Entering the Second Trimester…

Oh my God At last!!!! I waited for the day when I was exactly 12 weeks pregnant, as if like a big clock tower, ceremonious bells would ring and the disgusting feeling would officially disappear. Every other book, website, formerly pregnant woman, and self-proclaimed expert told me it shouldn’t be too bad after 12 weeks. So I rejoiced on November 21^st because I thought I would never see the day, when I could once again hold a conversation with someone, that included the words: onions, sausages, or cucumbers without grimacing, screaming out “gross” and then heading straight for the nearest throw up station that I had set up around my home.

I was done with Morning Sickness, which by the way is such an elegant name for what it really is. It should be called “your digestive abilities are on vacation, eat crackers and enjoy a constant state of acidity, heartburn and painful stomach discomfort.” I have never seen so much food in reverse. In my entire life, I have never ever been a vomiter. It probably happened to me around 4 or 5 times in my childhood, and I remember the results were always dramatic. I would immediately break out with blood freckles all over my face and my eyes would bulge out froggy-style leaving me to look stupid for a day or two. Crying was also part of the emotional drama of having your guts evict your meals. In the past 2 months, I’ve done this exercise around 30-40 times. This is why you should all go and kiss your mother’s feet. Being a mother, even before the kid is out, is very, very difficult.

I had also recently started sleeping in the TV room on the long sofa, because my bedroom stank. No one else smelled it. I pulled in a variety of people, family and friends to sniff my room usually sticking their noses into the AC vent and asking them if they wanted to die from the stench. Some felt sorry for me, some touched my head to check if I had a temperature, but most people told me that they had no idea what I was talking about. The problem was that the bad smell angered me. It was like a taunting skunk, that only I could see. Why was the bastard exclusive to my nose??? I started to feel like that cat that was constantly being molested by the uninvited advances of Pepe Le Pew. Don’t I have enough on my plate? I don’t need to be sleeping refugee-style in the living room, rudely awakened at 6:00am by an annoyingly cheerful sun, accompanied by a choir of stupid twittering birds.

But that’s all in the past. Today, I had graduated from this military camp of food intolerance and even my mood had lifted, after I had seen my 12-week scan showing the little monkey, with heart beat going strong and everything as it should be. It made me remember what I was doing, and that “tiny” over here, had no idea about all the uproar that was going on outside on a daily basis.

The next day was my brother’s wedding, and I had planned on staying up till 4am. Having gotten my hands on the menu, I was drooling in anticipation of all the yummy things I was going to taste. It had been in September probably, when I had last enjoyed eating anything and I really regretted ever having been mean to any foods, rejecting them for being too high in calories, unhealthy, or fattening. I now promised myself to never discriminate…and that all food was ultimately good and needed to be treated with respect and reverence.

The next day everything went well, I ate, I laughed, I saw people I hadn’t seen in months, and then I ate breakfast before I went home, all partied out and happily full. It was a nice ending to a very testing first trimester. But little did I know…the fat lady (not me) had not sung yet.

October/November 2007

I was supposed to keep it quiet. At least until after I went to the doctor and confirmed it was in fact a viable pregnancy. It was Ramadan and I was trying to secretly eat Tums in the office, to squash the untimely heartburn, without drawing much suspicion. At one point I was walking around starving, when I accidentally walked in on two girls illegally sharing some biscuits, and I grabbed one, thanked them and scuttled away. No one knew why I was being weird. I kept it quiet for two or three weeks, and then we finally heard the little heart beat in my tummy. That little heart beat which confirms that I am in fact capable of creating human life…that actually works. I didn't cry, but I was extremely relieved. My mother the terrible secret keeper, having witnessed this, decided that it was now safe to tell half the world, but I couldn't join in the dissemination of the news because I was busy at home enjoying the tell-tale signs of early pregnancy.

In the weeks that followed, I made my own conclusions about pregnancy. I started to believe that God had created morning sickness as a type of hazing for mothers to be. Just like the military, only the toughest will get the honor of Mommy Medal.

"Are you suuuuuure you wanna be a mother??? "

"SIR, YES SIR!!! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEU3!!"

"Okay then, you will be vomiting your guts out to prove it!!! Grab your basket and run, Sergeaaaaaaaaaant!"

By the end of Month 2, the misery was both phenomenal and contagious. At 8 weeks pregnant, I was not yet aglow with the wonders of maternity. I had been reenacting scenes from The Exorcist and in the intermissions, I was usually found hugging my trusty plastic-lined trashcan like it was my life raft out of this river of hell. Thinking that I was the last living victim of morning sickness, I was often found sputtering with tears down my face asking God: "Why Me?" As they handed me another tissue, my husband and my mother looked at each other helplessly and mouthed: "Not just you, every other woman on earth…" but they wouldn't dare say that to me out loud.

