Week 9 Update

This week was something of a turning point. I am now getting some breaks from the nausea and vomiting. At times, I still feel like stabbing myself in the eye with a sharp stick (while vomiting up Tater Tots, for example), but, at other times, I feel almost human again. Complete with laughter.

I had been really scared, because I've lost a few pounds with all the vomiting and not being able to eat, but we learned this week that the kids are both a good size for their gestational age. A kindly nurse even pointed out to me where one of them was moving on the sonogram, doing a little dance. I really needed to see that. Until that moment, the pregnancy had honestly seemed like a very abstract and sick-making endeavor. It hadn't yet sunk in that by enduring all of this shit, I will wind up with babies. Cute, cuddly, moving little babies.

I am finally rid of the micromanagement of the fear-mongering specialist I wrote about in yesterday's post. Apparently, my body is past the point at which it might spontaneously combust and suck entire neighborhoods full of daisies and schoolbuses and puppies into the black void of its explosion. That, or else there's a whole fresh crop of cooter waiting to be prodded, and I'm old news. Either way, I'm thrilled.

My days of the hateful progesterone suppositories are numbered, too--I will soon have non-oily underwear again! While I have to keep doing the stomach injections, I honestly don't mind them nearly as much as I used to. Ty and I have gotten them down to a science, and they hardly even hurt anymore, let alone bruise.

Speaking of Ty, this pregnancy is really cementing how much I love him. He expresses sympathy, not disgust, when I emerge from the Retching Chamber. He doesn't skeeve my less-than-glamorous appearance. He fixes me elaborate meals according to my strange pregnancy whims, and then whisks them away and brings Jell-O when I find that I'm unable to eat them, after all. He segues into the conversation like a champ when he arrives home from work to find multiple generations of my family folding his socks or sitting around the kitchen table. I never, ever expected to marry this amazing a man. Not even in my wildest dreams. In fact, he's a constant smiling, calming presence; a reminder that, in spite of everything, this is a really happy time.

He's right.