I’m 12 weeks pregnant with my first and, honestly, it’s taken me up until this point to peel myself off the bathroom floor for long enough to write a post.

The majority of you, mothers or not, will probably think I’m being dramatic AF as usual. Morning Sickness is a normal part of pregnancy, a sign that the baby is developing properly – sure, it’s not nice, but it’s also not a big deal.

Well full offence, but fuck you.

Take this Morning for example, I woke up feeling fresh-ish for the first time in about three weeks, went downstairs for some breakfast and – just as I bit into my first mouthful of Crunchy Nut – my body caught up with the schedule. I raced up the stairs to the bathroom where the toilet is literally right in front of me, and for some reason my brain suddenly goes, “BE SICK IN THE BATH.” So then, at 7.13am, I had to clean my own sick up out of the bath before I could get ready for work.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not surprised about it, I knew morning Sickness was a thing. I just didn’t expect it to be quite so horrendous – so why don’t people tell you how shit morning sickness is going to be?

Well, they probably do. After all, I’ve never been the most maternal person in the world, so perhaps I’ve always just nodded along when people discussed the unrelenting level of vomit that comes with growing an in-real-life human. But, to make this blog have a point rather than letting it spiral into an essay on the amount of pubic hair you find on the floor of public toilets, I’m going to give my theories on why people don’t talk about morning sickness.

It’s gross

Vomit is disgusting; people don’t want to see it, they don’t want to smell it and they certainly don’t want to hear about it. You get a tiny window in which people will feign interest and/or sympathy, before they’d really like you to please shut the fuck up and go and die quietly.

It disappears as fast as it comes

For a lot of people, morning sickness comes in waves. You can vomit for an hour straight, and still feel fresh as a daisy two hours later. So fresh, in fact, that you start to think “oh it wasn’t so bad”, which is usually around the time you end up with your head back down the toilet.

It’s too soon

This is the big one – you’re not ‘supposed’ to tell anyone you’re pregnant until you’re 12 weeks.

Before 12 weeks your chance of miscarriage is much higher, so generally people wait until the first scan to announce the baby. Now, I’m not one for big social announcements anyway, not that there’s anything wrong with them, it’s just not my style. So, this post has sat in my draft folder for the best part of a month whilst I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not I should even mention my pregnancy in such a public space. When I really broke it down, it wasn’t that I cared about anyone in particular finding out – I can’t really hide it for much longer anyway, but rather an all-consuming fear of jinxing the whole thing. What happens if I lose the baby and people ask me questions? Well, I guess if that happens (touch wood) I’ll just tell them. There’s absolutely no shame in losing a baby, and this pressure we put on expectant mothers to keep everything a secret during what is actually a really draining, shitty 12 weeks is unnecessary. At the end of the day, just like turning 30, going to Barcelona and shitting my pants in the street, it’s what’s going on in my life right now. And you know what, it’s a really exciting thing – at least now the nausea is wearing off. So, here’s to the next trimester – I hope to god it involves less toilets.  

Until next time… x

The post The truth about morning sickness appeared first on Scarlet Wonderland.