My sole purpose in life was now reduced to keeping small amounts of bland, tasteless mush down where it belonged; in the tummy, and sleeping for ungodly amounts of time, to avoid the hellish discomfort of being conscious. Work? I don' t even know what you're talking about. I simply forgot everything beyond my sofa and my TV and of course my good friend the barf bin. Also I was on so many pills, vitamins and hormones, that I'm positive that I had morphed into another being, slowly, day by day, until I had become unrecognizable.

All I would watch was MBC 4, and I had never in my life, been so in tune to the tragedies of daytime soap operas until then. ("Damn it, I knew he wasn't the real father but to sell his daughter out for the secret company files???") Yes the issues were inane, but they kept me distracted from my nausea, until the damn ad for Kraft cheese which appeared every ten minutes, showing a loving mother smearing a blasphemous amount of creamy goo on a preposterously small piece of pita bread, and giving it to her son, whose joy was seriously out of proportion. Both the over use of food and the melodrama made me sick.

It's a miracle I'm still married. My husband was the only witness to this scary phenomenon of losing his wife, who seemed to have been switched with a mean, grumpy Alsatian holding his first child hostage. And yet, through it all, he was kind, helpful, and caring to the green-faced witch lying on the couch muttering curses and swear words at all the suffering she had been subjected to. "Miskeen" Nayef. He deserves a medal.

My other savior was my mother. I never knew how much it meant to have her around, until she held my forehead, wiped my tears, and made me hot tea and toast. Without them, the world was black. I really believed I was going to die, if they left me alone with my very own "rosemary's baby".

"I'm carrying Satan's child and I'm sure that it's trying to kill me."

"Farah! Don't say that! The baby will hear you.." My mother would hush me.

Excited at being a grandmother, my mom was extremely happy that I was throwing up every other meal. She kept telling me that it's a wonderful sign and the pregnancy is strong. Beaming with pride she told me that this is what she went through, four times, and that it only lasts 3 months. Three Months??? I don't have 3 months! Sometimes 4 or 5 she would say. Five??? You are squashing all hope. I can't do this for another day. Can't they give me morphine or something?

I asked; they wouldn't. Apparently it's illegal to do recreational drugs with your baby. However, they did pat me on the back and tell me, that all my suffering is a good sign.

Sign, schmine, this baby better be a genius millionaire, and care for me when I'm old, grumpy and alone. Just like I am now.

September 24, 2007

One month into my brand new gym membership after retraining myself into maintaining a legally recognized jog for 30 minutes. I found myself wheezing , huffing and puffing like the grandmother of the big bad wolf, while climbing up some stairs.

My friend looked at me, as I looked back at her with a grin plastered on my blue, oxygen-deprived face, "I've never been good at stair climbing."

I go to the bloody gym every day, but I can't do 1 minute of upward ascending, without holding my gut and professing my doubt that I will live another minute.

"You know that's a sign of pregnancy…" she smiled.

"Yeah, but I took a test today and it said Not…" I replied, starting to doubt its quality.

Although the test claimed it was made in Holland, it had the comical name of: "Now you will know" apparently referring to the state of limbo, mothers-to-be go through when wanting to know if their eggs had in fact met the "one" and gotten engaged or rather embryoed.

After discussing the old-fashioned test I took, I was filled with suspicion. Maybe it was wrong. My friend's advice was that we should go to the pharmacy immediately and get the brand new digital tests, and maybe do another one tomorrow or the day after. So when we got the tests, I made her promise not to let me use one, because not knowing is the worst kind of temptation to use all the tests in one night. In the quest for motherhood, my curiosity and I were known to have wasted quite a number of tests unnecessarily and then sat there staring at a bunch of negatives, when one simple test would've sufficed.

My trusty guardian didn't last one minute of futile convincing. I didn't even have to try that hard.

"You know there was a second very, very, very faint blue line with the test I did earlier. Does that mean that it's still very early, or does it have to be really clear?"

The next thing I knew I was handed a test and shoved towards the bathroom and told to put us all out of our misery by just finding out once and for all. What was another negative…at least then we could enjoy the rest of the evening.

I walked out of my room holding the test and looked up at the eager face of my friend waiting for a response.. I shrugged and said: "You know, it's really early to even test, to get an accurate result, I should've waited at least another week…but even though it's early and I thought it was negative before..this digital test says… "pregnant"!

Lots of excited screaming and jumping ensued, and then immediately I got strict instructions not to ever jump like that again and to sit down for the next 9 months.

I was dizzy from disbelief, with a million things going through my mind. Grinning stupidly I looked around my house and thought, everything is going to change…I can't believe it.

I'm four weeks pregnant.