It wasn’t like this with my last pregnancy.  Or, if it was, I don’t remember it this way.  I remember some uncomfortable nausea that would improve when I ate, that peaked around 10:30 in the morning, and disappeared a few hours before bedtime.

This is something altogether different.  This nausea has consumed my life, and prevented me from consuming much of anything.  I haven’t written in over a week.  I’ve barely smiled.  I’m barely scraping by at work.  My daughter can still make me happy, but I haven’t been able to play with her like I should.  Odie is picking up the slack in a big way.

Did I ever complain before?  Turns out, I had nothing to complain about.  I didn’t have twenty-four hour a day nausea back then, and I didn’t know how sweet I had it.  Yuck, sweets.

In fact, yuck everything.  Even my old favorites, grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries, have me going green.  When I get super hungry, I force myself to eat something, but it’s hard.  Nothing sounds good, nothing tastes good, nothing smells good.  In fact, my pregnancy super sniffer is giving me all kinds of problems.

I had forgotten how much Odie stinks when I’m pregnant.  The man is ripe.  I can smell everything and it’s all bad.  In non-pregnant times, I find Odie’s smell appealing and during certain days of the month, irresistible.  And it isn’t just him turning my stomach.  A high school is a rough place to work under the best of circumstances, but it is a super-sniffer’s crucible.  I can smell the oil in their hair.  I can smell what they had for dinner yesterday.  Most of them don’t eat breakfast, and in the morning they have that empty stomach breath.  Many of them smoke or hang around smokers (or live with parents who smoke while driving them to school) so they reek of cigarettes.  Others smell like alcohol or weed.  I don’t smell the latter on my students, but I catch whiffs in the hallways. 

On the plus side, Odie has been letting me out of poopy diaper duty.

The doctor says there’s nothing to do about the morning sickness but wait it out.  We saw her on Tuesday.  My obstetrician is an attractive blonde woman in her fifties (she may be her sixties and just looks fantastic) who wears designer clothes and jewelry instead of scrubs and a white coat.  I like her because she is friendly, professional and positive.  I have to admit, though, that I always feel frumpy around her.  I have that frumpy-feeling frequently. 

I was weighed, had my blood pressure measured, got the handouts about prenatal testing from the nurse, and then after an annoyingly long wait for the doctor, it was off to the ultrasound room.  There was no anxiety inducing wait to see the embryo this time.  I think Dr. O was in a hurry, because she inserted the dildo-cam, looked around for a second, then whipped the monitor around to face Odie and me.  “See that flicker?” she asked with a big smile.  And there it was.  My baby.  Then she hurriedly measured the little sea monkey and announced, “Seven weeks, two days.  Looks great.”

My heart sank.

“Shouldn’t it be closer to eight?” I asked.  Going from the first day of my last period, I should have been eight weeks and two days pregnant on Tuesday.  The doctor replied that her measurement can be off three or four days.  Three or four isn’t seven, I thought in a panic.  Was I now going to be one of those women who searches desperately for justifications about why my baby is “measuring behind”?  Did it mean something was wrong with the baby?  Was I going to lose it?  Or is it really possible that I ovulated later than I thought and implanted even later still?  I’ll never know.  What I do know is that I saw a strong heartbeat, my doctor isn’t the slightest bit concerned, and I’m still sick as hell.  All excellent signs.  Bummer about the last one, but there you have it.

I’m really looking forward to the glowing part.  Right now, I have a rashy, acne looking sprawl from each temple to either side of my chin.  Pregnant women are supposed to glow!  I remember my second trimester was pretty awesome last time, but I’m not taking anything for granted.  I didn’t believe people when they said “no two pregnancies are alike,” because I’m one of those people who always thinks, “Yeah, but that won’t be true for ME.”  I thought my pregnancy would be exactly like my last one.  But at my first ultrasound with Baby V, I went in at 8 weeks and she measured almost a week AHEAD.  And the nausea was irritating, but it wasn’t life altering.

People close to me are teasing me that maybe it’s a boy this time.  We don’t have boys in my family.  It doesn’t happen.  When a man marries into my family, something happens to his Y-sperm.  They become capable of only swimming toward the light or something.  We make baby girls.  I am having a girl, damn it.  I have 18 months worth of baby girl clothes and 18 months of experience raising a baby girl.  I’m ready to be the mother of two daughters.

The mother of a son?  Talk about starting from scratch.

I can’t think about that right now.  I’ll think about that tomorrow.  Right now, I’m going to eat the only thing I can stomach today: Thai fried rice.