Nobody Told Me

(This column was originally printed September 2012, in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

No one warned me about what pregnancy was really like. The silver screen shows the mom-to-be being sick when she first finds out she's carrying a little one, but after that, it's all smiles and baby showers and decorating bedrooms with cute children's themes.

No one told me that for the first 12 weeks or so, I'd be practically living in my bathroom at home or camping out in the bathroom at work. No one told me I'd be frantically trying every cure for morning sickness I've ever heard about, getting more and more frustrated as none of them do much of anything for me. Now instead of settling my stomach, the very smell of ginger makes me ill.

When I first learned I was pregnant, I made all these fancy lists and charts of what I could eat each day to make sure I was getting the proper nutrition. Nobody told me that I'd be too sick through this first trimester to even think about eating much of anything.

I didn't know I was going to be surviving by sipping on smoothies and Instant Breakfast, while nibbling on bird-sized portions of crackers, soups and bread. These days I get most of my nutrition from a ridiculously large prenatal pill that about gags me every time I take one. Then, if it doesn't gag me on the way down, then it usually makes me sick to my stomach several hours later.

Movies and television usually depict doctors appointments as happy times filled with ultrasounds, finding out the gender of the baby and watching them grow. I wasn't told that I was going to be continuously poked and prodded with medical instruments in unspeakable places and have enough blood drawn to fill a second person.

As I near the finish line of the first trimester, I've gotten gradually more grumpy at home as the reality of what being pregnant really is like sets in. Spending my time flopped over on the couch, a pillow clutched against my queasy stomach, and watching mind-numbing evening TV, I just have to glare at my husband now and he replies with, "I know, I know. I did this to you. I'm a horrible person." He's heard me groan one too many times from the bathroom: "People do this more than once?!"

So it was with dampened enthusiasm that I went with my husband to my regular checkup last week. As normal, I got poked and prodded. But this time we saw an ultrasound for the first time: a moving image of a figure on its back, tiny arms curled up over its heart. As I moved to try to let the nurse get a better image, the baby curled up into a ball, and my husband laughed, "Look, it sleeps like you do!"

In that moment, all the weeks and weeks of miserable sickness became worth it. I was even okay when the doctor told me I was actually a week LESS pregnant that we first thought (which probably means at least one extra week of morning sickness I didn't know I still had to endure.)

I've got that ultrasound above my desk at home now, where I look at it before gagging down that vitamin or running to the bathroom to be sick AGAIN.

Because behind the cause of all this miserableness is a tiny baby who "sleeps" just like me -- and no one could have told me what seeing that would feel like.