Day in the Life of a Journalist, 36 Weeks Pregnant, Living With Hyperemesis
Hanging in there and prepping for a C-section.
The Pomegranate is thrilled to welcome Fortesa Latifi to our Day in the Life series.
7:20 A.M.
My husband’s alarm wakes me up. I can’t believe I’ve slept in this late. With one bleary eye still closed, I grab my phone and open the Nanit app to check on E, my 2-year-old (! how is she 2!). I don’t even want to say how great she’s been sleeping lately because every parent knows that talking about how well your child is sleeping means it will end. So all I’ll say is: all three of us had a restful night and E is still snoozing away.
I go into the kitchen and start my day by chewing a prenatal gummy and pouring some liquid IV and a ton of ice into my water bottle. I take approximately three sips of cold brew even though I know I’ll throw it up. (I have hyperemesis gravidarum, which in my case, means I throw up 5-7x a day every single day of pregnancy, after every time I eat or drink, and sometimes even when I don’t.) I sit down on the couch and decide to put some make-up on while I wait either for E to wake up or for it to be time for me to wake her up.
I have an appointment today to get the thickness of my C-Section scar checked. As I understand it, second C-Section is scheduled for 39 weeks but if the scar is thinner than the doctors would like it to be, I may need to deliver at 38 weeks in order to avoid an increased possibility of uterine dehiscence or rupture. Now that I’m in the (knock on wood) safe zone of being past 36 weeks, I do hope that I get to have this baby early. I’m so, so ready to not be pregnant anymore.
8 A.M.
I turn off E’s sound machine and she immediately wakes up. It’s kind of crazy how Pavlov-ed she is by that thing. I go into her room and open the blinds and ask her how her night was and all she says is “I want dada” so I call Alex in. He gets her out of bed and we do our morning routine of brushing her teeth and getting her hair done. Alex’s mom, my angel of a mother-in-law who has been trading off with my own mom taking care of us in the last few months of pregnancy while I struggle with HG, a full-time job, and parenting a toddler, comes over. Alex leaves for work with a promise of meeting me at my appointment later and E and my MIL start making breakfast. By 8:20, I’m sitting at my desk starting on my work for the day. I only have another week of work before my nesting time off starts at Yahoo (you can read my work there here) which then rolls into maternity leave.
9:15 A.M.
My MIL makes me a smoothie and I drink it then promptly vomit. I work on some story edits and then log into a work meeting.
10:00 A.M.
E and my MIL leave for the park for the morning. She says “bye, Mom!” and walks outside and I swallow my instinct to chase her and just hold her for hours. The more pregnant I get, the weirder it feels for E to not be constantly by my side. I think it must be hormonal but even when she goes to a park half a mile away with a trusted caregiver, I miss her so much I sometimes cry.
Back inside, I grab a Diet Coke and a pack of crackers for my hour-long meeting. I hope I can wait to vomit until after the meeting is done. I’m so tired I feel like I could fall asleep on top of my keyboard. I’m not sure if this level of exhaustion is an HG thing or a 9-months-pregnant thing but I’m dreaming of my bed.
11:00 A.M.
I vomit again as soon as my meeting ends. My hands are shaky – I think from low blood sugar – so I eat a handful of sour gummies and hope that tides me over slightly. I put in another 45 minutes of work even though I feel like a ghost just tapping on a keyboard.
11:45 A.M.
I curl up on the couch with my book (The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett) and resolve to read and rest until my daughter gets home from the park around 12:30. I fight the urge to ask my MIL to bring her home early. It’s insane how much I miss E when she’s away from me but also, I know that she’s having more fun running around at the park than she would be having hanging with me at home, especially when I’m this tired.
12:15 P.M.
E and my MIL get home from the park, with my FIL who is also visiting for a few days. E snuggles up against me on the couch and tells me all about her day. When my MIL tries to straighten up the living room and touches my book, E says “that’s Mama’s book” and gives it to me. She’s very into rules these days. There is a pillow on the couch that she won’t let anyone but my MIL use.
