I was sooo not prepared for the onslaught that has occurred these past two months. Like, whoa. With my first pregnancy, I was one of those women that every other pregnant woman in the world hated: I had a perfect, easy pregnancy. My morning sickness was like 15 minutes of vague nausea every other week or so. That's it. My aches and pains were limited to my pelvic bone disliking it when I first got up in the morning, a charley horse I got one night, and a brief struggle with prenatal vitamins because they are of the devil. (Don't worry, I won the struggle . . . but I still had to take the pills. So maybe that's half a win.) My whole pregnancy was this bubble of happiness, because I got to ENJOY it, unlike a lot of women who pretty much suffer from day one. And lemme tell ya, first time pregnant women have it so easy. Because NOTHING is expected of a first time pregnant lady. "You can't lift that! Do you need a nap? Oh, come sit down, you must be so tired! Are you sure I can't help you with that?" All day, every day, it was awesome. No, I did not take advantage of this in any mean ways, because I was in a pregnant bubble and had no bad symptoms and nothing could hurt me but it was still nice to have zero expectations on me!
Second pregnancy? Psh, the bubble is over. I am so not this woman. Even if I wasn't suffering every bad side effect and symptom IN THE FRIGGING BOOK, second pregnancies are so not the zero-expectation cakewalk the first one is. Number one reason? Because if you are pregnant a second time, know what that means? You've already been pregnant. And you now have a little rugrat running around that sooo does not care that you are going to throw up if you have to sit up and put Barbie's shoes on one more time. And once you have kids, it's like the magic goes away and people assume that psh, so you're pregnant, whatever, you've already got a half-grown kid that can help you. Except, well, five year olds can't exactly haul the 50 pound bag of dog food out to the car, now can they? Nope. They are really good at holding the cart still while you try and shimmy said bag onto the bottom of the cart in an extremely ungainly way, though.
So yeah, second pregnancy, and I presume following pregnancies, just don't have that magical glow that the first one does. It's so unfortunate. Because I could totally use a zero-expectations cakewalk this time around. My first pregnancy, I worked the whole time! Yeah, it was just part time, but still! I could totally have handled full time! This time around, I'm lucky if I manage to get all the laundry through both machines in one day, and I'm even luckier if I get it folded before I need to do it all over again. One day last week I felt really good and not only got it all washed, but folded and put away in one day! I felt like Super Woman! Which is extremely, really sad because that's just a typical Monday for me when I'm not experiencing the joys of being "in the family way".
Maybe it's because my body remembers this pregnant thing, remembers where it's going to end up at the end of this. And it's surrendering early. My lower back is under the impression that I'm already massively pregnant, because every time I do something that aggravates it, it sits up and complains right off the bat. I'm not even going to discuss my boobs, but let's just say they're acting very immature. I've got this tiny little fetus in me that isn't even the size of a lime at this point, but my pelvic muscles are putting up this huge fit like I have a bowling ball strapped down there! But the worst part is the nausea. Holy balls, it is insane. Morning sickness, ha. ALL THE TIME SICKNESS. Morning, noon, night, and every hour in between. I am sick when I eat, I am sick when I don't, I'm sick when I'm full, and I'm sick when I'm hungry. I cannot win! My best friend right now is my bottle of Tums, and I've had more Tums in the last month than I've ever had in my entire life, times ten!
Thankfully, I have one saving grace and that is my amazing control over my gag reflex. I do not throw up unless I give myself permission. Not even kidding. I was once playing in a concert in high school (clarinet), had to throw up since I was sick, and not only did I walk out of the gym entirely, but I walked AROUND to the OTHER SIDE of the commons to throw up in the women's bathroom. I also locked my stall door behind me before I gingerly knelt on the floor and made my offering at the porcelain altar. So, when I say I don't throw up unless I want to, I sincerely mean it. I've only thrown up once while pregnant this time around, and I only did because I figured it would calm my stomach faster. Which it did. So at at least I'm not throwing up all over the place all the time, which I'm very grateful for. I really, really hate throwing up. I'd take almost any ailment over throwing up.
I think the part about this morning sickness that sucks so much, is that there's nothing I can do to get rid of it or settle my stomach except lay down. Not sit down. Not lay back and lounge. But full-on LAY DOWN. And lemme tell ya, there is not exactly a lot of stuff that you can do while laying down, except for sleep and stare at the wall. I got so bored that I figured out a couple contortions that still kept me lying down while I got on my laptop, but when you're laying down for half the day, even having the entire internet at your disposal is not enough. You still get bored. Extremely bored. "I'm gonna go whine on my blog because I've already annoyed everyone on Facebook" bored.
Yeeeeah . . .
Pregnancy. The miracle of life. The misery of enduring it. Now, don't misunderstand, I wouldn't change my mind about having this baby, and there's no way I'd trade him or her for feeling normal again (and we did have a close call). But I am very desperately looking forward to the day when I am able to feel normal again. I'm counting down the days to my second trimester when the morning sickness SHOULD ease up or go away entirely. And if it ends up not happening . . . I will cry. Big, fat, pity party tears.
*Sniff*
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