I am having a really difficult day.. I was sick this morning and everything I have tried to eat has just been sitting in my stomach and causing indigestion, nausea, and a lot of discomfort. I felt well enough to go to a birthday party yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t sleep until 6AM this morning and the cats were waking me up almost every hour. By the time my body gave in and got up, I was feeling really yucky. I keep thinking that the morning sickness is getting better but then I have a day like today and it throws me for a loop.
As some of my friends know, and from my many posts on facebook, I have been going through a difficult time with morning sickness. I used to think morning sickness was something tolerable; like you got sick every once in a while and you were fine. Thank you TV for portraying that image. I’ve seen quite a few shows/movies recently where the woman becomes pregnant, throws up once, and continues the normal routine of whatever she was doing previously in the movie - going to the beach to play with her kids, cooking dinner, escaping from some crazy killer.. all things she seems to do effortlessly.
You’d think that Christine, the doula, knower of pregnancy and childbirth would be prepared for morning sickness. I was not. This was really the only “normal” pregnancy symptom that I was all too unfamiliar with. It started around 5 1/2 weeks and now at almost 13 weeks, has continued in it’s relentlessness. I barely passed my classes this summer. In an attempt to graduate I took a full load of summer classes and was doing fine until I got sick. Thankfully I overwhelmed my professors with doctors notes and emails updating them on my status. I easily missed 40% of school, but had enough backing from my doctors to force my professors to pass me. Plus I did well on tests and assignments, even though most of them were late.
After about a week or so of constant nausea, 5-10 trips to the bathroom per day, I called my midwife in tears.. She prescribed me Zofran, suggested a few other things that could help me, and I felt better. Not normal, but I threw up much less and could actually eat some food. I had lost 10 lbs. by that time and was not doing good. I managed to not drop out of school and finish up the semester, thanks to Zofran, my loving midwife, Nancy, and my super amazing boyfriend.
Despite the Zofran being a good medication for vomiting, I still felt nauseous 24/7. Even today, almost 2 months into morning sickness, I still feel nauseous. For me, the worst part has been laying in bed. I’ve gotten relatively used to it, but I still go a little crazy from time to time. My midwife explained to me that my body wants me to be still. She said if I have the luxury of staying in bed to do it and that would help me a lot. So I lay in bed for most of the day, only getting up to use the bathroom, take a bath, brush my teeth, and change my clothes. Laying around all day maybe sounds nice to some people, but it’s no fun. I want to get up and do something but the second I do, I feel like throwing up. Yucky.
Although I have started to feel a tiny bit better, the constant nausea, feeling helpless, and trying to stay positive has taken quite a toll on me emotionally. I think a LOT of people just plain don’t know how morning sickness can affect a pregnant women. I am a member of the Mothering.com forums where I joined a support group for women with severe morning sickness and one woman posted something that I felt compelled to respond to. She said that a lot of women in her family have never had morning sickness and most of her friends haven’t had anything too severe. When she needs support, they almost treat her like she’s faking it because they don’t understand how she could get “that” sick from being pregnant. I thought this was awful, but a really good example of how our culture views pregnancy....
...It’s like women who are newly pregnant are supposed to be overjoyed. They should go out and have lunch with all their friends to tell them the good news, go shopping for the baby, hang out and have a normal life. This is just not the case for some women. Especially women who have jobs and smaller children at home. When you are exhausted, nauseous all the time, throwing up, have aversions to almost every food that you look at....being newly pregnant sucks!
So I’m hoping that today is one of my last bad days and that this MS is leaving my body. I’ve had enough and I’m feeling like I can’t take much more. Dave probably wants this to be over too.. he waits on me constantly and gets me my water, medications, aloe vera juice, food every 3 hours, and helps me get to the bathroom when it’s really bad. He lets me cry on him when I’m overwhelmed, he listens to me when I say that I’m not excited and doesn’t look at me like I’m from another planet. Someday hopefully soon I won’t be so sick and I can get excited about this little muffin.. for now, I just need to take it easy and trust that I’ll be ok.
~Christine
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