Where's My God$%^m Glow?

Millions of women face morning sickness with an admirable stoicism and elegant determination, never revealing the extent of their suffering to others but rather enduring the twelve weeks of nausea, fatigue and headaches with the reserve and courage of Navy Seals.

I am not one of those women.

I am desperate to bitch and complain to anyone who will listen about how miserable I feel right now. How oddly my life has changed since being “diagnosed with a baby” a short time ago.

I’m 9 weeks pregnant and full pregnancies last 40 weeks, which, if you divide by 4, turns out to be 10 months rather than 9. (Apparently, some male doctor somewhere thinks women cannot do math.) I was willing to sign up for harboring a human parasite for 9 months, but 10?  That’s unreasonable. Of course, “they” want you to talk in weeks now anyway, and it turns out that “they” actually begin counting from the start of your last official period, rather than the day you conceived. So that’s kinda nice. Buy-38-weeks-get-2-free.

My morning sickness began precisely at week 6, and true to the rumors, everything makes me nauseous. Not just food and smells, but activities such as talking on the phone, using my electric toothbrush, taking hot showers and scrolling down my Twitter feed too quickly. I’m guessing the same doctor who claimed nine months instead of ten also came up with the term “morning” sickness, as it is actually an all-day/all-night, equal opportunity condition.

C-h-e-e-s-e (I can't say it out loud) makes me gag. It didn’t used to. At first, c-h-e-e-s-e was one of the things I could eat and enjoy. Then around week 8, a switch flipped and just the sight of my American cheddar sent me running for the toilet. A Kia painted an offensive shade of pea green in the parking lot at school made me gag. The drop of sweat on the side of my friend’s neck after she walked to my house to see how I was doing made me gag. Gagging a lot makes me gag.

And yet, despite the nausea, I’m starving!  Every few hours I get these pangs of hunger that snake through the pit of my stomach and make me feel as if my insides will self-digest. So I run to the kitchen where the sight of food …you guessed it…. makes me gag. I can’t leave the house without arming myself with multiple Baggies of bland foods such as pretzels, dry cereal, and yogurt.

And if one more person tells me to try saltines, I'm going to shoot myself. 

But the truth is, I always expected this would happen.  My mother made certain I knew from day one just how much she had suffered when she carried me, as if she were waiting for me to apologize for being such an inconvenient fetus.  Since I take after her in most things WOMAN, it made sense that I would face a similar fate with my pregnancy, or “payback” as she likes to call it.

What I didn’t expect was the complete and utter lack of motivation that has settled upon me like the storm cloud that hovers over the head of the grumpy character in a cartoon. Usually I am an active person who enjoys doing the annoying things health magazines recommend, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator and walking to the store rather than driving. Now I find I don’t even want to get off my couch. I don’t want to make plans with friends. I don’t want to leave the house. Sometimes, I hate what I’m watching on TV but I don’t want to change the channel.

Yesterday, I took off my orange flannel pajamas and put on my blue flannel pajamas in order to keep things exciting for my poor husband.  Believe me, that’s about as exciting as it’s going to get for him for a while. But this is all his fault anyway.

I did manage to get a hair cut the other day. I told the woman to leave it just long enough for a “puke ponytail.”

I have four more weeks of this to go before the end of the first trimester, traditionally the time when morning sickness subsides. (Come to think about it, calling it “four weeks” does sound more manageable than saying “one month.” Maybe that’s why “they” recommend talking in weeks?) And every woman who has walked in my fuzzy slippers before promises me “It will all be worth it.”

Deep down, I know that. And I’m sure I will feel elated again shortly. But in the meantime, not wanting to have sex or a filet mignon, not wanting to take a road trip or hang out with friends, not wanting to shop or write, having no interest in many of the basics elements of life that are inherently "me" has been a rather jarring development that, quite frankly, makes me gag.