Pregnancy: The bad and the ugly

I haven't written much in the last few months, mostly because I had a lot to say but wasn't ready to talk about it. But now I am ready, so prepare for the deluge! The happy news is that I am pregnant with an active baby boy that my husband wants to name Rooster. (So not happening.)

And so for my first pregnancy post, I'm going to tell you about all of the bad stuff that comes with being pregnant! I hope that this post does not set the tone for future posts; I intend at some point to write about all of the positive side effects of pregnancy, if I can come up with more than two of them, anyway.

Pregnancy introduces a new normalcy of health that frequently feels far from normal. Here are a few of the symptoms that have characterized my pregnancy thus far. I suspect that more are still to come...

NAUSEA
I am very lucky that this stage was short-lived for me, though while I was in the middle of it, I had no way of knowing that its worst would last only 3 weeks.

My nausea was not as bad as it could be; for instance, I did not break my twenty-plus-year streak of a vomit-free existence (I don't know why I don't vomit; it just doesn't happen). However, I did spend much of my time lying on the couch, wondering why on earth women willingly have multiple children.

At its "best," my nausea was similar to the seasickness I felt on our Caribbean cruise, or to the way that I feel after I consume dairy without a Lactaid pill. This feeling was constant and stayed with me most of the day.

At its worst...this is difficult to describe. Do you know the feeling you get in your stomach just before the stomach cramps tell you that it's time to find a bathroom, and fast? It was like that, only there was no way of making it go away.

I probably should have mentioned this, but as you can already tell, my blog is not going to offer The Sexy Gal's Guide to Pregnancy-type of information. But if you've been reading for any amount of time prior to this, you probably already knew that.

I discovered that frequent eating of small meals helped. After I ate, I usually felt better for about 15 minutes, and then the nausea returned. If you wait too long to eat, you feel terrible and the last thing in the world that you want is food. However, if you can convince yourself to eat, you will feel better, or at least I did.

The worst of my nausea was over within three weeks. However, I didn't really feel like myself for several more months. Standing for long periods of time was difficult, and I still felt a general malaise that was difficult to kick. (More about my sleepiness later.)

A side effect of this nausea was a mild case of the blues for which I was unprepared. I think there were a few causes.

First, I had no idea how long the nausea would last; for some women, it's a few days or weeks, and for others, it lasts the entire duration of their pregnancy. I couldn't imagine 9 months of feeling as bad as I did.

Second, I had to hide it as best as I could, as I was not ready to share the happy news with everyone so early. Pretending to feel great when you don't is exhausting.

Finally, my nausea was not something that I could treat, as most drugs are off-limits, and I felt powerless in my sick feeling.

I feel lucky to have had such short-lived nausea.

STUFFY NOSE
The nausea ended, and the congestion began! However, I will take a stuffed-up nose over sickness any day.

The medical cause of this congestion isn't known, but it's fairly common among the preggos. I dealt with it for as long as I could and then convinced B that we ought to get a humidifier. He was amenable, so we hit our local Target in search of relief. There I learned that there are both hot and cool air humidifiers, and the hot humidifiers are best for congestion. Hot won.

A hot humidifier boils the water, so it sounds a little like a hot pot while it's running, but it helped immensely and minimized my usual wintertime dry-weather cough, so it's a keeper. Plus my congestion is much better, though I'm not sure whether I should credit the humidifier or simply the passage of time.

SLEEPINESS
I have always been an enthusiastic and needy sleeper. I used to require a minimum of 8 hours per night to not feel tired during the day, and this need has only increased since I became pregnant. My typical bedtime is now around 8 PM, and I sleep until 5:30 or 6 AM. On weekends, I have been known to go to bed at the same time and sleep even later (and sometimes take a nap, too).

It's possible that this sleepiness is at least partially related to my next symptom:

SLEEPLESSNESS
This symptom comes and goes. When it comes, it usually sticks around for several nights. I can always fall asleep when I first go to bed, but if I wake up in the middle of the night, I stay awake for three or more hours. I'm usually able to fall back to sleep around 5:30 or 6, but if it's a weekday, that's when I have to get up anyway.

I have no idea what causes my sleeplessness, which feels like jet lag. I'm sleepy but unable to sleep.

Last week, several nights of sleeplessness left my defenses down, and I came down with a ferocious cold, which I unfortunately shared with B. I'm mostly over it now, over a week later, but he is still fighting the worst of it.

IRRATIONAL CRYING
I am nothing if not rational...most of the time. But these pregnancy hormones are tricky little buggers. Minor annoyances that I would--if I were able to think rationally all the time--be able to ignore and forget about become major grievances for no reason whatsoever, and the only response that I am able to muster is an immediate emotional breakdown.

I slipped and almost fell down in the lobby at work one rainy day and had to go spend some quality time crying about it in the bathroom. I had to spend similar time in the bathroom at the symphony the other night after they made me throw out my tea. Who makes a pregnant, sick woman throw out her tea??? Jerks. Though in their defense, I suppose they couldn't tell that I was pregnant.

It's best to succumb to the tears once they start coming on, or they stalk my eyes for hours to come. However, giving in has its downside because once the crying starts, it's very difficult to make it stop. I read a sad book a month or so ago (The Friday Night Knitting Club?) and cried after the end for a solid 30 minutes. You can do stuff like that when you're home alone. When your husband is home, he's likely to be scared by such behavior.

Lucky for me, my irrational crying is not an everyday or even everyweek occurrence, so most of the time I do not feel like a weeping, blubbery mess.

ITCHY BELLY
I did not expect this symptom. My belly is itchy practically all the time. I got some "tummy honey" by Bella B; it's supposed to prevent stretch marks (sigh), so I've been applying it liberally, and it helps with the itchiness. But it doesn't make the itch go away completely. I just have to deal with it and try not to scratch too much.

FREQUENT BATHROOM TRIPS
Remember the sleeplessness? The reason I wake up so much in the middle of the night is because I am constantly running to the bathroom. Each night involves a minimum of one and sometimes as many as three trips to el banyo. It's not unusual for me to use the bathroom multiple times within a span of 10 to 15 minutes.

A couple weeks ago at our last ultrasound, the technician told us that the baby's head was resting right on my bladder. That explained a lot. He's getting big enough that I can now feel when he presses down on my bladder. I won't attempt to explain it in detail; I'm sure you can imagine the sensation. It seems to happen the most when I'm in the car.

So there it is, all the bad stuff, or all the bad stuff that has happened to me so far. More tales from the bump to come...