I doubt I'll EVER want to remember this week

But in case I do, here's a snapshot of life at 8 weeks pregnant.

I'm sitting at work at 3pm on Friday with no deadlines looming over me.  My head hurts.  My stomach hurts.  I'm counting the seconds until I can take more anti-nausea medication (FYI, it's 7200).  I want to go home and lay down, but if I did, my heartburn would get really bad.  I'm surprised the human race did not die out long ago.

I'd been feeling a little bit of queasiness/nausea since around week 5 - most of it actually in the afternoon- but nothing prepared me for full-on, How am I ever going to survive 5 more weeks of this? morning sickness that hit me last Sunday night.

That's right.  Night.  After feeling pretty good all day, I experienced revenge of the homemade pizza and cinnamon Life cereal (How could I possibly have thought that would be a good combination??) every hour on the hour from 11pm to 6am.  Fortunately Ron and Barbara (my bosses) are out of town this week for ARVO (the vision conference in Ft. Lauderdale) so I could e-mail in sick and lay on the couch, trying to choke down the orange Gatorade Daniel had valiantly fought early morning rush hour traffic to bring me.  I felt like I had the stomach flu.  More than that, I had the headache to end all headaches, which could only be relieved by the pleasant distraction of gagging 3 sips of orange Gatorade back up into the toilet.

After work, Daniel took me to urgent care, where I was introduced to my new best friend Zofran (anti-nausea med).  After two days of taking full doses of Zofran and Tylenol at the closest intervals allowed, I started being able to think about eating things that were not pretzels.  I worked from home on Wednesday and went back to work on Thursday.  I curse losing 2 days of my precious maternity leave/ baby sick time to my own sickness, but there was nothing to be done for it.  I still don't feel very good, but I did at least get out for a walk every day but Monday, and I returned to yoga this morning.  Tomorrow should be a return to "running" again.

The biggest surprise- other than the crushing fatigue and nausea and the fact that one morning around week 5 I woke up in Dolly Parton's body (if you know what I mean...) - is the food aversions.  I haven't really had any cravings.  It's more like each day there are one or two things that don't automatically make me want to hurl, so by default they sound pretty tasty.  Every night we spin the wheel of acceptable foods to see what's for dinner.  Last night it was tortilla chips.  And a McDonald's chocolate milkshake.  Which has now been stricken from the list.

An easier list to develop is the list of foods/food products I cannot imagine ever consuming again.  EVER.
1. Vegetables. Any kind.
2. Soda.
3. Gum.
4. Meat.  Any kind.  Especially sausage, which we have tons of in the freezer from our meat box.  Daniel, I hope you are hungry for sausage.
5. Eggs.  Any kind. Omelets seem especially revolting because they have the potential to include vegetables.  Shudder.
6. Fish.  Any kind.  Maybe I could do fried.  Probably not.
7. Salad dressing.  Any kind.
8. McDonald's chocolate milkshake.
9. Fruit.  Although canned peaches might not be so bad.
10. Life cereal.  I think this one is truly out forever.

And I could go on.

Almost more horrifying than food is the smell of food.  Cooking- gah!  Everything about eating is fraught wither peril.  I feel sick, then I eat, which makes me feel more sick, but in a different way.  The only things I've been able to get down reliably this week with few side-effects are Amy's microwavable bean burritos, granola bars and mini pretzels.  I'm eating the way a 5-year-old would eat if he had negligent parents.

The one thing keeping me going is that I have my first OB appointment on Monday.  It'll be a full physical, but the nurse thinks that the doctor will do a sonogram to date the pregnancy.  I'd like to think that feeling as bad as I do is good insurance that nothing will go wrong in these early weeks, but it will be nice to have a proof that the little kidney bean inside me that is sucking my life away is actually real and not a horrible, nausea-induced hallucination.  

Kid, this better all be worth it.