So, this week has been a bit of a slog, to be honest. I’m really struggling with the reduced energy resources I have to work with these days. I started off most mornings feeling more or less decent, and made some solid progress on my to-do list, including a lot of niggling tasks that were very satisfying to finally get done… but by lunchtime I feel like lying down, and then I don’t know whether it is just more tiredness, or too much time staring at my phone while lying down (mostly reading! but still…), or if that’s just going to be the pattern of my “morning” sickness (worse in the afternoons/evenings), but the day just sort of never picks back up from there. I continue feeling crappy and mostly don’t get back up off the sofa for any significant amounts of time until finally it seems like an okay time to go to bed. Sigh. I’m finding this pattern to be quite wearing on my psyche – the lack of that feeling of satisfaction that comes of having done a “good” number of things in my day on top of constantly feeling just sort of sub-par really weighs on me more than I would have expected. Hm. Will monitor that, I suppose.

In brighter news, we managed to snag a first ultrasound of the Bean this week, as you can see from the heading photo! In typical Italian fashion, when asked (by me) to research good gynecologists in the area, the boyfriend ended up unearthing a (moderately tenuous but apparently still acceptable) connection to the head of the obstetrics department at the local hospital. And so we saw him, without even having an official appointment. He took my history, had a look on the ultrasound, confirmed the gestational age and presence of one little embryo bobbing around in there, and then promptly told us that he doesn’t take on new patients anymore, so we’d have to make more permanent arrangements with someone else. He did, however, recommend a few names, so that was good.

And, okay, to be totally honest: seeing the little Bean for the very first time and hearing their little heartbeat galloping along really was very meaningful. I was probably too nervous to fully enjoy it, but I already feel a much closer connection to this little Bean than I did even just that morning. Little Bean has gone from a vague sense of nausea and exhaustion to a being of its own with a semi-round little head! Don’t get me wrong: I still feel mostly like garbage and am not enjoying that factor at all, but I did start to occasionally imagine myself with an infant after that. More than before. And you know what? I freaking love infants! Or at least I did, before this weird first-trimester (or perhaps post-2021-stress-syndrome?) feeling of blah fell on me. I do see a glimmer of hope that perhaps it could pass and I could feel energetic and excited about the future again, though.

In the meantime… I actually had a very nice weekend that included a snowshoe hike in the woods with a good group of dear friends and lunch with another good (slightly overlapping) group of dear friends. Hiking in the woods on the sparkling snow under the blue sky made me feel more alive than I had all week and served as another little glimmer of hope. So there’s that.

In other news, I also finally managed to scrape together some ingredients and what was left of my energy resources on Friday afternoon to make a new recipe: pasta alla norma. This was inspired by the fact that we found salted ricotta at the supermarket (not always readily available, and definitely not to be confused with regular ricotta) and was delicious, if I do say so myself. (I feel comfortable with that slightly bragging statement because it is exceedingly rare that I make something for the first time – or at all, to be honest – and it comes out good enough that I would spontaneously eat it… as opposed to feeling obligated to eat it because by then I’ve made it and it seems a pity to waste it.) This was actually good enough that I was delighted to find the leftovers in the fridge for Monday’s lunch. (Is that too long to keep leftovers? Hope not!) Caveat: you have to fry the eggplant to make this (unless there’s another way I don’t know about?) and that means it ends up being kind of heavy and probably not at all good for you, fat- and cholesterol-wise. But as an occasional treat… win. (The recipe I used was basically the NYT cooking one with some herb substitutions because I didn’t happen to have oregano.)