Immediately upon the discovery of my new mommy-to-be status, I began to wonder worry if I would endure one of the most dreaded and despised symptom of pregnancy…morning sickness. In order to be prepared, I devised a plan of action to combat this potential inconvenience by arming myself with knowledge, dietary adjustments and known natural remedies to ward off this beast if I ever encountered it.
A few days into my pregnancy awareness, I made a routine trek to our friendly neighborhood Whole Foods for a leisurely Saturday dinner. Since I’d read that the big “m.s.” can sometimes be triggered by certain foods, I decided to minimize my risk by forgoing my usual curry turkey salad and opted for the kinder, blander naked grilled chicken breast and a green salad with lime vinaigrette. Before checking out, I passed a young lady conducting a demo for a new natural ginger ale…I figure that since ginger is supposed to quell even the most turbulent of stomach aches, I should be preemptive and not only purchase a bottle for dinner, but a whole case just in case the big “m.s.” decided to sneak up on me. Dinner went well, I felt fine and life went on for about another two weeks with no sign of falling victim to nausea. By this point, I was convinced that I had a good chance of being in that small percentile of women who never experience it…which kind of made sense. In my normalcy, I’m the one who rarely gets sick to the stomach, I can even count on one hand the number of times that I’ve ever thrown up in my life…so I was definitely justified in my confidence.
Two weeks later, my husband made a special Sunday dinner request for my AMAZING chicken pot pie. Now, if you really know me you understand that making something that sounds as simple as pot pie would not be easy with me at the helm. It’s a two day process. Literally. So are my greens, but that’s an entirely different post! On that Saturday evening before heading out to Jazz @ Lincoln Center, I filled my Crockpot with fresh chicken, veggies, spices and other secret ingredients to begin slow cooking my pot pie filling to perfection. We got back home around 3am and walking in the door the gorgeous aroma of roasting chicken hit me. Before getting ready for bed, I sprinkled a few more spices into the pot and took in a long whiff of the deliciousness in anticipation of finally devouring it the next evening…little did I know that around 10am, a few hours later, my entire life was about to change. Besides being super exhausted, I woke up with what felt like a tsunami in my stomach. The churning and bubbling was unbearable and all I could do was lay in bed and weakly call out for Anthony to bring me some iced water. After falling back to sleep for a few more hours, I was abruptly awakened not by a loud sound, but by a loud smell…the smell that was once so delicious was now so repulsive…my pot pie contents…and because it had been slow cooking all night, it had permeated throughout the entire house making it impossible to escape it. I managed to stumble downstairs to our guest bedroom/office and despite the fact that it was December I opened all the windows. As I breathed in the frigid, crisp air I feared this horrible feeling wasn’t going to go away anytime soon…unfortunately I was right. Although I didn’t throw up that day (even though I felt like I would) that Sunday marked day one of the big m.s.
One of the facts that I quickly came to terms with in dealing with this new inconvenience is that it is the BIGGEST misnomer in the world. Who thought it was apropos to label it morning sickness when my green hued face not only lasted all day, it actually got worse around 4pm. Another “laugh about it now but it wasn’t funny then” point is that I felt I was completely useless in my current career as a food marketer/writer and that my skills were more aptly suited for the NYPD canine forensics team because I had a sense of smell that would rival any bloodhound. All the smells that I once loved were absolutely disgusting. I couldn’t use any of my body washes/perfumes/hair products, food smells instantly made me gag and the worst smell of them all was Anthony’s cologne…so much so that I didn’t even want to be in the same room with him…we literally slept in separate beds for several weeks.
As thankful as I was that I didn’t have to be “at work” at a certain time everyday, I still had to lead the daily operations of my company, and since joining the canine forensics team was out of the question I became more familiar with not only working from home, but the concept of working from bed. For seven solid weeks, I conducted numerous staff teleconferences, client status meetings and consultations in a lateral position from my queen sized Serta. The few instances that I had no choice but to conduct a face to face meeting in the office were the worst days of my life because of two words, public transportation. My beloved mode of getting from point “a” to point “b” had become the bane of my existence. The 10 minute light rail ride to connect to the PATH train was dizzying and the 15 minute PATH journey to get to 33rd Street was a torturous ride to hell with nauseating twists and turns, gross smelling platforms/people and the worse…that fact that I typically had to stand because the trains were often packed like sardines and since I wasn’t showing, no one ever offered to give up their seat for me like they do now with my visible belly. I liken it to being on a stand-up roller coaster while having the stomach flu and being enveloped by the smell of urine laced chili fries. Sounds delightful doesn’t it.
Midway into the big m.s., I came to terms with reality. After countless cups of ginger tea, bottles of natural ginger ale (that once tasted so good that day at Whole Foods) and forcing myself to nibble on ginger snaps (and I mean forcing, the thought of eating ANYTHING was more than a challenge), I soon realized that ginger was beginning to do the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do by actually making me more nauseous. I used to like ginger, rephrase, I used to LOVE ginger prior to my pregnancy. Now the shear mention of the word makes my throat quiver and wretch. I also tried Seabands acupressure wrist bands which only mildly eases nausea for a few hours and really hurts if you try to sleep while wearing them. My “ah ha” moment came when I realized that natural remedies do not work for me. Adding to that, I’d lost 10 pounds. I had NO appetite what so ever and on the rare occasion that my stomach growled for food, I couldn't eat because NOTHING smelled good and I was terrified that if I added anything to my stomach, I would feel worse than the misery I had grown accustom to. On top of that I could barely stand from the dizziness and when I did stand I always felt like I was about to throw up (which I never did, it was just the sensation of being about to which is worse in my opinion)…in essence, I could no longer function. In an attempt to rectify my situation and after threatening my ultra conservative ob/gyn, I was prescribed a low dose anti-nausea medication. It helped with that awful “verge of vomiting” feeling (yet didn’t completely get rid of the nausea) and allowed me to eat a little more per day, but that was about it. Smells still got to me, I was still dizzy and I was still losing weight. The reality was that I just had to let nature run its course and hope that it would subside going into my 2nd trimester. In the meantime, I didn’t enjoy Christmas, especially Christmas dinner (the turkey smell reminded me of pot pie incident), I nearly slept through new year’s eve, only waking up during the countdown at number 9, and my birthday was a blur at best…then something miraculous happened. On the first day of my 2nd trimester I woke up feeling normal. No nausea, no dizziness, no headache, just normal. Me being the cautious person that I am, I reserved my excitement until I had five straight days of normalcy…and it happened. I had officially survived morning sickness. I feel like I overcame some sort of combat that at one point felt never ending. I’ve since been discharged and now it feels good to actually enjoy being pregnant. Naturally, I’m very anxious about the end result of this process, the inevitable pains of labor and delivery, but I have a new found resilience…if I can make it through the perils morning sickness, I am definitely poised to make it through ANYTHING!!!!