We hang out for a little while then E tells me she wants milk, which is her way of saying “I want you to give me milk and cuddle me and put me to sleep.” As we walk into her bedroom, she says, “oh! my glasses!” and rips them off and tosses them to the floor. We settle into the chair in her nursery and chat more about her day. She makes a list of people she loves and includes my MIL, my FIL, my sisters, and her dad. It is very sweet. At the end of the list, she just keeps saying “And I love Mama too” and my heart just… almost bursts. I love her so much it hurts.
12:45 P.M.
I lay her down in her crib, where she’ll chat to herself and play with her stuffies for approximately 15 minutes before falling asleep. I vomit again then look for clothes that are vaguely comfortable at 36 weeks pregnant. I end up wearing some stretchy shorts and a bra-less Abercrombie tank that barely covers my belly, figuring I’ll throw my jean jacket on top and it’ll be fine. I gather my supplies (book, wallet, water bottle, barf bag) into a tote bag. I toggle between podcast episodes, wishing I hadn’t already listened to the new This American Life this morning while I was working then remember that Spotify has this new feature where you can scan the page of the book you’re reading and it’ll bring you to that part of the audiobook. I try it and the app perfectly finds my spot. I don’t drive much, so the idea of getting to listen to my book on this 35-minute drive is so nice.
1:15 P.M.
I get in the car and drive to my C-Section scar appointment, listening to my book. On the way, I go through the McDonald’s drive-thru and get a small McFlurry and medium fry. Even though I’ll vomit them up, I get a quick blood sugar boost that makes me feel like I’m at least half-alive.
2:00 P.M.
I’ve checked into the appointment and am waiting to be called back. I take a quick trip to the bathroom to vomit and by the time I get out, my husband is there. He kisses my forehead and gives me the sweet, pitying look he always gives me when he can tell I just threw up.
2:30 P.M.
We’re called back. My blood pressure is taken (it’s fine, thankfully) and we wait for the ultrasound tech to come in and start the scan. I check the Nanit app on my phone and watch E sleeping in her crib. The tech comes in and starts the scan and I alternate between watching the screen where my second daughter is wiggling around and watching my husband watch the screen. I love the look on his face when he looks at his babies. The tech is lovely and warm and asks us if we’re sure about when I got pregnant because the baby is measuring pretty big. This is astonishing to me both because I’ve been literally starving for 9 months (“the baby takes what it needs,” the tech assures me, as my doctor has this entire time) and because babies in my family are uniformly only ever 6 pounds.
The scan takes about 20 minutes and then we wait for the doctor to come in and review the results and check my scar. Because I’m such a miserable pregnant person, I’ve been vaguely hoping that my scar has thinned out enough that they’ll want to reschedule my C-Section for 38 weeks instead of 39 weeks but when the doctor comes in, she says everything looks great and we’re set for the end of June. This is, of course, technically good news but I’m so hungry and so tired and so depressed from being so hungry and so tired that the idea of having to make it through three more weeks in this state makes me feel panicky. I tell myself this is what’s best for the baby and for me. I just hope that I don’t go into labor before my scheduled C-Section.
Alex and I leave the office and drive home separately because he met me there from work. On the drive home, I call my mom and update her and use voice-to-text to do the same with my sisters before listening to my book.
4:00 P.M.
I park outside our house and when I walk into the gate, E is waiting for me. She squeals and hugs me and I melt. I ask her what she’s been doing with her grandparents and she tells me in the toddlerese I love so much. Back in the house, I throw up again and suddenly feel myself drawn to bed as though it’s a magnet. I text Alex and my MIL, “okay if I rest?” and fall asleep before they text me back that of course it’s okay. This is being 36 weeks pregnant.
5:30 P.M.
