The Illness Called Pregnancy

Now for the negatives. You were not a bundle of joy inside the womb. I’m calling it. I did not like being pregnant. There were moments where it was exciting and amazing, but there were many more moments were it was not. I was sick about 5 or 6 times a day everyday for about 7 months of the pregnancy. Now we aren’t talking mild nausea but full-on vomiting multiple times a day - again EVERYDAY! I already loved the whole idea of you, but this was torture. It started about 8 weeks into the pregnancy with mild nausea. I started using ginger gum and acupressure wrist bands. Then it got worse and I stepped it up to Zofran - so much Zofran. I got my first refill prescription from a doctor in the ER at work because I was so miserable that I couldn’t wait the whole weekend to call my doctor for a refill. Working full time did not help either. Running around on my feet for twelve hours with high intensity cases was tough when I had to keep running out of the rooms to throw up. Everyone kept telling me it was because you were a girl or (my favorite) don’t worry, you won’t remember this later. I still remember. It’s hard to forget throwing up so hard that you pee on yourself a little every time - all new kinds of embarrassing. But to add insult to injury, I find out at about 28 weeks that I not only have hyper-emesis but I also have gestational diabetes. There was no history on either side of our families of diabetes – during pregnancy or otherwise. My numbers were subtle and thankfully I could manage it with dietary changes alone rather than medication. I did have to prick myself four times daily to take blood glucose levels. I quickly was able to take that down to a couple of times a week to maintain good numbers because for the first time in my life, I was intense with my diet - only for you baby girl. It was difficult though as a no sugar and low carb diet would be hard for anyone, but especially for me who pretty much lives on pasta and pizza. Daddy took me out for one last Double Dave’s pizza buffet before committing to the diet. The one benefit of gestational diabetes was seeing a specialist once a month for the duration of the pregnancy. I got to have an ultrasound each time and see you again. You were pretty cute even in-utero. The one scary thing is that each time they would tell me how huge you were and that you were going to be a fat baby – an anticipated possible outcome of a gestational diabetes case. My numbers were looking good but you kept getting bigger. I had to get stricter with my diet to manage it. I even went to the doctor 8/1/12 and they told me that you were still on “the big side” and if you went full term that you would be 9-10 pounds. Looking back, I definitely still remember the difficulty with the pregnancy, but what I am most surprised with is how eager I would be to do it all again if I had to because of what a wonderful outcome I had - because of you - the baby who was most definitely not on "the big side".