About eight weeks ago, we discovered that we are pregnant. I had been feeling weird all week – moody and annoyed. The Saturday morning of General Conference, I finally took a pregnancy test. You already know that it was positive, but after taking fertility meds for two-and-a-half years to get pregnant with Claire, I am much more familiar with the negative results on that little piece of plastic than I am with the positive two lines. In fact, I’m so familiar with only one line that when it was positive for Avery, and again for this third child, I didn’t believe it. Dustin didn’t either. We expect my body to behave abnormally, so when it performs the way it should, we are stunned to put it mildly. We are stunned and thrilled. Then, the ‘morning’ sickness kicks in, and I have a pretty dang hard time being happy about anything.
I am such a baby when I don’t feel well.
Even now the morning sickness continues, and I am sitting on
the couch waiting. Waiting for it to be over. Waiting to feel good again.
Waiting to enjoy food again. Waiting for the baby to get bigger. And, I’m
driving myself nuts because one of the things I learned most acutely throughout
Claire’s cancer treatment was to never wait for anything to get better. Better is relative, and better just
might be what you have right now.
So, here I am trying to give myself a pep talk. My talk to
myself for eight weeks of morning sickness and fatigue has been something like
this, “But you didn’t even have to do fertility! Isn’t that great?! And, you’ve
always hoped there was another little one meant for your family. Now you know
that there is! And, you better not miss out on this time with your beautiful
girls, Claire and Avery. They’ll need to know you love them extra-special once
this baby arrives, and well, you aren’t doing so much in that department right
now. Come on! Better is now! You already have better!”
And, I think of Claire a lot, and how awful she felt for so
long only she had no idea that she would ever feel anything different. She
barely complained, and the minute she felt better, even minutely, she was
playing with as much energy as she could muster.
I know the morning sickness will sincerely get better around
week 15 or 16, so I have a few more weeks to go, and I’m thinking I should
revel a little in the fact that taking a nap on the couch every afternoon while
the girls watch Bambi is to be expected. That could be ‘better,’ right? A nap
everyday? Plus, I pretty much only eat carbs right now, which are my favorite
anyway, and I shouldn’t feel guilty for that at 13 weeks pregnant, should I?
That could my ‘better’ today. No guilt about not eating my vegetables?
Pre-nates should take care of the deficiency, right?
I guess my real point is that even with the pep talk and thinking
about the positive side, I’m still waiting for better. I have a hard time
motivating myself to do anything more than laundry and nightly meals when I’m
feeling so crummy, and even those simple things seem overwhelming.
Still, better is
just around the corner.
We’ll talk more then.
