Weeks 4-5: Excitement mixed with supreme anxiety because I didn’t feel pregnant and therefore worried that I wouldn’t stay pregnant. I foolishly wished to feel something.
Weeks 6-14: I threw up every morning until I started to take Unisom/Vitamin B6, at which point I could function but felt nauseated pretty much all day. I puked every fourth or fifth day even on the meds. I didn’t feel hungry or thirsty and ate mostly very fresh lettuce, pasta, and potatoes.
Weeks 14-17 (present): I’ve felt increasingly less nauseated over the past few weeks and have only throw up twice. I’ve also felt hungry and thirsty again, and I can eat meat now, which was problematic texture-wise earlier on.
Another striking thing about being pregnant is how quickly my body has shifted from feeling like my own to feeling not mine. Being sick contributed to this shift at the beginning. Even more, though, the comments about my body, almost none of them intended maliciously, that everyone seems to feel license to make have surprised me and left me more cognizant of trying to maintain sovereignty of myself. The whole dilemma also has me thinking about why my sense of self feels so tied to my body that it can be this disorienting to hear comments about it.
Inviting Joy 