You know you're morning sick when...

In the spirit of hyperbole and a half, one of my new favorite blogs, I have decided to write a hopefully comical version "you know you're morning sick when...". Having just discovered that I am indeed pregnant, a revelation that occurred in the docter's office at the urgent care after I'd spent the week throwing up, I can empathize with those who get really sick during that first trimester.

After finding out that what I was sick with was incurable and would likely last at least 6 more weeks if I was lucky and 9 months if I wasn't, I immediately turned to the internet for solace. I googled "morning sickness jokes.' Apparently, morning sickness isn't very funny. I found three jokes, two of which I remember, one about a women who wasn't even pregnant. she was just "damn sick of mornings" and the other about a lady with bowel cancer. I didn't find either of them amusing in the least and the last one wasn't memorable enough even to reserve a not funny slot in my brain. My advice? Don't bother looking for first trimester jokes if you're throwing up and want a laugh. It will only disturb you.

One of the ladies at my church described morning sickness this way: "It's like when you used to get up really early for school in highschool and you were starving because it was so early, but you didn't really want to eat also because it was so early." Eating that early sounds almost unethical in some way, but you feel that if you don't get some food in your stomach, you will keel over from starvation. She said she used to eat apples in the shower, and as soon I began wondering about the logistics of how she managed this, I realized that I should stop. There are very few reasons to visualize your friends in the shower (in fact, I can't think of any right off the top of my head). You might start thinking of them differently, and not knowing this woman very well, I wanted the conversation to avoid such an akward turn on my part.

For me, morning sickness has been worse than just a feeling of starvation and the inability to fill the gaping hole in my stomach. It's been worse than queasy. Sometimes, especially early in the morning, but it can happen anytime during the day, my stomach rebels completely. It doesn't matter how much if any food there is down there. If he (yes, I've considered my stomach a he ever since he started misbehaving so badly--I think it's because then it seems separate from me, like a bad pet cat or dog that I can punish and then lock in the laundry room for an hour.) doesn't get his immediate desire, he will simply contract, pushing the nothing in there up and out. It's often just air and I burb, but sometimes stomach acid comes up too.

This stomach rebellion leads me to the constant mantra "Must eat, must eat, must eat." In the past 4 weeks, I've opened a can of everything we have in the house and left most open on the counter unable to take more than a bite, some of which I spit out into the sink. This syndrome is shown best in Dr. Who the "food" episode available on youtube.

The above doesn't happen as much anymore. I've found some "safe" foods that seem to be able to avert disaster at certain times of the day, but there is not magical food item for those early hours of the morning. I usually try to get something, really anything solid into my stomach and then go back to sleep for an hour or so to let things settle. Sometimes it works and sometimes, my stomach sneak attacks me.

At the beginning of this whole experience, my husband and I designated a throw up bowl. It's one of the metal mixing bowls we used to use for cooking but likely won't use every again after how well it's been used in the last month. I keep it with me wherever I am and at night, it sits next to my bed in an easily accesible location.

Anyway, the other day, I had woken up a little earlier and eaten part of a granola bar and drunk some juice. I felt pretty good about what I'd accomplished and wasn't feeling nauseous, so I allowed myself to fall back to sleep. My stomach was obviously not pleased with this arrangement. While I slept over the next 45 minutes, it consumed the juice and granola bar and proceeded to make so much acid that when I woke up at 8:15 and rolled over, I almost fell out of bed in my desperation not to vomit all over my pillow. I barely made it. My husband woke up to my pitiful retching sounds, and this time, I felt the need to apologize for the delightful wake up call.