Alex sits on the edge of our bed and puts his hand on my shoulder to wake me up. I can’t believe I actually fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon but I feel so much better. Our bedroom door opens and E walks in. “Wake up, Mommy!” she yells and I assure her that I am waking up.
Alex, E, my MIL and FIL and I sit down to a dinner of leftover pizza from the night before. E is not at all interested in eating and I’m too tired to fight her so I let her go play while we eat. She had a big lunch and at 2-years-old, she’s kind of an either-or kind of girl. I figure she’ll tell me if she’s hungry later. I eat a piece of pizza and drink a La Croix then excuse myself to the bathroom to throw up.
While Alex and his parents are finishing their dinner, E and I sit on the couch together and read. Although I prefer reading on my Kindle, I always try to make sure that I have a physical book I’m reading at any given time because I have this feeling that E can’t really tell the difference between my phone and my Kindle and I don’t want her looking up at me and seeing me staring into a screen. Right now, my physical book is a galley of the incredible The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza and I can hardly put it down. E settles into the crook in my arm with her own book and turns the pages, occasionally exclaiming to me about what she’s ‘reading’. Moments like this are a dream come true.
6:00 P.M.
With dinner finished and cleaned up, Alex turns on the NBA Finals. We are a Big Basketball Family, to the point that the other day, E said, apropos of nothing, “I love basketball.” As Alex turns on the game, he asks her who we’re going to watch tonight and she says “Wemby!” The only screentime she gets is when basketball is on and even then, she kind of pays attention for a minute or two and then walks off to play with some toys or chat with us. She wanders off and we hear some splashing and my MIL gets up to find her trying to scrub the toilet with the toilet brush, doubtlessly imitating her dad who scrubs the toilet every day to make sure I have a nice place to vomit. It is both very cute and very sad.
6:45 P.M.
Alex gets E in her pajamas and she gets out the last of her pre-bedtime zoomies. She is twirling in her nightgown and laughing hysterically.
7:00 P.M.
My FIL takes E into her bedroom and reads her a few books. This is something he always dreamt of doing before he became a grandfather and I love that it’s his reality now.
7:15 P.M.
Daddy is requested by E. He sits with her in the rocking chair in her room and they talk about her day. “More talking,” she says when he seems to be slowing down. I listen to them chat from the living room while I watch the basketball game and read my book. Life is really, really good despite how incredibly brutal an HG pregnancy is.
7:30 P.M.
E requests I go in to finish up the bedtime routine. My anxious mind can’t help but count how many days we have left of doing this before our lives change forever when the new baby comes. It’s this weird pre-grief that’s mixed with excitement and it makes my chest hurt. I hold E and we laugh and joke and after about 10 minutes, I tell her it’s time for bed and that I love her and I’ll see her in the morning. I lay her down in her crib with her approximately 35 stuffies and rejoin Alex on the couch, where we watch the rest of the basketball game. The Spurs win. E is asleep. My MIL and FIL have left and it’s just me and Alex, like it was for so many years.
8:15 P.M.
We watch an episode of Widow’s Bay which we’re really enjoying. I love Matthew Rhys from The Americans so it’s really fun to see him in another role. I didn’t expect Widow’s Bay to be laugh-out-loud funny but it is.
9:00 P.M.
I throw up one last time (I’ve lost count but I think it’s been 6 or 7 times today which is par for the course) and get ready for bed. Alex comes in and tucks me in and gives me an ice pack for my aching head. I try to find a comfortable position and settle in with my Kindle to read.
9:20 P.M.
I tuck my Kindle under my pillow and marvel at the fact that, just a few weeks from now, there will be a bassinet next to our bed with a newborn in it. I fall asleep with the distinct feeling of standing on a precipice.
Fortesa Latifi is a journalist and mom based in Los Angeles. She is the author of Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online.
You can buy Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online anywhere you get your books, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop, Hudson Booksellers, Target, and Walmart.
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