating pregnancy. Apologies for the uncertainty this introduces in the first month or so . . .