I really hate to give the topic of morning sickness more than its due. Nausea is the enemy. The best way to fight it is to continue with life as usual and give it no chance to stake my day as its territory. If you surrender to it, it wins. My husband – a very caring, compassionate person who has pulled out a new level of patience towards me and my pregnant complaints –  surprised me by being really pleased when I told him fortitude and resistance was going to be my philosophy towards morning sickness. I would’ve guessed that he’d assure me that I’m allowed to feel however I feel and not harbor guilt about it.  I think he just betrayed his own willingness for me to be nice and normal again! XD

But since I’m experiencing the first trimester of my pregnancy, nausea has become this defining force that I am aware of even when I don’t feel that bad. You always have to be on the lookout for it. If I get up in the morning and feel fantastic, I can pretty much be assured that it’s going to be a horrible day. I’ll be sitting there, having gotten through breakfast, the laundry, showering, and I’ll be ready to start in on a project for the day, and then – WHAM! – nausea and all its cohorts (dizziness, smell sensitivity, exhaustion) will burst out with the fervency and tyrannical horror of a velociraptor. And I’ll be about as pissed as said velociraptor because my day is now going to be devoted to lying on the couch and watching M*A*S*H all day on my non-cable-equipped television.

Or is it? That’s the thing – it comes and goes. When I started this post I felt a case of the pregnancy miseries coming on, but now they seem to have passed. But this means nothing. Nausea has been just too flippin’ fickle for me.  Sometimes it goes on without cease for days on end and other times I seem to be in the clear for whole weekends. I resent the fact that my hijacked body prevents me from making plans for when I can cook or paint a picture or have a conversation with my best friend without bursting into tears.

Another grievance. Because I feel entitled to complain about every single aspect of nausea simply because I am pregnant, ornery, and irrational, I have a bone to pick with the inconsistent frequency of nausea. I resent the fact that I feel like there’s something wrong with the pregnancy when I actually feel functional. All the books with Q&A say that nausea affects everyone differently. Some people are heaving day and night for the entire pregnancy, while others get none of it at all. (I would conjecture that that latter may actually be worse because then you have an “I didn’t know I was pregnant” case on your hands.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no matter how much the book encourages you not to worry, you can’t stop worrying until you have a healthy, sweet, little baby in your arms. When I feel good, I pray for my blessed nausea to return because then I know all is well with Bebe. And when it’s there, I feel sad for my sorry self.

No win, all the way. Except maybe, just maybe, all this annoying crap will be put into perspective when my little Bebe comes. I’m pretty sure (s)he’ll be worth it.