I'm sorry my blog is a bit behind here! Life was busy last week and somehow I just never managed to sit down for more than 2 minutes to be able to talk about what was going on with my pregnancy.

On the positive side, during the last week to week & a half, I've been feeling better. This is likely related to coming to the end of the first trimester. My afternoon/evening nausea is starting to abate, thank goodness. I was getting very tired of being almost unable to eat after lunchtime. I've also noticed that, especially within the last week, my anxiety has decreased as well. This is a distinct relief.

While I know it seems superficial, my biggest complaint right now is about clothing. My pants still fit (barely) around my slightly thickening waist. I don't look pregnant, rather just as if I've put on a few pounds around the middle. (My weight is actually still down overall though, so I must have been losing in one area and gaining in my abdomen.) If I button my regular jeans it is uncomfortable to sit down. When I can, I wear the maternity clothes that I saved from my last pregnancy. I'm not big enough to wear the pants with the full belly panel, but they make some very comfy bottoms with low slung, elastic waist bands. Unfortunately, I only have a few pair of those pants and (to my great frustration) my favorite local place to buy pants doesn't have my size nor does the website for that particular retailer.

On the up side, the "hairband trick" still works with my regular pants in a pinch. In case you've not heard of this, it is where you wrap a hair elastic around the button of your pants, thread it through the button hole, and wrap it back around the button again. It'll secure your pants so that they don't go anywhere while gaining you an extra inch or two in the waist. It doesn't look cool and necessitates a long shirt to cover the waistband, but it works to keep pants from falling off.

My uterus is around the size of a grapefruit this week. I'll admit, I find this rather amusing. When you look at sexual anatomy diagrams (which are generally shown non-pregnant anyway), the uterus usually looks pretty large. In reality, it's about 3 inches and looks a bit like a pear. By 10 weeks, my uterus is now more the size of a grapefruit. In the grand scheme of things, this is still pretty small. This week, my embryo became a fetus. It is now just over an inch in length.

I also had my most recent checkup with my OB this week. Early in pregnancy, women are generally seen every 4 weeks (if you have a high risk pregnancy, it may be more often). My blood pressure and urinalysis looked good. One of the things they gave me is a special card that has my pregnancy information on it. It includes my EDD (estimated due date), blood type, Rh factor, and other information from my OB blood panel. I'm supposed to carry the card with me. If I were to be hospitalized, it would give other health care providers to have the basic information they needed to treat me & who to contact for my records.

I also was able to hear the heartbeat this week. They can usually first detect the heartbeat on a special handheld monitor sometime between 10-12 weeks. The medical assistant had to search, but it was there. My little peanut was bouncing along at 170 bpm (beats per minute), which is in the range it should be at that point.

They were a little bit worried because I had lost 4 lbs since my last appointment (4 weeks prior). This is almost certainly related to all of the nausea I've been experiencing. It is generally preferable not to lose weight during pregnancy. Because I've only lost a small amount so far, my OB/GYN is not too worried yet. He said that I need to try to make sure I'm eating properly, as much as I am able. I've been treating the nausea using various natural methods (ginger teas, sour candies, B6 supplements (taken according to my care provider's instructions & dosages)). I also have some prescription anti-nausea medication that I can take when it gets really bad. Usually they want you to try to avoid medications when pregnant (especially during the first trimester), but there are times where the rewards outweigh the risks of carefully chosen medications that have been shown to be safe. I try to avoid needing the medication, but if the nausea is so strong that I can't focus or keep down food, it becomes necessary.

Overall though, I'd say I feel pretty good. I am still tired and nauseated much of the time. I'm also still anxious. We discussed ways to manage my anxiety and my OB ordered blood work to check my thyroid. If it is still an issue at my next appointment, we'll look into it further. I've been using my management techniques with some success this week but it has been a hard week. A friend-of-a-friend who is also a young mom passed away unexpectedly this week. Another online friend had her baby this week and after delivery they discovered the baby has some health problems and will likely be having surgery in the next few days.

Last weekend, I dug out my maternity pants from my last pregnancy and laundered a few pair. In spite of losing 4 lbs, some of my regular pants are becoming increasingly uncomfortable around the waist. I have a couple pair of regular jeans that are alright, but it would be nice to have more options. So I got out 2 pair of corduroy pants and a pair of jeans that I had saved. They have elastic waistbands and sit low. (If you're familiar with maternity wear, I'm not wearing the kind with the full belly panel yet. I'm nowhere near that.) They are much more comfortable that squeezing into my other pants. You still would not know I was pregnant just by looking.

If you have questions, please feel free to post them as comments to the blog. I'll answer as I am able/comfortable doing so.

There seems to be the almost universal belief among North American parents (I'm sure this is a phenomena found elsewhere as well, but I'm just talking about what I've personally seen) that their kids, whether these are theoretical future children or actual kids, and whether they have yet to reach their teen years or not, will hate or at the very least dislike them. Teenagers hate their parents: everyone knows that.

My mother has told me that when my sister and I were small, she used to say to my father that he had to take over primary parental duties once we hit our teen years. She's told me that she loved being a parent, and loved spending time with us, right from the get-go, but being surrounded by warnings of "wait until they become teenagers!" she always thought that would change when we got older.

Out for a Fall walk in 2008. We so obviously hate each other.

I suppose it's actually a very reasonable belief that your teens will dislike you: after all, most teens I know and have known do dislike their parents!

