I’ve become increasingly convinced, psychologically, that there is a relationship between the winter and my morning sickness. I’m one day shy of my 14th week of pregnancy. Morning sickness usually arrives uninvited at about week 6 (roughly two weeks after you miss your period) and stays for another 6 weeks. It’s unusual, though not unheard of, for morning sickness to last this long.
For me, it’s actually gotten much, much worse in the last two weeks. For most of my pregnancy, I could eat stuff, I was just picky. And I would throw up every couple days. Now, I can hardly eat anything. (Amazingly, I have yet to lose much weight. I do not understand this.) I spent a week throwing up morning and night. Now I’m just throwing up every night. Every single night. At about 8:30.
Just in the way my sickness has extended past it’s usual date and worsened at the end, so goes winter. By the end of March, you can usually see the grass. We still have foot deep drifts in our back yard. It’s snowing several days after the vernal equinox.
Both of them seem to stretch back in my memory. I hardly remember what it felt like to feel good, to eat food and enjoy it, to have energy and enthusiasm. I hardly remember a time when I could walk outside without a coat, and feel the warm wind on my face. I don’t remember the sound of lawnmowers buzzing and kids jumping in and out of pools. I just remember the scrape of ice and the sound of the snowblower.
The consolation is supposed to be that both of these will inevitably and invariably come to an end. This pregnancy will cease. There is no way for it not. Hopefully the morning sickness will diminish before I deliver, but even if it’s 9 months of agony, it’s finite. Spring, too, will eventually arrive. There was no volcano chilling the world. The grass will green, the garden go, the kids will go back to splashing.
But I don’t believe it viscerally anymore. And it seems like every setback I experience with my health pushes spring back. And every snowflake adds to the weight of my nausea.
I miss being me. I miss being cheerful and happy and energetic. I hate staring blankly at my screen, wishing I was asleep because asleep is the only way I feel good. I hate it.
My Truant Pen 