The Mom I Want To Be

The middle of the first trimester is going about as can be expected considering the types of articles I came across while frantically Googling whether or not I was the only one to feel this out of sorts (a.k.a. mildly squishy on a good day and full-on miserable on a bad day). First trimester can be miserable for a lot of reasons. It started with endless nausea, made especially worse by hunger, so I find myself eating ALL the TIME. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the minute the nausea finally went away I worried I had gained too much weight too fast for the first trimester and lamented my growing "baby pooch," which is not a "bump" but instead a combination of food and bloat. There's the acne, which comes in the form of painful bumps appearing in the most uncomfortable places--ooh look, a new one almost every day! And finally, the sheer emotional drama of not knowing if everything's okay. Lack of bump, symptoms that co...

I have to admit, I wasn't prepared for how lonely the first trimester would be. You don't yet really feel pregnant, and (if you've chosen to wait until the end of the first trimester to announce) you don't have a lot of people to talk to about the pregnancy yet. There are cousins and friends who have been through this before, but we are making sure we make it through that first trimester before spilling the beans to everyone. Right now, it's a small circle who's in the know. Sure, having a secret all to yourselves is nice. Sharing a special something between just you and your significant other is exciting. But here's the thing about secrets: you always want to tell just one more person. And then another. And then another. To distract ourselves, we've found various ways to pass the time. First, we take comfort from the few people who do know, who we can talk to about it. My mom, for example, took my first "bump" photo by a brick accent wal...

September 22, 2018 was just an average Saturday morning. Hubby and I were planning to sleep in. Maybe go to the gym. I was planning something else, but I didn't expect anything to come from it. We'd been trying for a baby since after our wedding in December of 2017, really getting serious in the new year, and hoping month after month that our baby dreams and start of our family would finally come true. By September I was dejected, but still hopeful. It hadn't quite been a year--the time when my doctor said he would start doing fertility tests--but it was getting close. I'd written sad poetry and short stories to get out my emotions. I'd stayed up late so many nights just perusing the "Glow" ovulation and pregnancy app on my phone, reading the experiences of other women trying to conceive (TTC). Some had been trying for three months and expected it to happen already. Some had tried over a decade with nothing. Many joyfully posted the pregnancy announce...