What to Expect When You're Expecting

You expect vomit-and I vomited a lot, from week 8 to about week 18.  Even though everyone said the vomiting would stop around week 12, my body took that as a challenge and continued to vomit harder and stronger.  And even after the vomiting stopped, I was pretty nauseous most of the time. I actually lost weight during my first trimester, not unusual based on my level of upchucking.

The nausea was bad...almost worse than the vomit, because once you threw up, you actually felt sorta okay.  Many a morning I threw up in my bathroom and was out the door 10 minutes later to go to work.  But the all day nausea was terrifying.  And motion made it a lot worse. Do yourself a favor-don't get on a plane or a cruise ship while you're in your first trimester.  The flight attendants were lovely and let me stand pretty much the entire time, often pacing up and down the aisle adjacent to the bathroom, but all flights come to an end, and you can't make a cruise ship stop rocking.  You also can't always get to a bathroom because cruise ships are freaking HUGE.  The hubby spent a lot of time hanging out with my brother-in-law, exploring zip lines in Belize, and tequila tasting in Mexico.  He had an amazing trip.  I either slept on a fully reclined pool chair or holed up in our state room, watching "Something Borrowed" for the millionth time and wondering why, with such a great cast, the movie was so terrible.

There was also exhaustion.  As my sister can testify, a normal date with me and the hubby, and her and her hubby, consisted of going out to dinner or a movie, followed by watching me fall asleep on the couch-and this was pre-pregnancy! So it was to no one's surprise when I started sleeping around the clock.  Every moment was an opportunity for sleep.

Pregnancy brain is a real thing.  My hubby loves to tell this one specific story: we were both in our galley kitchen (NYC kitchens are tiny and airless), and he handed me a plastic Fairway bag and asked me to put it away. We all have a bag of plastic bags in the kitchen, right?! So in my mind, I put the bag in the bag of bags.  I looked up and hubby was hysterical laughing. Apparently, and I had to be shown it to believe it, I opened the utensil drawer, shoved in the bag, then shut the drawer.  I also forgot nearly everything I did or said-the Google calendar became my best friend and computer generated confidante.

My nose was a blood hound and it made me never want to eat, never ever ever!  I eat chicken probably everyday of my life.  It's yummy and healthy and easy and not terribly expensive.  And then, BAM, food aversions.  I couldn't stand the taste, the thought of, the texture or the smell of chicken.  I couldn't cook it and I certainly couldn't be anywhere near it.  You know what I did want, every moment of every day?  Pizza. And the thing is, I actually don't like pizza. I'm that weird girl in class who always voted for a bagel party instead of a pizza party.  The hubby was in heaven and he quickly gained 10 sympathy pounds.

I could cry at the drop of a hat and I had zero control over my emotions.  You know those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" playing in the background?  Yeah, I was bawling, BAWLING the second it came on.  I had to change the channel.

And the fun thing was, all these early pregnancy symptoms that usually go away during your 1st trimester leaving you to the brilliancy and glowy heaven of your 2nd trimester...yeah, they didn't go away.  I was miserable and I was going to make everyone miserable with me.

On the plus side...no migraines and no I.B.S.  Good thing too, because I wasn't allowed to take my migraine drugs.  OBGYN said he would give me narcotics if I ever got one.

That's Emma Watson covering my beautiful sleeping face aboard whatever Royal Caribbean ship we were on. Photo credit goes to my sister.  Oh, and that's my brother-in-law napping next to me.  I purposely cropped him out of the picture, except for his very loud swim trunks.