What Made Life Slightly Better While Fighting Pregnancy Nausea

Greetings from Zombie-land. For the last few months I have been suffering from some serious, all day long, pregnancy-from-hell nausea. I officially have hyperemesis gravidarum, and it has made doing anything but lay in bed pretty difficult. I don't know how women are supposed to deal with this and still have normal lives. I feel so grateful that as a grad student I have a flexible schedule and non-traditional work hours. I don't know how anyone with a 9-5 does it.

Eventually, I worked out some finely-tuned systems for managing the nausea, and I've collected them here in case future Sarah finds herself in this position again or if any of you out in the interwebs are searching for remedies.

• Stacy's pita chips before getting out of bed
• I ate a half of an avocado for breakfast. Something about the fat content, potassium and b vitamins helped I think. Plus they also have folic acid.
• If you can stomach it, have a nutritional supplement like boost or ensure. Most of the time, the nausea prevents me from having an appetite for anything at all, but then I think low blood sugar makes me feel even worse- a viscous cycle. If I can manage a boost (in a big glass with lots of ice and a straw) then it takes some of the edge off.
• Ginger juice helped sometimes. I got it from Whole Foods.
• I couldn't always keep it down, but when I could, this Iron/B-vitamin supplement seemed to help. Also purchased from Whole Foods.
• Sea-bands! They worked! It may have been a placebo effect, but they worked. Or maybe I bought them so late into the first trimester that the nausea was easing on its own anyway. Do I care how it worked if it worked? Nope.
• Rest. Get as much as you can.

Good luck ladies (and future me)- remember, it will stop at some point...

The Miscarriage Chant

I'm so nervous about miscarriage. I compulsively search the internet for miscarriage statistics, but it never makes me feel any better (obviously). I'm obsessing- miscarriage, miscarriage, miscarriage....it's always in my head. A haunted chant behind every breath.

Worse, I get anxiety about my anxiety--meta anxiety. What if those people who believe in "The Secret" are right, and you can bring positive things into your life by really believing it- then if I do miscarry, maybe I brought it onto myself, by chanting it into reality?

In an effort to feel better, I searched for an inspirational quote:

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt

How do I look fear in the face? How do I be courageous? Yes, I am pregnant again, and I do believe that "I can take the next thing that comes along"(Is there really much choice?)...but I'm wearing down.

And I'm certainly not courageous enough to fully accept the reality of this pregnancy- to believe in it or to be excited. And I'm definitely not telling anyone about it.**

I'm not courageous enough to be as vulnerable as the first loss, or even muster the bittersweet, tentative optimism of the second. I will not be blind-sided once again. I sleep with one eye opened, finger on the trigger. Oh you ill-willed fate! You thought you could surprise me! Thought you could just swipe the rug from under me again! Well, nice try fate, no such luck. I didn't even believe I was pregnant! I knew you were coming! I knew you'd take it away! I will not trust good fortune only to be made its cuckold again!

I'm the humbled serf to Queen Fate. I'm abundantly grateful if she gives me cake, but I dare not ask for it. I know my place.

These are the times when being religious is helpful. If I believed that Christ was my personal savior, he might be willing to help me out with this, but...I don't. So, I'd better not ask him for help. I feel very certain that if there is a god it would inappropriate and selfish to ask for help with my petty needs...surely he has better things to do. So I won't ask him either.

Buddha would tell me that the cause of my suffering is my desire to control the outcome of this situation. He's right, but I'm not interested in rationalism right now. I want comfort. I want paternal protection, I want a guarantee. I guess right now I'll look for comfort from another omniscient, omnipresent entity: the internet.

** postscript: clearly, publishing this on the internet is a way of 'telling people;' however, I didn't publish this post until several months later.

F-d Up Gameshow

Finding out that you are pregnant after a miscarriage (or two) is like finding out you are on the worst game show ever.

On this game show, the stakes are high and the rules are a mystery.

If you make it to the end, something really, incredibly awesome and life-changing is going to happen- but at any moment, for a reasons unbeknownst to you, you may be disqualified, and the floor will drop from under you like Veruca Salt.

But please don't stress too much, this is bad for the pregnancy. Also, you can't rely on any of your go-to stress management tools. Your doctor frowns upon running, you may over exert yourself.  No yoga- you could twist that baby right out! And go ahead and put down that refreshing beer, the only ale you'll unwind with has ginger in it.

Stay tuned, folks.

"Either you are here-now or you are now-here."