What isn't true, though, is that that dislike is inevitable.

The dreaded teenage years came in my family, and likely to my parents surprise, nothing horrible happened. I mean, problems came up in day to day life, for sure, but looking back, I actually think that in terms of parent-child relationships and issues over "discipline" type stuff the teen years were (and are, as my sister is still a teen) smoother than when we were younger. I attribute this to the fact that it was a constant progress over the years from more traditional parenting to more respectful parenting (which mirrored our transition from relaxed homeschoolers to unschoolers).

Though there are definitely unschooling parents/teens who don't have very good relationships with their teens/parents, it seems that the majority of unschoolers really and truly do. Which to me, is a wonderful thing to see.

I believe the reason for that is actually pretty simple.

When the subject of "teenage rebellion" comes up now, my mother is fond of saying "why would you rebel, since there wasn't really anything to rebel against?"

Now, I think there is an important distinction to be made here: some parents proudly brag about how their teens aren't "rebellious," and what they really mean is that their children are obedient to their parents wishes (or, possibly more likely, are simply very good at hiding the aspects of their life that their parents would disapprove of). When I say that most unschoolers I know, myself included, don't or didn't "rebel" against our parents in our teen years, I don't mean it's because we fit the perfect-child model of some narrow-minded authoritarian-parenting suburbanite.

While I've never been very big into alcohol or drugs, I definitely drank long before the legal drinking age (though admittedly the whole culture in my home province of Quebec is very different from the rest of North America, in that virtually everyone drinks at least some amount from the time they hit their teens, with the parents knowledge). My sister, who turns 18 (legal drinking age in Quebec) this summer, has been going to bars since she was 15 or 16, with my parents knowledge (again, very common practice in Montreal). Both my sister and I have been openly anti-state, anti-hierarchy, and anti-authority for years. I've dyed my hair unusual colours, shaved the sides of my head, and worn clothes throughout my teen years that plenty of parents I know would have disapproved of. Sometimes we stay out late into the night. We've been known to participate in Pagan religious rituals. We swear frequently. We hang out with people who are big into drugs. If all those things were listed entirely out of context, it would probably sound like we were the people that many parents warn their kids about (then again, for all I know, parents have warned their kids about us...)!

So why do we get along so well with our parents? It's pretty simple: control.

Or, more accurately, the lack of control.

Think of the things that most commonly cause friction between teens and their parents: breaking curfew, bad marks in school, skipping school, using drugs, subscribing to different religious and political views than their parents, disobeying parents...

Compare this to a respectful unschooling parent: no school, no marks, no curfews, no orders, and a belief that teens are entitled to their own beliefs.

I want to make it clear that being a respectful parent doesn't mean agreeing with or approving of everything your teen does: it just means accepting and not attempting to control what they do. Thus, a parent that's strongly anti-drugs of all types might share all their opinions on the issue with their teens, give them information on why they believe what they do, etc. Yet despite that, they wouldn't ground, punish, or shame their teen if they came home high. In a mutually respectful relationship, teens are far more likely to genuinely take their parents opinions into account when deciding what they want to do, but teens are still their own complete and autonomous people, and will make the choices they deem best for themselves in the end.

Parents in general, from the most to least mainstream out there, all seem to frequently express a wish that their children communicate with them and be honest with them. Yet what the more authoritarian and punitive parents seem oblivious too is that no one is going to be honest with someone else if they know that by being honest, they're opening themselves up to be yelled at, punished, shamed, or treated with anything less than respect. Those parents also don't seem to realize that good communication has to work both ways: parents can't expect their children to spill all the secrets of their lives, all their important thoughts and deeds, to someone who thinks their own personal life is none of their kids business.

I also want to make it clear that I don't, and didn't when I was still in my teens (having just turned 20 a couple of months ago, I still have trouble remembering I'm no longer a teen!), tell my parents everything. I'm my own person, with my own life, and some things stay private. Sometimes because it's something very personal, or a secret not mine to share, and sometimes it's because I know it would worry or upset them to know something. Yes, occasionally I keep things (and have kept things in the past) I know my parents would disapprove of away from them, not because of any fear that I would "get in trouble" or anything like that, but simply because I don't want them upset or worried about things they ultimately have no control over.

My (and my sister's) relationship with my parents is really good. We talk to each other about everything from how we've been feeling, what we've been doing, interesting links online or news stories, what our friends are up to. We don't stray away from subjects such as drug use and other illegal activity. I'll cheerfully announce that a friend is taking up graffiti, and Emi will call to say she's headed out to a bar after band practice, so expect her home late. I've never worried about coming home smelling like weed. And because of the relationship we have, my sister and I have never hesitated to get our parents help when we're worried about a friend doing hard drugs, and we'd never hesitate to call instead of driving home with someone who's drunk.

I'm incredibly grateful for the relationship I have with my parents, and that my parents are the people that they are.

So in conclusion, here are my very inexpert opinions on what makes a good parent-teen bond: respect, honesty, communication, and a lack of coercion and control.

Basically? Treating each other like full and complete human beings, with different desires, beliefs, aspirations, and experiences.

It's such a simple concept: don't be your teen's enforcer, be their partner. And if more parents acted this way? Well, then I think we'd start seeing a hell of a lot less of this "teen rebellion" thing!

Originally published at http://yes-i-can-write.blogspot.com/