I was filled with so many emotions when I first learned I was pregnant: joy, excitement, happiness, fear. We found out when I was about 4 1/2 weeks along and for those first several days, life just seemed better somehow. Colors were more brilliant and smells were more fragrant. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face thinking about the secret that I carried inside, in more ways than one.
It wasn’t until the end of the fifth week that I started to feel a little strange. The changes were subtle at first: lunch and then dinner would come and I wouldn’t eat much, due to a lack of appetite. I wasn’t really worried, but after a few days of this, my desire to eat had decreased until almost nothing sounded appealing.
By the sixth week, not only was I losing my appetite, but the thoughts of certain foods began to repulse me. The rice crackers and sweet pickles that I used to eat with such regularity suddenly made my stomach churn. No longer could I eat salmon and turkey and other things that were good for me. The smells of them made me want to swear off food altogether.
It wasn’t until a few days later, however, that I realized what direction this was headed. It began with a slight nausea that hit at the strangest times of the day. Before dinner, first thing in the morning, even right after lunch. There was no apparent rhyme or reason; it just happened and the only way to combat it was to remain completely flat on my back. And since sleeping or lying on the couch was my only respite, I spent many hours over the next few weeks doing just that.
This has continued over the past two months and if anything, has gotten worse. For the most part, though, I’ve gotten into a routine. Get up, eat breakfast, get sick. Get ready for work, get sick. Get ready to leave for work and get sick one more time, just for good measure. Once I’m at work, I’m remarkably able to keep keep food down. Not always, but usually. But as soon as the dinner hour hits, so does the nausea.
I tell you all of this not as a cry for sympathy or even to complain (I’m really not complaining, honest). But instead to say how much I now respect pregnant women. I really had no idea how hard this whole “morning sickness” thing was going to be. I always thought that I would somehow embrace it and just “go with it” because after all, it means a little one is in there growing and doing its thing. I never realized just how challenging it would be to function like a normal person and continue about your day as if nothing were wrong.
So gone are the early days of looking at the world through rose colored glasses while stopping to smell the flowers. In fact, I try not to smell anything at all, as it doesn’t usually end pleasantly. Instead, I concentrate on making it through each day at a time. Because I know that eventually this will go away.
Until then, you can find me lying on the couch.
Did you have morning sickness? Did you find anything that helped?
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