Seasick Sarah

Golden milk lattes, the first trimester and ‘stupid face’.

 

Firstly, before I get down to the nitty gritty, I would just like you to know that I am having some technical difficulties with the wordpress site and my blog posts might look a bit weird as I’m learning. Photos might be side ways or blurred and things might be all over the place for a while. I do apologise for this.

 

Secondly,  I’d like to introduce you to the ‘stupid face’. ‘Stupid face’ is when you don’t have the energy to hold up your own facial muscles. ‘Stupid face’ can be caused from being insanely hungover, nausea, extreme fatigue and… morning sickness.  While it’s molded by lethargy and pain, ‘stupid face’ does make the funniest and best selfies.

I am a master of ‘stupid face’. I spent the first 17 weeks of my pregnancy masking my ‘stupid face’ with a bright eyed, cheerful face. ‘Stupid face’ was always there though… slyly, quietly, painfully lying there, just under the first layer of my skin. This is one of the best of my stupid faces that was caused by morning sickness…

Figure 1 Stupid Face

Now, let’s talk about the first trimester…

You pee on ‘the stick’, trying not to drip any on your fingers (eww) while your heart races, your breath is held, your eyes are wide open…then those two little lines slowly start to appear. You’re excited but you feel sick. Like the feeling you get when you’re about to go on a ridiculously scary ride at a show. Holy shit!

You’re pregnant.

You want to laugh, you want to cry.  Shooting stars start to burst in your tummy.  You start dreaming of all the possibilities; the glowing skin, the thick hair, the cute bump that you’ll have and all the crazy combinations of food that you can now indulge in. At night you lie in bed on your tummy (something you won’t be able to do for a looooong time after first trimester passes) and drift off to sleep gloriously contemplating the future.

You’ve done it. You’re going to be a beautiful mum.

A few weeks pass and nothing much has changed. You delude yourself into thinking that you’re getting ‘a belly’ and then send copious amounts of selfies to your mum and friends, cutely labelled as ‘baby bump’. But nothing’s really there, you’re just imagining it and being a pregnant idiot. It’s normal, everybody does it. I look back on those photos I sent and grimace and laugh. Such an idiot. I still had a flat stomach. (ooooo, flat stomach. I miss you). You’re just too excited and want it all to happen now! Your boobs might start to grow and they become tender but you’re travelling along pretty smoothly.

Life is still kind of normal… except you’re holding onto the biggest secret of your life because you’ve read so many books. Books that tell you not to let anyone know you’re pregnant until week 12 of your pregnancy just in case ‘something bad’ happens. It’s hard keeping that to yourself. I didn’t really understand why I should keep it a secret. If ‘something bad’ happened to me and my baby I would want people to know, especially my friends. I would 100% need their support if something went wrong. So I told ‘em… and it felt good. I was looking forward to my beautiful, glowing pregnancy journey.

But this is what being pregnant really looked like for me (see ‘stupid face’).  In the early stages of my pregnancy I felt like I was stumbling under a black sky in a stormy, battering ocean…Alllll day. Morning sickness feels like seasickness. Relentless seasickness. I know this because I ONCE got sick on the calmest of oceans but nevertheless, I ironically got sick. Pregnancy sometimes feels like an ocean; it’s beautiful but the motions of it sometimes feel like they’re drowning you.

Mornings at work were prime ‘stupid face’ feeding grounds. When I arrived, happy, ‘bubbly face’ would spring on. “Gooooood Morning” I’d bellow, “I’m well thanks” I’d nod, “beautiful day”, “another day another dollar”…bla bla bla… hold that smile, don’t vomit, oh god don’t vomit.  It would take all my energy to push ‘stupid face’ down and act my normal charming self 😉

As soon as my face was out of site from whoever I was greeting, ‘stupid face’ would return. The smile would instantly disappear and the skin on my face would turn a shade of grey and hang off its bones. The eye balls would lull and bob about their sockets; my mouth would droop and hang open and a little bit of drool would start pooling in the side of my mouth as small gasps of air struggled to escape my lips. Oooooooaaah the pain. If you’ve had morning sickness, you will totally understand the ‘stupid face’ feeling that consumes you.

Whoever labelled ‘morning sickness’ needs to be slapped across the head with a dead fish. Idiot. Morning sickness doesn’t just occur in the mornings.

I would be driving home after work and ‘BOOM’. Morning sickness. Lazing on the couch watching telly in the evening and ‘BOOM’, morning sickness.

It happens 24/7. It should be called that. ‘24/7 sickness’.

Not only is there 24/7 sickness… there’s tears. Tears with no explanation. I remember sitting at the kitchen bench with my husband as I pathetically spooned my dinner of yoghurt and strawberries into my mouth (all I could stomach). All of a sudden a wave of emotion flooded over me…’Stupid face’ returned and I began to ugly cry. You know, that full on cry you hide from everyone and only do when you’re flying solo.  My husband looked at me with pure panic insistently asking me what was wrong. “I’m just so tired” I managed to get out between snorts and sobs. Liquids were dispersing out of every orifice of my face. He had to put me to bed. It was 6pm.

Speaking of dripping orifices. My midwife told me to go out and buy some panty liners! Panty liners!? I thought they were just for old people. As I tilted my head like a dog’s response to a high pitched noise, she explained to me that I would begin to leak some ‘extra substances’ down there (awesome).  She was right too. I’m glad I did because nobody likes soggy undies. I started to get anxious every time I laughed or sneezed. Would I wet myself? No one told me I would be wetting myself when I was pregnant. Bloody hell!

During the first trimester, the crazy in you steps up another level. For example, I couldn’t talk about Byron Bay; the thought of the place actually made me feel nauseous. I would stop my husband mid conversation and tell him to “change the subject”, as I dry-retched.  Sooooo crazy…crazier than my normal crazy…

We often visit Byron Bay and I was there when we found out we were pregnant. I had drunk a ‘golden milk latte’ (a super food, hippy, turmeric laced drink that promises to cure all your problems) at one of the many hipster cafes.  I really enjoyed it, I love that kind of food.  Food is medicine.  But soon after that hipster cafe something strange began to happen. All of a sudden, healthy, sugar free, gluten free, healthy foods started making me feel sick.  And the thought of Byron Bay… and golden milk lattes… and bone broth… and Sarah Wilson… started to make me dry-retch. I carb loaded it from there on in.

A friend of mine who is pregnant now has the crazies too. She has the 24/7 sickness real bad! Recently she had to sleep with a banana on her face to stop her from feeling ‘24/7 sickness’.

On. Her. Face.

Literally had a half peeled banana draped across her face as she slept. Hilarious. Other nights she had lemons but then she got so used to the smell of lemon it started to make her feel sick; so then she used cut oranges and then came the banana.

It’s the draping of the peeled banana on her sleeping ‘stupid face’ that cracks me up. Imagine what her husband thinks when he climbs into bed with his fruit salad faced wife, kisses her goodnight and then chews on some pith as he drifts into slumber.

 

Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5   ‘Stupid Face’