Maternity Girl

Unless you have lived under a rock for...well, your whole life...you are familiar with Madonna's song "Material Girl".  "We are living in a material world and I am a material girl..."

Well...nowadays I am a "Maternity Girl" living in a maternity world...or at least my world is a maternity world.  I'm a floral designer who loves color and pattern.  I am busy. A doer.  Always on the go.  Like many when I first found out I was pregnant....which was fairly recently...I felt great!  Cleaned up a storm.  Window shopped for all the baby things I would want to buy.  Life was normal except for this little thing growing inside me.

And then it happened!  The sickness set in.  Not just "morning sickness" so commonly talked about.  All day sickness.  Suddenly I was hardly eating, which meant not taking my prenatal vitamins.  What happened to my fun little pregnant world.  Reality.  Don't get me wrong.  I am so HAPPY to be pregnant.  It's so exciting to dream of what it will feel like to hold our child for the first time.  To dream of what he or she will be like, look like.  Of knowing a love I know I can't possibly understand right now.  But if I read one more thing about eating a nutritious, balanced diet and taking your vitamins I thought I was going to scream.  Thanks books and websites for all the guilt trips about what a terrible mother-to-be I am depriving my baby of the proper nutrition and possibly causing permanent damage.

As I lived on crackers, apples and the occasional cup of soup, and as I tried to find something to drink that didn't make me want to gag, it occurred to me that whoever wrote those things must never had been sick when they were pregnant.  Lucky, but not my reality.

So I am thinking I am not the only one to make this journey feeling weird and thankful the doctor called in zofran for me.  So I decided to start this blog.  To help someone, if not just myself, feel a little less guilty and a little more encouraged about getting past sickness, the constipation (that's right), the weird "I just look fat not pregnant" phase and find some humor in this maternity world.

I am a 33 year old Maternity Girl and I am trying to navigate my new maternity world as gracefully as possible...and for me that means having a sense of humor and being real.  So I hope you will join me in my little world!