Oh, the Morning Sickness

I can’t stress enough how much I loved being pregnant.  Growing a life inside of you, feeling your baby move and squirm, and creating a bond even before that baby is born is truly the most amazing thing.  It was such a blessing and I cherished it.

That being said, my pregnancy was not a walk in the park.  Morning sickness took hold right around five weeks and persisted until sixteen weeks.  Not that I minded it.  I recall driving to work one morning and talking to the baby, as I did every single day from the time I found out I was pregnant.  I told the baby to grow big and strong and healthy and that if those things meant that I needed to be horribly sick, then I would be horribly sick.  Wouldn’t you know that the very next morning my sickness started?!

Now, when I say I had morning sickness, I don’t just mean that I was nauseated.  Certainly, that was part of it.  Yet my morning sickness involved puking…a lot!  I would wake up feeling like death.  I would shower, start to get ready for work, and then begin vomiting.  I would get in my car and continue vomiting in to a paper bag.  I would drive down the road while vomiting.  Sometimes, if it was a really bad day (which usually happened the next day after I had gotten my progesterone shot) I would need to pull over.  Then I would continue on my way to work.  I would be teaching in class and need to run out to throw up in a trash can.  It was constant and brutal, yet in an odd way it was incredibly comforting.

Until about your fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, you do not feel your baby moving.  Thus, you live in constant wonder of how your baby is doing.  For me, my sickness served as proof that things were progressing.  My HCG levels were rising, my baby was growing, and I was sick as a dog.  It was wonderful!  I was ever so grateful for that morning sickness.  However, I was equally as grateful once I hit sixteen weeks and my doctor prescribed Zofran to end the vomiting. 

I did many things trying to ease my discomfort those first few months.  Crackers sat on my nightstand so that I could eat a few before I got out of bed.  I drank gallons upon gallons of Take a Boost.  Ginger ale filled my refrigerator, mint tea was ready for steeping, and pretzels traveled with me throughout the day.  None of it helped.  Being so sick was obviously impossible to hide from my students so I had to make up lots of excuses. 

“I eat lunch at sixth period, so I need to eat pretzels through the day so I don’t get too hungry.”

“I have low blood sugar, so I need to drink soda so I don’t get dizzy.”

“I am throwing up because I took my vitamins this morning on an empty stomach.”

Luckily, many of my guys believed me.  However, those who didn’t simply thought I was a horrible drinker and perpetually hung-over.  I lost a lot of street cred once they all found out I was sick from pregnancy, not being up all night boozing.  Teenagers.

Soon, my evidence of pregnancy was not my constant sickness, but the tiny movements of my baby.  The early flips and kicks, feeling more like small waves or popping popcorn.  They were miraculous and once they started they didn’t stop.  Eventually, those movements were felt in my expanding belly, as I started to grow right around nineteen weeks.  I loved that people around me were going to know I was expecting just by looking at me.

(19 week belly)

I was moving out of the “danger zone” and in to a time when it was safe to tell everyone.  More planning for this baby could begin and I began to really envision my life as a mother.  Time for registering was coming up and I had no idea how daunting that could be. 

Stay tuned for my best advice while registering, my favorite products, and the things to leave off of your list.