Series: What I Learned Being Pregnant

*Disclaimer: I AM NOT PREGNANT AGAIN! So don't ask.*

As I just said - no, I'm not pregnant again. No, I'm not even considering getting pregnant again. But, as it turns out, a friend of mine is pregnant and she has asked me for advice on being pregnant. Flashback to this document I wrote throughout my pregnancy that would take care of just this situation. Yep, I'm a geek, I know, but come on, writing is how I deal with things. I figured, I could just e-mail her the doc, but that takes all the fun out of it. Since most of you who follow me have had kids, you can relate to some of this stuff too, so I figured I'd take you along for the ride too.

I have not edited these writings at all. I left them in their pregnancy-induced-brain glory. Because, well, we all know you're a little crazy when you're pregnant, and I don't want to go in and make it look any more sane to give my friend the impression that she's not going to go out of her ever-loving mind. Cause she will. She'll take her husband and close friends with her. It's one of the joys of being pregnant. :) 

So, here is "What I Learned Being Pregnant," numbers 1-3.

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We all say things like, “if only I had known then what I know now.” And it’s true, so true. Because if I had known what I was in for when I got pregnant, I think I would have been taking the Pill on the sly for the rest of my natural life. Alas no, I decided to actually pay attention to my cycle and – boom! – like magic, get pregnant on the first try. (Seriously, I know people who have been trying for years – why were we so “blessed”?)

But since that first positive pregnancy test (which my dear, wonderful husband didn’t see the second line on, so I proceeded to take a different brand the following morning at 8:30 which provided a much darker line which I subsequently shoved in his face) it’s been a learning experience. Some things momma warned me about, some I just had to learn on my own.

1. Morning sickness is not morning sickness at all.

It’s round-the-clock sickness. And what’s worse, I was so paranoid about losing this baby, because I was essentially symptomless and freaking out (save for the positive pregnancy tests – even if I was the only one who saw the positive on them). I remember praying to God at night to give me some morning sickness so I knew everything was okay with the pregnancy (because the all-knowing and ever-powerful internet told me morning sickness is a sign of a healthy pregnancy).

God, in his infinite wisdom and humor granted my prayer request. To a level I couldn’t imagine. I was sick every morning, every afternoon, and every night. I did not cook at home for over two months because every night my husband would come home from work and ask me what I could eat. It varied from day to day. And just mentioning a certain food would have me holding my mouth closed and running for the nearest bathroom.

And nothing, nothing, beats the hurling every night thanks to those stupid prenatals. (A symptom that lessened at the end of the first trimester, but reared its ugly head every once in awhile until afterwards just to see if I was still paying attention.) Of course, it didn’t help any that brushing my teeth made me yak too. It was a vicious cycle for me:

a) try to take stinky horse pill

b) throw up stinky horse pill

c) finally swallow stinky horse pill

d) brush teeth

e) throw up stinky horse pill again

f) successfully swallow stinky horse pill after three more tries

g) finally brush teeth after dry heaving a couple times. (Thank God I had free samples of the stinky horse pills to get me through the nights it took three or four tries before I finally got one to stay down.)

And to make matters worse, I was counting down the days until my second trimester when the morning sickness would end. I somehow thought when I hit that magic day that the morning sickness would go away. Wrong. Sigh.

2. It really is possible to hate someone for “doing this to me”

I said more than once my husband owed me for “doing this to me.” I’ve also routinely blamed him because it was his fault – the night our child was conceived I was perfectly content to roll over and go to sleep instead of fool around.

And the more time wore on, the worse my sickness was, or the harder it was to do the most mundane things, the more he’d hear me pull out my trump card statements. I’m sure it got old for him to hear it, especially as time wore on and I started getting really excited about the baby, but it still doesn’t mean I have to take responsibility for the night it happened.

3. I hate people who can sleep.

I have always had problems going to sleep. I have to go to bed hours before my husband does because a) it takes me forever to fall asleep and b) he’s one of those people that starts snoring before he hits the pillow and I’m one of those people that snoring irritates the hell out of. I seriously sleep next to a fan to drown out his snoring in the instance I wake up in the middle of the night.

So, you can imagine how irritated I got when I would wake up at three in the morning and found it was impossible to go back to sleep until five or so. Even now, as I type this, it’s 2:12 in the morning, and the constant sound of my beating the hell out of my keyboard isn’t drowning out his snoring.

And I hate him. I mean, darn it, if I can’t sleep, he shouldn’t be able to sleep either. Period. End of story.

I haven’t figured out which is worse – I wake up in the middle of the night to pee and I can’t go back to sleep, or I wake up in the middle of the night because he finally came to bed and woke me up in the process and I can’t go back to sleep. I tend to lead towards the latter because it’s all his fault. I like blaming him. It makes it so much easier for me to sleep at night – oh wait, no it doesn’t.

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Coming tomorrow... numbers 4-6.