novice mistakes, 11 weeks, 6 days

First, thank you to all of you for your incredibly kind and thoughtful words and cheerleading on my last post. Celebrating this pregnancy – instead of, you know, persisting in a state of completely paralyzing anxiety – has at times been challenging. But if my laugh-crying is any indication, I’m getting there. Mostly though, just thank you. I know that many of you are still deep in the infertility struggle, so the kind words mean even more. And now, on to the funny!

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I’m no expert. In fact, the act of simply writing this – as if I even sort of know what I’m talking about – is bound to induce the M word or some other parade of horribles. But because I am completely unhinged calm, cool, and TOTALLY CONFIDENT, I press on.

So. Here is a totally non-exhaustive list of completely random things that I did do, and that you should not do, under any circumstances, during the first trimester of pregnancy. I hope you can learn from my novice mistakes:

1. Riding a ferry

Seriously, what are you, some kind of deranged masochist? We all know that non-drowsy children’s Dramamine is a joke. 

2. Interviewing for a new job

No matter that you’re wearing tightly-cinched-at-the-wrists long sleeves under your suit jacket in 85-degree weather and look like some iteration of a clinically insane prairie wife. One wrong move could reveal your wrist-bound SeaBands – literally the only thing standing between you and projectile vomiting. Sure, whatever, you know they can’t nix you for being pregnant – hello lawsuit – but you also know that would never be the stated reason.

3. Being present – or anywhere within smelling distance (which, when you’re in your first trimester, is, approximately, 18 miles) – when someone is eating marrow[1]

I don’t even know what to say about this one. Just writing it out so disgusts me that I can hardly continue. It may be true that prior to being pregnant, your partner has never, ever, eaten bone marrow. But the first trimester may, inexplicably, find you at a series of pretentious-hipster restaurants where bone marrow is somehow featured prominently on the menu as a kind of appalling “appetizer”. And your beloved partner, or one of your dear, dear friends, will say something convincing like, I mean, seriously, WHEN are we ever going to have THIS again? To which the only appropriate response swill inevitably be – NEVER! LET’S EAT IT RIGHT NOW! LET’S ORDER TWO!  <everyone breaks into frenzied and delirious excitement>. If you find yourself in this situation, I implore you. Intervene! Provide a reasoned analysis. Namely, there will be other times to eat adventurously. Like, you know, any time, whatsoever, when you are not pregnant. Like, literally, ANY FUCKING TIME THAT IS NOT RIGHT NOW. 

4. Fiendishly consuming an entire bag of sour gummy peaches under the auspices of a legitimate sour candy craving that must be sated IMMEDIATELY

Purely hypothetically speaking, you may find yourself, in an aisle of a northern California Walgreens, as your partner, in his most soothing, understanding, but secretly terrified voice, tries to bring you down off the ledge of mass corn syrup consumption. In an escalating series of let’s face it, pained exclamations “whispers” you will assure him that you know exactly what you are doing, despite his desperate entreaties to PLEASE EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION since, really, you haven’t had anything but oatmeal and pasta for days. No matter. You press on, defiant. Of course, as everyone knew it would, it all ends in four words: EXCRUCIATING HEARTBURN FOR DAYS.

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[1] I know what you’re thinking. Marrow? You can’t be serious. It’s disgusting, it suggests I only dine in the lavish castles of medieval kings, etc. But here I am, subjecting you, loyal reader, to it’s very being. SO. Without further adieu, I invite you to replace marrow with “anything remotely adventurous that has a pungent odor and looks like the inside of your elbow.” There. That’s better.