How to Quit Caffeine and get Addicted All Over Again

Step #1: Get pregnant.

Step #2: Feel nauseous while drinking your favorite tea that no longer tastes like your favorite tea, but now tastes like you are drinking water filled with cigarette ash.

Step #3: Drink a flavored caffeinated tea. Blech. Still gross and still nauseous.

Step #4: Try everything else with caffeine because you are desperate to stay awake while grading the most boring essays known to man. Tough shit. Get nauseous while drinking anything else you tried that has caffeine.

Step #5: Follow Steps 2-4 for about 2 weeks until it finally hits you that caffeine is making you sick and you need to stop.

Slump over and cry to the only co-worker who knows your secret. Cry to your other co-workers just because you've always been a whiner, and they're used to it. Watch Grey's Anatomy on your Kindle. Then, whine some more that you've gotten nothing done in the final weeks of school because you feel sick to your stomach and you can't stay awake focused past 1 p.m.

Wait. Did you, my dear reader, miss something?

As in Step 1?

OH MY GOD!

Is Mama really ----  ???

Yes.

"Mama, there's a baby in your belly!"

(More on that below.)

Up first....

The rest of the steps.

Step #6: Enter the tail end of your first trimester and realize that decaf coffee doesn't seem to bother you. Start making one cup of decaf every morning.

Step #7: Because you still have IBS, you can only drink half a cup of that decaf, which doesn't do jack to help you get focused past 11 a.m. Having a toddler to play with, this is unacceptable. Regular coffee is out of the question, unless you want a hole burned into your stomach.

Step #8: Realize weeks later that (DUH!) you should try to drink tea again. If other caffeine is fine (like the Boylan Cane Cola you've recently become addicted to), tea should be too!

Step #9: Drink your favorite cup of tea - Tazo Awake tea. Relish in the reawakening of your addiction.

Step #10: Email Boylan to find out just how much caffeine is in that one bottle of soda. Because, damn, you're still awake and it's past your bedtime!

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Coming Soon: Baby Ferris #2

15 weeks.

Due date is January 23.

First trimester screening looks good.

Doctor says that because I went to term and beyond with Cole that the chances of me having pre-term contractions a second time are unlikely. (PLEASE keep your fingers crossed that he's right! It goes without saying that I don't want to be on bed rest again.)

Cole has known since I was about 8 weeks, and has grown more of an understanding every day about what it means. I might do a future post about this.

Feeling good now, and thanking my lucky stars that my morning all-day sickness didn't last past 10 weeks. I'm still exhausted most of the time, but thanks to caffeine, I can manage playtime with Cole and still have fun! I forgot how tiring being pregnant can be, plus I've got a toddler, so it's much more trying on my 35-year-old body.

Dada and I are super excited. We are still in the midst of trying to figure out if we should change around the house to fit the new baby, or if we should just squeeze the new baby into our room for six months until next summer rolls around when we can make the changes.

We find out the gender of the baby August 29.

Baby Ferris #2: 13 weeks