Wisniewski Baby #2 Is On The Way

Yeah, I said it. We're pregnant again! 

My actual reaction

After a lot of thought and careful financial planning, we meticulously weighed all the pros and cons of parenthood and decided to welcome another child into our family. (Meaning, obviously, I rolled over in bed one night and was like, "Baby?" and husband was like, "Sounds good.") 

True story.

So much to our mutual delight, we took a home pregnancy test a few weeks later and it was quickly, obviously positive. And also to our mutual delight, I did not immediately have a total anxiety attack/meltdown. 

Last time, although it was a planned pregnancy, I immediately started crying and hyperventilating at the thought of having to go to the hospital and push a monster alien human out of my body. I felt trapped, stuck, doomed -- even though I wanted this baby. Even though we actively tried to conceive her for five months. The pregnancy could not have been more planned -- and yet, that's anxiety for you: Random, debilitating, completely irrational. Instead of, wow, I'm going to be a mommy!, I was thinking, Oh SHIT. One way or another, this baby has to come out of me. It has to PHYSICALLY COME OUT OF ME. In a hospital. With pain and needles. And surrounded by a bunch of sick old people who will probably cough Leigonairre's disease in my face and kill me -- if childbirth doesn't kill me first. 

Suffice it to say, it was not an easy pregnancy.  

So this time, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the pee on the HPT to dry, I prayed -- fervently -- to Baby Jesus that whatever the results of this test, I would just be okay. Not even happy, necessarily, just not about to have a nervous breakdown. Please, please, please, I prayed. Just let me be okay. 

I peed. I looked. I saw the two lines. 

And I felt...

Kind of....

Happy? 

What is this strange feeling inside me? It's like my heart is getting hard. 

And then, a few minutes later, when I realized I actually wasn't going to have an anxiety attack: 

Havin' another baby, son!

So far, I'm barely pregnant at all -- eight weeks exactly this Friday. We're still so early, and the baby is like the size of a lima bean right now, I'm sure. But already this pregnancy is night-and-day different from the last one. And I am oh-so-thankful. I really could not be happier, so far. Instead of frantically worrying that everything I'm doing is damaging the fetus in some way, I've been popping that zoloft like candy and feeling AMAZING. 

Things that have been awesome/different/the same so far:

1. I'm so fucking hungry. All the time. And so far, like the last pregnancy, the only thing that allays this hunger even slightly is carbs, more carbs, and red meat. I don't know if this is what normal pregnant women experience, or if it's just me. All I know is that from dawn until dusk and a few times in-between, I need food in my mouth-hole at every moment or I feel like I'm going to die.

And I'm just going to say it, okay? Vegetables are bullshit. Same goes for fruit. Neither of these things make you even slightly less hungry after you eat them, and it gives me such hunger-rage that the other day I ate half a bag of carrots and just started punching a nearby pillow. Last weekend I was driving to my in-laws house and I decided to be healthy and took along two apples in the car with me for a snack. Two apples later, I was jack-knifing my car into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot and screaming PUT BAGEL IN MY STOMACH SACK at the drive-through window. I may as well just eat air.

The other night at Portillo's

Lately, whenever someone offers me raw vegetables for a snack, I feel like Robin Williams in that scene from Hook where he's in Neverland and all the Lost Boys are eating out of those empty bowls and they're going on about how delicious everything tastes and how full they are, and Robin Williams is like, you're kidding me, right? There's NOTHING THERE. WHERE IS THE GOD DAMN FOOD I'M STARVING.

"Eat? Eat what? There's nothing here. Gandhi ate more than this."

So needless to say I've been eating tons of baked potatoes and cheeseburgers and doubling up on those prenatals. Bangarang!

2. Dare I say it? I'm not as nauseous as last time. This is terrifying to admit, because last pregnancy I was constantly sick and I spent most of my time in bed, either sleeping or crying miserably or leaning over the side of the bed to throw up. This time, I was on the phone with my OB before the pee on the pregnancy test was even dry, begging her for some Zofran. And to my amazement, I have hardly needed to use it so far.

It sounds insane, but with June I didn't even know such a thing as Zofran existed. I was ten weeks along when I had my initial intake exam -- the one with the nurse who asks you a thousand questions about your family history and your menstrual cycle and your family's menstrual cycle. The Nurse was asking me all the usual questions and then she started in on the nausea. Are you feeling any discomfort? She asked. Any nausea? I think I just grunted at her and made a mental note of where the nearest trash can was. Then she clucked at me and was like, well ginger is supposed to help. Well, your mom is supposed to help. I had cut up some ginger root the week before and just sat there with it in my hand in the middle of our apartment kitchen like an idiot. I remember thinking, am I really supposed to eat this shizz? It looks like a mandrake.

So I just sniffed it, dry-heaved, and threw it in the trash. Ginger was a no-go. Neither was 7-Up, fresh fruit, or "deep breathing," whatever the hell that meant. The nurse also tried to push some vitamin-B lozenges on me and I was like oh you mean SNAKE OIL???! Probably just wanting to shut me up, she said, "Well, if the nausea is interfering with your daily life, we have some medicine we can give you."

Wait a minute, Nurse. Just wait. You mean there exists a magical elixir that will make me stop running to the toilet every time I eat something? And I sat in this office for five whole minutes before you said anything about it? I just stared at her blankly until she reached for her prescription pad. YES, I WOULD LIKE THE WILL TO LIVE AGAIN. Thank you for offering.

(Speaking of nurse visits, why do the nurses never think it's funny when they ask "Is the father of the baby Caucasian?" and I answer with, "There's really no way of knowing." I'm 0 for 2 so far.) 

Aside from Zofran, I've also discovered a non-medicinal remedy that actually works for nausea -- or at least it does for me. These babies. Thank you, Jesus! They're available in all different colors because apparently some women actually give a crap what they look like when they're pregnant and want to color-coordinate. These things could have swastikas on them for all I care -- they dull the nausea just long enough for me to shove bagels in my food-hole, and that's really all I ask.

3. I have a baby this time. This falls into the awesome/different category of this pregnancy, even though if you would have asked me a year ago, having a crawling, toddling baby in the first trimester of pregnancy would not have been my idea of a fun time. But every time now I feel a wave of nausea or I'm so exhausted I fall asleep in the middle of breakfast, I remember that all of this goes by so quickly, it really does. And it is so worth it. Even though last pregnancy was awful and I spent most of the time just totally miserable and unhappy, I would do it all over in a second if that meant I was getting a baby half as sweet and beautiful as June. It's miserable, sure -- at least some of it. But for every moment of misery I had in the first trimester, I had one hundred moments of pure joy once I actually had the baby. So I feel like I can actually handle things now. I have my zoloft, I have my Portillo's cheeseburger, and I have one happy, healthy, smiling toddler to remind me of what I'm doing all of this for. I'm going to rock this pregnancy like Beyonce.

Except instead of a microphone I'll be holding a cheeseburger.

Holla!