Life is a day by day process. Never have these words been more true for me than during pregnancy. As my body changes and modifies itself to become the home of a growing baby, I experience a very different life than when I am not pregnant.
If this pregnancy follows a similar pattern to my previous one, the morning sickness that arrives around week 7/8 will last till about week 14 and during those weeks, my sole focus will be survival. Every morning waking up and dragging myself through the day, hoping the nausea will be better in the afternoon and just looking forward to when I can crash into bed again.
There are great moments, moments of playing with my first baby, now almost 9 months old. There are times when I feel “not sick” and it feels like I’m on top of the world. There’s good food, and cuddles with my husband.
Still, morning comes again, and I wonder how much of life I just take for granted and don’t appreciate until it’s gone. I never think about how great I feel until standing up too fast could cause an upending of the milk I drank to settle my stomach. I never realize how many days I live without once considering how much energy I seem to have, until I’m spending an entire day needing a 5 hour nap and wondering how I’m going to complete even one of the tasks for the day.
So, I take it one day at a time. One hour, one moment. I know that at the end of it, I’ll have a wiggling bundle of cuddles, and it will all be worth it.
(I have to give such massive respect to the people of the world living with chronic illness and pain. I know that my pain will last for a time, then pass from me, but can’t even imagine the strength of living day by day for an entire lifetime, never knowing if it will be a good day or not. Your strength astounds me.)