Catch Up: Part One, Part Two, Part Three

We left Planned Parenthood and headed back out to the interstate. To err, celebrate, or something, we stopped at Krispy Kreme. No sooner had I downed my first donut than I started to feel a bit weird. I had a funny feeling, I couldn’t quite place. By the time our trip was over the funny feeling had gotten a bit more specific. Ugh. I was definitely going to be sick. I ran in the house, and my extended and intimate relationship with the toilet began.

Now…I’d always heard about so-called ‘morning’ sickness. And while that might the common term, I like to refer to it as ’constant sickness.’ I don’t mean to be dramatic (blatant lie) but seriously, it’s not bad enough that in nine months I have to push a human through a passageway, that to be absolutely frank, hasn’t accomodated some generously sized penises without injury. But now, when I’m just getting used to the whole pregnancy thing, I have to deal with constant nausea, and vomitting in excess of 8 times per day. What the F? Evolution has not been kind to women. I mean, seriously, what do men have to go through that is remotely close to even menstrual cramps, let alone birthing a child? Pregnancy sucks!

I should note that I have a very small family. I haven’t been around ANY babies, like ever, and I don’t think I’ve changed a single diaper in my life. I have no siblings, and only two first cousins. I’d always been hippie-ish, and skeptical of convention. So instead of talking to a obstetrician or a family practice doctor about my pregnancy and impending childbirth, I decided to talk to the one Certified Nurse Midwife available in my insurance plan. At my first appointment, I was depressed, sick and, um, depressed. So she gave me a prescription for LSD.

Just kidding, but seriously, it might as well have been. The anti-nausea medicine felt like an acid trip. I got really drowsy and fell “asleep” on the couch. I say “asleep” because my dreams were psychotic. I felt like I was 15 again, watching posters melt off my girlfriends wall. And while, I might have been technically “asleep”, resting, I was not. It was the most fitfull sleep I had gotten since the night before my first day of high school. I woke up and puked immediately. Great. It didn’t even work. Not to mention the fact that I had insomnia for the remainder of the night.

I tried to be positive. It will get better eventually, I thought, and it probably won’t get worse, right? Wrong. Hello influenza.The combination of hypermeisis (clinical term for severe ‘morning’ sickness) and the flu was just too much for me. I literally lived with my face in the toilet for two weeks. At one point, I honestly thought I was going to die. But I didn’t, and after a couple visits to the ER, and some IV fluids, I was back to just being nauseous constantly. Yay! I even started to get hopeful that it would go away eventually.

The first three months passed, and I was still sick. I figured I was just one of those women who had morning sickness for a little longer, but eventually it would go away. Four months passed, still nauseous. Five months passed. Six months. It was around seventh months, that I finally gave up hope. By eight months, I feared I’d have morning sickness even after I gave birth.

Being pregnant unexpectedly and then so sick, and then even sicker was really hard on me emotionally and physically. There was definitely a time when I hoped for a miscarriage. Every day at work, when I was barely functioning at my job and spending most of my time in the bathroom, I hoped that they would fire me so I could just curl up on the couch at home and sleep away my problems. I pretty much lost any shred of enthusiasm that I had left for life. But then something really strange happened…