Written July 13, 2011

Disgusting. I am disgusting. Only 6 weeks pregnant, and already I hate my life. For the past week, my activity schedule has been horribly similar to someone Oprah has to bring in a team for to cut out of her house. I lay around on the sofa and watch TV for most of the day. This is not because I love TV. We don’t even have cable. It’s because if I stand up or move around a whole lot, I feel like I am going to be sick. If my stomach gets empty or close to it, I feel like I am on a boat in the middle of a storm after drinking a gallon of expired milk. So my only option is to watch Bob Ross and Ellen and sip ginger ale all day. It reminds me of how I spent my summers in elementary school. And I don’t like it.

The thing that is the most worrisome about this is that according to all of the pregnancy calendars, I am not even supposed to be getting sick until a few weeks from now. Our existence as a family teeters on a very unsteady house of cards- the foundation of that being that I can work and take care of a baby at the same time. Now the house of cards has come tumbling down, so much so that Chris’s angelic parents had to come for a few days and take care of me. I don’t work, I don’t cook, I don’t even really take care of my child. I just lay here. And I disgust myself for doing this.

I think the worst thing about all of this is the fact that the one smell that is guaranteed to set me over the edge is the smell of my own daughter. Before pregnancy, I couldn’t get enough of Eloise’s sweet baby smell. I would hold her in my lap and take deep sniffs of her soft baby-fresh head. Now anytime she comes near me I have to remember to breathe out of my mouth so I don’t smell her. I can’t really sit with her while she eats because her little globs of avocado and banana and whatever she is eating is too much to handle. When I change her poop diapers, I have to tell myself (out loud, with my nose plugged) a story that I am on a beach sipping a beverage from a coconut, or in Paris touring the Louvre, or anywhere other than Florence changing poop diapers so that I don’t barf on my kid. I think this is my body’s way of telling me that I already have one baby, and having another is not healthy right now. Who knows?

If I could just get up and strap a barf bucket to my shoulder, and go about my daily routine stopping every so often to puke here and barf there, I’d be in business. But I don’t puke. I haven’t. If would be so happy if I could. It’s just extreme nausea all day everyday. And anytime I try to do get up and move about, I remember that I am so exhausted that it is effort for me just to bat an eyelash, so doing laundry or dishes or anything productive is a no-go.  Seriously, is morning sickness a consequence of the Fall of (Wo)Man just like periods are? If so, Eve and I are going to exchange some words one day. She’s done me dirty one too many times.

I guess it always takes a bout of helplessness to make me really thankful for the people in my life. More specifically, I am thankful for Chris. Just when I think I am ugly enough to become a candidate for Extreme Makeover, he comes over and tells me I’m pretty. Or when I think I am being a total lazy bum he will wash the dishes for me and tell me I am a good mother. When I want to just give up and cry, he knows just what to say to make me laugh. In all of my complete uselessness, he makes me feel like I am still someone worth having around. And that is how I know we are going to survive all of this, and more importantly, I know we are going to survive it together. Marrying him was really the best thing I have ever done, and thinking about what my life could have been without him makes me want to puke all over again.

I heard once (I can’t remember where- a war movie maybe?) that the person you spend you life with should always be someone you would want in your foxhole with you. Someone you can depend on when bombs are falling on your head or it’s raining or snowing or you have gangrene or trench foot. I totally agree with that. When two people meet and even decide to get married, they have usually been on their best behavior the whole time and everything is cupcakes and rainbows. It is easy to imagine yourself married to someone who complements you and takes you on dates and buys you flowers and is nice all the time. But that is not at all what marriage is. Marriage is much more like a war zone than an episode of The Bachelorette. Puke hits the fan, babies grow in your uterus without your permission, money is tight and dogs poop on the floor and the trash needs to be taken out and you live in a painfully small town and worry that you won’t ever live up to the expectations you had for your life. And you do this all in a three foot radius of someone else who is going through their own sets of issues. That’s marriage. That’s what falls on your head when you are in the foxhole. So the best thing you can hope for is someone who can make you laugh while the bombs fall, keep you warm in the snow, and help you bandage your trench foot so that the two of you can keep fighting – together. While the world will tell you that marriage is either unnecessary or disposable (as in, you use it as long as it makes you happy and then throw it away when it doesn’t), people who understand the beauty and depth of the institution will tell you that once you know what it is like to make it through the war with someone, you are grateful to them forever. You never war vets talk ugly about their platoon members. They’re brothers and always will be because they have been through hell and back and didn’t leave each other. Well that is a very unpoetic description of what marriage is too, I guess. It’s a daily trip to hell and back with someone who won’t leave you. And it’s wonderful. In my case, it has been nausea hell. And Chris is still here- sticking it out with me.

So and So if you happen to see me changing a diaper and almost yelling, “I am in a gondola, floating down the Grand Canal in Venice with a plate of spaghetti and the music from Lady and the Tramp…” in a stopped-up sounding voice, don’t call the authorities. This is just how I am dealing with life in a foxhole. I’m fine. Or I will be, in a few more weeks. I hope…