Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Heartburn!

I knew pregnancy was going to bring me all sorts of new experiences, and honestly, I am excited about most of them.

However, this newest "experience" is one that I'm not so excited about—heartburn.

I've never had heartburn before—I'm not really the type to eat much spicy food (I'm kind of a wuss about spicy stuff), and I think usually I can stop myself before I overeat and reside in that pleasantly full phase of a meal. On Sunday, I didn't really eat anything out of the ordinary—we got Chipotle for lunch and I ate half at lunch time and half for dinner. I mean, the portions are huge, so splitting it in half usually seems to work out just fine for me.

However, as I got ready for bed, I started noticing this annoying warm feeling in my chest, and soon it was in my throat. It didn't really burn, per say—not what I imagined it would be from all the commercials that show people with cartoon flames in their esophagus. It was definitely like nothing I'd ever felt before.

Usually with headaches and body aches I just get in bed and go to sleep, and in the morning I feel better, but as soon as I lay down in my bed, the feeling got worse, so I sat up immediately. Aaron suggested I try some Tums, and I knew that was on my list of approved medications for pregnancy, so I chomped about four of them. (They were actually pretty tasty—berry-flavored and a little chalky. And as Aaron pointed out, they have calcium, something my body needs anyway, just like the commercial says.)

Anyway, since then I've noticed this same sensation twice more, though not as pronounced as Sunday night. I've added a bag full of Tums to my desk drawer. I can only imagine this is going to get worse as the Cupcake takes up more and more space in my body and pushes my stomach even closer to my esophagus. Fun! The old wives tale is that heartburn means your baby will have a full head of hair when he is born, so I guess we'll see.