The Sickness -- morning, evening, night... pick one -- Part One

nospam@example.com (Bobby) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:51:54 -0600

It wasn’t long after we were sure we were pregnant that Robin got hit with The Sickness. Morning Sickness, they call it, but that is one of those big societal lies, like the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, or lowered taxes. It can come at you in the morning, the evening, 3am, 12 o’clock, or whatever time you would find most inconvenient. Sometimes it lasts all day and even all night long. No one actually knows what causes it. Some say it is the increase of estrogen and progesterone levels, some say it is the new sensitivity to smells, some say excess stomach acids, and still others say it is the hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in the poor lady’s body that keeps increasing until about the 12th week or so — which, as a matter of fact, happens to be the time that most pregnant women start to feel better.

But not all!!

Oh no!

Robin’s mother was sick for the entire pregnancy… for all 4 kids. Needless to say, Robin is hoping to follow her sister (also a mother of 4) and… not be sick for the entire pregnancy. So far, well, the jury’s out on that one.

So, what are all these big words I keep bandying about? Human chori-whatsis? Progesticulate? Estro… well, most of us know what estrogen is. Just so you can be sure I am not trying to sound smart, and to allay any cynical thoughts that I am not the caring and inquisitive husband I am making myself out to be, I shall endeavour to show just you how SMRT I really am…

Estrogen is the hormone secreted by the woman’s ovaries that affects much of her body, especially the reproductive cycle and organs (it makes a woman a woman…).

Progesterone is the most dominant hormone during pregnancy. It has the effect of softening the the muscles in the body, possibly to help make sure that pre-term labour doesn’t occur. It also causes a general relaxing of the digestive track, which leads to excess stomach acids that could cause vomiting and heartburn, not to mention constipation… but those are for later. Read on!

hCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin (man that one -does- make me sound smart!), is a hormone that triggers ovulation (it’s sometimes injected to help women who have difficulty conceiving), is the deciding factor of most pregnancy tests, and "signals the corpus luteum to continue progesterone secretion, thereby maintaining the thick lining (endometrium) of the uterus, and providing an area rich in blood vessels in which the zygote(s) can develop." — the placenta takes over after about 10-13 weeks. Thank you answers.com!

There.

Now, moving on…

There is another element to pregnancy that they don’t advertise to the world at large. Namely, the fact that a woman’s immune system is lowered to prevent rejection of the new life form growing inside her. This, unfortunately, leave the a lot more vulnerable to getting sick — but regular sickness, not the morning variety. We found this out the hard way when we went camping down by Mount St. Helens and Robin came back with a throat infection… that quickly turned into a really bad cold… with fevers… and vertigo.

Yeah.

Robin ended up having to stay home from work for the better part of 2 week. The damned thing just wouldn’t go away! The symptoms seemed to lessen over time, but her body really had to work for it. The worst things, the ones that kept sticking around week after week, were the cough and the vertigo.

Now if you have never had vertigo, believe me, you don’t want it. It is not like the fun times you had as a kid, spinning yourself about in circles until the ground moved like the ocean, you couldn’t stand up, and you tossed your mom’s tasty tuna sandwich on the grass. That was fun. Not so, vertigo. Imagine all of those things, but involuntary — and all the time. Not fun. Not. And Robin had had a serious issue with vertigo several years ago, so the memories only made it worse for her.

Now add morning sickness to all of the above and you have the recipe for one seriously unhappy pregnant lady…

(to be continued in part 2)

August 23rd... Holy crap, we're pregnant!

nospam@example.com (Bobby) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:43:00 -0600

Wow.

That was all I could say for the first 15 minutes.

Wow…

In retrospect, we probably looked a bit ridiculous, my wife and me, standing there in the bathroom staring at the little stick she had just peed on, periodically swapping our dumbfounded "wow’s" with dumbfounded silence.

The one line is much fainter than the other… does that mean it’s actually negative? Did we read the instructions correctly?

We re-read the instructions.

Wow.

Stunned silence…

But seriously… it couldn’t have happened this soon — could it? I don’t know… That line is really faint. Or is that the other one is really dark? Maybe that’s the one that means we’re pregnant!!

…Are we sure we read the instructions correctly?

We re-read the instructions.

Wow…

Stunned silence…

And so on, and so forth, for the next 15 minutes to half-hour. Eventually, we decided to wait until the next morning, whereupon my wife would take the test again, using the alternate method where she pees in a cup.

Good times.

So the next morning…

Robin wakes me up at 6am and whispers excitedly to me: "We’re pregnant!" and heads off to work. I was still half asleep and was certain I had dreamed it, but no! The test was the same as before! We must be pregnant!

Hmmmm… Better take her to the doctor just to be sure.

The long and the short of it is, the doctor said that not only is she pregnant, she is very pregnant. She had so much of the hormone (hCG: human chorionic gonadotropin) in her system that the test results were confirmed instantly! Apparently, at that time, she was already 5 weeks along. I thought about this for a moment and was struck with a moment of blazing clarity: That was why she had been so weird lately!!! It all made so much sense! That time, a week or so back, when my sister’s kids were visiting, all she did was sleep. More so that her usual napping self, I mean — the woman does love her sleep. Oh!! And that time when she was being so moody and generally bitchy even she commented on it. She had no idea why she was feeling that way, at the time, but… ohhhh hindsight! And the time… well, you get the idea.

So the discovery is in… but what does this mean? Wellll, I’ll tell you: More stunned silence. Accompanied by huge and stupid looking grins.

We’re having a BABY!!!

Progeny…

Little us’s…

Whoo boy.

Man the world is in trouble.

holy crap, I'm pregnant! (Entries tagged as hormone)

The Sickness -- morning, evening, night... pick one -- Part One

August 23rd... Holy crap, we're pregnant!