The Second Trimester Begins.

Two days into my second trimester, I can finally, officially report that I woke up feeling like myself.

I didn't want to throw up or go immediately back to sleep. I grabbed a Diet Coke, ate a nutritious breakfast of Zebra cakes and watermelon, sat down in front of The Colbert Report, and went to NewYorkTimes.com first thing instead of BabyCenter.

Anyone who's pregnant can tell you--that's a milestone. That's like being released from demonic possession and finding yourself once again able to think for yourself. And it feels good.

It's been a while since I've written, and that's mostly because there hasn't been a lot to say. I worked every day last week except for overnight Saturday (or Sunday morning), so I spent this week, as usual, trying to desperately schedule in more than four hours of sleep at a time. I met with my gastroenterologist on Thursday at noon, which is also the equivalent of about 3 o'clock in the morning to me, and sat half awake as he talked.

On Saturday, I got home from work at about 10AM. I crawled into bed with Jason and was in a deep sleep by 10:05.

During that sleep, I had another set of pregnancy-induced crazyass dreams. One--and I won't go into too much detail because it's pretty much disgusting and not nearly as nuanced with political references as my Dubya adventure--has stuck with me:

I'm driving to work, up a huge, winding hill, with Louie in my lap. We get into a car accident, and Louie finds himself trapped in the rubble. This magical circus man appears, and he has this big wheel with him, a la The Price is Right, minus the sparkles and Bob Barker:


He tells me that I have to spin the wheel to get Louie out of the rubble. So I'm spinning furiously, and I can see him start to pull himself out the harder I spin. But then it's too late, and he's sinking farther and farther down, and The Circus Man tells me I've lost him. Just as I'm about to fall into a state of deep despair, and only an inch of Louie's ear is left peaking out of the mangled steel, Circus Man changes his mind, and tells me it's not too late and TO SPIN, SPIN! So I spin with all my might, and out comes Louie, and then he's free and I run and scoop him up and shower him with kisses. Except the whole ordeal has taken a toll on my little perfect 5 pound puppy, and he now has only tiny nubs where his legs used to be. But it's all okay, because he's alive and that's all that matters.

And then I drive to work, with Louie and his nub-legs, and everyone at Channel 4 is so amazed by the story that they dedicate all the newscasts to my miracle dog, and Louie is suddenly, overnight the most famous creature in the world.

There's a lot more to that dream, including a world tour with Nubbin Boy and an entire sequence in which the previous scene is switched and Louie has to spin the wheel to get me out of rubble and I wind up with nubs for legs.

So, to make a long story short, I woke up from that dream and made Jason grab the thermometer, because that dream extended far beyond pregnancy insanity and had to be a fever dream, too. And I was right. I had a fever of 100, which isn't inherently a huge deal, but raised body temperatures during pregnancy can lead to birth defects, so Jason and I promptly freaked out.

After some calls to the doctor and a lot of Tylenol, I fell back asleep around 5 in the evening.

And I didn't wake up until 9am the next morning.

I don't even want to count how many hours of sleep that is, but I'm starting to think the fever was just my body's way of saying "Sleep, you crazy person!" because I haven't slept more than 4 hours at a time in about two months. Even on my days off, I find myself waking up in a panic at 1 in the morning because ohmygod why am I not writing the news???

Can you tell this schedule is starting to really, really get to me? Yeah. It really, truly is.