My 6-year-old daughter has been asking for a little sibling ever since her younger cousin was born. Her requests became more insistent after her aunt announced that she was pregnant again and Cousin Abby was going to have a little sister! My husband and I had been trying for the better part of a year, only able to consider having another child after we finally moved into a home that was big enough for another baby. I was feeling the tightening of the pregnancy noose — I’m 37, and my husband is older than me. Were we going to be able to have a second child, as we’d always planned? Things weren’t looking good.
At last, the fairy-tale ending! I’m pregnant! I’m 9 weeks in. Wow, it’s a miracle, right?
Yep, it’s a miracle, all right
We were overjoyed, but man, I forgot how much this whole pregnancy thing SUCKS!
It’s obviously been over six years since I’ve been pregnant, and a lot has happened in my life and the world between then and now. Clearly my brain wiped away all the bad memories from last time as some sort of survival tactic, because despite it being the second time around, I was not ready to feel this crappy.
The day after my two positive tests, I did not take my Adderall, for obvious reasons. I’ve been on meds for ADHD since last November, and they’ve really changed my life. Up until then, I was self-medicating with caffeine, and I was still known to drink at least three cups of coffee in the morning.
Well, those two little blue lines on the pregnancy test meant no more focus pills and no more coffee. I figured I could have one cup of coffee per day, or three cups of black tea, and I thought tea was probably the better option since I could drink it all day.
For about three days after the positive test, I was an absolute wreck
Going from that amount of stimulant down to basically nothing made me a complete mess. I had a constant migraine that I couldn’t shake, and all of a sudden, my organized thoughts and motivation were completely gone. It took everything I had not to freak out at my family for the smallest thing. I don’t want to be overdramatic, but my detox from adderall and caffeine felt a lot like that scene in Trainspotting, when Ewan McGregor is menaced by the baby crawling on the ceiling.
So it was a huge relief when my withdrawal symptoms passed. I spent a week or two feeling pretty good. I figured that now I was over the hump, I could handle whatever the pregnancy threw at me. I’d done this before, right?
The naiveté of these thoughts makes me retroactively face-palm. How could I forget about MORNING SICKNESS? Or in my case, ALL-FREAKIN-DAY-SICKNESS? I developed a food aversion to pretty much everything. Nothing sounded good for more than a day. I mentioned to my husband that all I wanted to eat was ice cream. He bought me a bunch of ice cream. But the next day I couldn’t eat it! I had moved on to cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches on rye bread. Alas, this food interest was gone after three days.
It made me realize that all the stereotypes about pregnant women having demanding cravings is bull — it’s not a craving so much as, “Hey, this is pretty much the only thing I can think of that doesn’t make me want to throw up when I picture myself eating it.” So yeah, husbands, get your butts to the store and buy it now before the situation changes! Just don’t buy in bulk.
The physical symptoms are pretty awful, sure, but for me the mental struggles are even worse
I had just found a mixture of medication that allowed me to function somewhat close to what a neurotypical person can do, and now I can’t take my pills until after I’m done breastfeeding … in like two years.
My ADHD symptoms are 10 times worse. I can’t keep a thought in my head. I can’t remember what I was doing when I walked into a room or why I went there in the first place. It usually takes me about two hours to write a blog post. I had to write this one in little chunks over a day because I couldn’t stay focused long enough to do more than a couple of paragraphs at a time. Literally all I want to do is watch cheesy horror movies and lie in bed with my cats. Doing anything else feels like physical pain in my brain.
And life doesn’t just stop because you get pregnant
I’m still working on community events I’ve organized, teaching summer school, staying on top of trying to get ready for this baby, and keeping numerous other commitments I made before this pregnancy essentially made me brain-damaged.
I’m only on week 9 — maybe in three weeks this will clear up as much as can be expected? I certainly hope so. Moms, if it’s been a while since you’ve been pregnant, prepare yourself: It’s way worse than you remember. Make sure you have the ginger tea stocked and your anti-nausea prescriptions filled, because darling, you’re in for a ride.
