Hour by Hour

Time changes when you’re pregnant. Months turn into weeks; weeks turn into days; and in the beginning, days turn into hours. You hope each hour is better than the last; you hope the next hour holds a little relief, or a little sleep. You’re not complaining and don’t regret those hours, because it’s part of the deal; but you sure won’t mind when a few of those hours cut you a little break.

Morning sickness is no joke. I’m impressed by those that have pushed through it with another child to take care of; with difficult hours to work; with those that have had it way worse than me. And I’m 100% confident that having children is the absolute wonderful thing they say it is, because no woman in her right mind would willingly go through this twice otherwise.

Pregnancy doesn’t wait until you’ve gotten used to the idea of being pregnant. It doesn’t wait for you to have a bulging belly. No, instead, it starts throwing stuff at you left and right from day one {ok, technically day 14}. Aching hips, cramps, headaches, dizziness, and oh the nausea.

I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy to keep the truth about morning sickness under wraps. Each book, website, and blog I read tried to pull the wool over my eyes.

Every book says some form of the following sentence: “but don’t worry, even if you are one of the 80% of women who get morning sickness, it usually passes by the second trimester.”

Imagine how you feel when you’re extremely carsick, sea sick, or hungover. Now imagine that for 24 hours a day for, oh, say 12-14 weeks. That’s 84-98+ days. Translation: a really, really long time. Suddenly I have a loathing hatred for the word “usually”.

Aside from a friend who’s been hospitalized all too frequently with hyperemesis, no one has shared even a glimmer of truth of what it’s really like. I vaguely recall hearing someone refer to it as “pregnancy poison” once, and that’s about as close to accurate as you get. Books, doctors, and even other moms make morning sickness sound like an unfortunate case of allergies- somewhat annoying and inconvenient, but really no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Well let me tell you otherwise. It is constant, unrelenting nausea with no escape. Nausea so intense it makes you want to crawl out of your skin. So overwhelming that at times you can barely think, put a sentence together, or even begin to comprehend what someone else is saying to you.

It’s constantly eating to keep your stomach from churning in on itself, although eating is literally the last thing in the world you want to do. Except maybe go on a roller coaster.

Eventually you get passed the worst of it, or more than likely, get used to functioning feeling like crap, and you start having some days that are better than others, and you have to jump on the opportunity to fit everything in. You never know when it’ll knock you down again.

{On a side note, as soon as you start feeling better-than-awful, you start forgetting how bad it really was. So maybe it’s not a conspiracy. Maybe it’s just lack of accurate memory…and no, it’s not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Just don’t tell that to a pregnant woman in the throws of morning sickness.}