Notes from the First Trimester

So this is how it feels like to be well and truly pregnant.

My main word throughout the day, most of the days, is “yuck.” I get out of our house and walk down our hallway. Get a whiff of the smell reeking out of our neighbor’s unit: combo of soy sauce, garlic and cigarette smoke. YUCK. Go into a meeting, suspiciously eye another person’s food container. Yes, he’s going to open it in this claustrophobic, windowless room – lentil salad with lots of onions. YUCK. It’s the afternoon, my “evening” sickness starts knocking at my door. I swallow a dollop of my metallic-y saliva. YUCK.

But of course, not everything is YUCK about pregnancy. It’s just generally how I feel on most days of my first trimester. I guess it’s nature’s way of preparing you for dealing with poo-filled nappies 6 months down the road. You can’t say YUCK often enough. You are free to think it, say it, contort your face to convey it. And that is specially called for when the “morning/evening sickness” fully grabs you and you find yourself spending a lot of quality time kneeling in front of your toilet.

I usually come home ready to bow down before our Caroma ceramic bowl. Half flush? Full flush? We’ll find out when we’re done, shall we? It usually goes for a couple of hours in my case, averaging at around 3 passionate hurls. Some people tell me, “Oh, I didn’t go through any sickness at all when I was pregnant.” I close my eyes and count to 10.

The exhaustion is also not fun. We travelled to Japan on my 7^th week of pregnancy. Just the week before, my obstetrician asked me if I wanted her to prescribe anti-nausea drugs for me. Given the drug-averse person I usually am, I politely refused and said I could handle it. WRONG! By our 3^rd day in Tokyo, I could not stand the smell or the sight of Japanese food. I did not want to see another soft egg. Or raw fish. I did not want to smell soy sauce or even think of swallowing noodles (buckwheat or otherwise). This, of course, was torturous to my husband, who had gotten fully on-board with my ‘pre-pregnancy’ love affair with Japanese food. What was more torturous to him than avoiding all the Japanese food places (while we were in, yes, Japan) was my insistence that we just eat spaghetti Bolognese forever. (Not that this suggestion always worked to my favour.) One of the places we went to served my spaghetti Bolognese with lettuce and eggplant. YUCK. The next one we went to the following day served it with – brace yourself – a soft egg! Double YUCK. It took a lot of self-control to keep myself from throwing up right there and then. I had it sent back to the kitchen (which was very confusing to the waiter. It’s like, “Wha-? No one has ever sent back food in this restaurant. I do not understand the concept.”)

The other thing that is YUCKIER in retrospect than it was at that time (seriously, I thought it was a brilliant idea then), was going to Shakey’s in Tokyo. Seriously. I love Shakey’s in the Philippines. The thought of Manager’s Choice, thin crust with an unhealthy pile of mojos on the side, actually makes me happy now. But back to my story. So in Tokyo, after saying “No thanks” to all the nice Japanese resto spruikers along the way, I finally found a familiar logo that gave a semblance of comfort amidst all the nauseating confusion – Shakey’s. We went down to the dinky basement of this building and saw an 80’s version of Shakey’s – back when they were still in Magallanes... before they destroyed South Supermarket and the Magallanes Theater. Oh my gosh. The floors were slightly sticky and the pizza was extra greasy and smothered in obscene amounts of fake-tasting cheese. Oh the price you pay for that momentary comfort. Now I have to live with the memory of eating YUCKY Shakey’s in Japan. Not worth it.

But not everything is yucky about the first trimester of pregnancy. (Of course, there is that hope that you will get through it without getting severely dehydrated from vomiting or extremely malnourished from all the food aversions.) There is also that first moment when you get your 5 week scan and they show your baby looking very much like a grain of rice. The ultrasound technician pointed out the little white blotch that was supposed to be our baby. I squinted to aid my imagination. Nope. It still looked like a grain of rice. But it seemed like a mighty fine grain of rice.

The other good thing about it is the fact that your nutrition (poor or otherwise) will not necessarily negatively impact the development of your baby. I mean, I can only seriously eat bananas. Anything with bananas. Not that I am addicted to them. They’re just the only things I can eat. Bananas and candy. Lots and lots of candy. Which is extremely bad. But, like your alcoholic coming clean with his addiction, I did confess to my doctor that I cannot swallow veggies of any form, I cannot look at most meats (and things that used to bleat, moo, or cluck) and I cannot stand the smell of a lot of seasonings. I can only eat Bananas... and sweet junk food. My favourite dinner at the moment: Fruit Loops. My obstetrician non-chalantly said, “Eat whatever you can. Your calories have to come from somewhere. You’ll eat better when you’re in your second trimester.” Oh wow! It was like giving an 8 year-old license to operate machinery! But I guess that’s why she charges you $150 a visit. So you can feel good about feeling mostly YUCKY.

Another good thing is the love and concern you get from your hubby. Not that I didn’t get that before falling pregnant. I did. But oh, what levels they can soar to! Really. Andrew hunted for banana bread at around 9pm a couple of days ago because I didn’t want to have anything else for dinner. He also miraculously found me green mangoes in Australia (in the middle of winter too.). He bought 1.5 kilos of it, only to have me wolf down two whole ones in one go and end up sick afterwards. Needless to say, I didn’t have the stomach to eat the other 1.2 kilos of it.

He has also willingly taken over kitchen duties. (I did offer to wash dishes. But I told him I can’t stand the sight of leftover food on dishes.... so really, I can only wash non-dirty ones. Which, are all of course, already stowed away in our cupboard.) He has also been very understanding about ditching his cologne (which he just bought before our trip to Tokyo) and about having to eat his dinner away from me (sometimes even away from our house) because I can’t stand either smell.

And my most favourite thing of all out of the first trimester, is the 12-week scan. From the grain of rice, our baby has now turned into a little 6cm bean – complete with cranium, 2 arms, 2 legs, and a strong heart. When it was being probed, it kept on jumping and wriggling its arms in protest. There you go. Our baby won’t be a pushover. I slid into one of those Johnson’s Baby moments – where the mother goes into a semi-cry but the tear doesn’t leave the corner of her eye. Then the music cues in “Johnson’s Baby powder, ikaw lamang, wala nang iba...” I was so overwhelmed with love and joy at seeing our baby on the screen. It is real. It is happening.

The technician checked all of our little bean’s vital stats and at every step, declared, “That’s perfect.” (I know she was probably trained to say that to everyone.) But I just lay there with my mouth open. What a gorgeous thing it is to see such a miracle before my very eyes.

I am reminded on one of David’s Psalms. Psalm 139 where he declares to the Lord,

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

I look forward to each of those days the Lord had ordained for our Mochi. I look forward to meeting the Lord’s handiwork – fearfully and wonderfully made- when he/she finally pops out in February.

P.S.

(Yes, I nicknamed our baby Mochi because I love mochi and ate a whole box of it right about the time the baby was conceived.)