Riding Out the Waves

Riding Out the Waves I'd read the books, I'd consulted the girlfriends, and still, I wasn't expecting morning sickness to be the nightmare it actually was. Sure, the books briefly mention that it could last all day, but who would believe that? Common sense tells you that someone experiencing "morning" sickness all day long is eith er lying, or just terribly unlucky. It's also common knowledge that nearly half of all pregnant women sail through their first trimester completely puke-free, and so I naturally assumed I'd be part of this lucky group. I couldn't have been more wrong if I assumed Vanity Fair wanted me to pose for their cover in all my pregnant glory.

Morning sickness arrived during my fourth week of pregnancy, and I quickly learned that the nausea of morning sickness is not the kind we are all used to -- apparently it's a mutant strain of nausea, impervious to vomiting and time restraints. You could throw up for hours and not feel the slightest bit better; and you could go to sleep feeling queasy, and wake up the next morning just as green-tinged. The nausea of morning sickness was more than just nausea too -- it was an all-encompassing, overwhelming feeling of wanting to crawl into a hole and die, 24 hours a day. I certainly had not expected this.

Before I conceived, I was a nine-hours-a-night girl. I never had insomnia. Never tossed and turned. Sleeping was one of my fortes. I even put it down on my resume under special skills, right next to my ability to say the alphabet backward really fast. But take that nine-hour girl and reduce her sleep time to about half and watch her mentally wither away.