Friday, October 07, 2011

Achy, Breaky Head

Just in case anyone reading this blog somehow wasn't paying any attention at all and got the impression that I like—or even gracefully tolerate—being pregnant, I will say this: BEING PREGNANT SUCKS.

Sure, I’m not as desperately nauseous this time as last—in part because I no longer question the approach of eating constantly (who cares that most women don’t gain much weight during their first trimester—it will come off eventually…maybe), and I have a well-honed sense of exactly when to pop an anti-barfing drug so that I seldom barf anymore. (Only a pregnant person—or a bulimic one, I suppose—would consider barfing 3-4 times a week not that often.) The problem I’m having today (BEING PREGNANT SUCKS) is the migraine sucking away at the inside of my sinuses and my well-being.


Last time I was pregnant, I don’t think I had a migraine once. I definitely didn’t have any after the first few weeks. I convinced myself that I don’t get migraines when I’m pregnant—essentially taunting the headache gods (not to mention the pregnancy gods, who are not as nice as you’d think) into making sure I suffered the next go-round.

I used to have migraines all the time, so not having them while pregnant was a rare perk of being knocked up (besides the cute, snuggly perk at the end of the line). I had a few here and there after giving birth, and Excedrin almost always did the trick of making them vanish.

But I’ve been having more and more headaches since getting pregnant, and when you’re pregnant, you CAN’T TAKE EXCEDRIN. Nor, if you’re me, can you down a bunch of coffee because coffee is one of the MOST DISGUSTING SMELLS in the world. Nor can you DRINK SO MUCH WHISKEY that you no longer care that your head hurts. Apparently it's, like, bad for the baby or something.

“Take some Tylenol,” my doctor husband suggests, even though I PUNCH HIM EVERY TIME he says this because Tylenol is IMAGINARY MEDICINE and doesn’t ever do one single thing to help any pain I’ve ever had in my adult life EVER EVER EVER.

“It can’t hurt to try it,” he says, ignoring my fists against his shoulder.

I tell him that it can hurt—that it does. “It hurts my psyche—bad.” Though not as bad as my fucking head hurts in the first place.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, Tylenol is imaginary medicine. I never take Tylenol, being an Advil girl myself. In the first trimester though, I had a headache that just wouldn't go away (not a migraine - I do get those, but very rarely, once a year or less, and so far... knock on wood...). Anyway, I took Tylenol and... Nothing. I mean, it did absolutely nothing, not even a half hour of relief, not even a placebo effect. Eventually, the headache just gave up and went away on it's own. So, solidarity, sister. I'm hoping that your migraine also gives up and goes away on it's own - sooner rather than later!

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  2. It did, in fact, fade--no thanks to %R#$%! Tylenol. Thanks for the solidarity!

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  3. I've never been pregnant, but is iboprofin forbidden? It is my #1 headache reliever, chased with Diet Coke or Cherry Zero. Which I just gave up.

    Clearly we're in an apple transition. Not just the heartbreaking tributes left outside the Apple store today that made my eyes fog up.

    I theorize that your mealy gala apples were probably LAST season's crop from Down Under. Everything changed last week when USA apple season exploded, at least in Arizona supermarkets. I just bought huge, crisp, tangy Honeycrisps from the USA; Tangos (USA) and Macintosh (Canada). But do apples have significant amounts of fiber? Being in a bit of a fiber crisis right now, they weren't on my radar. Pears, I'm told (or their skin) has the highest fruit fiber.

    Meanwhile, today I had five (5) early pink grapefruits fall out of my eerily prematurely ripe backyard tree. They were small and greenish yellow with only a pink spot or two, compared with the big, hot-pink babies I'll harvest later on. But it's hard to say when that will be. Every year my tree cranks out its crop earlier than the previous year. My neighbor's grapefruit tree still has got nothing but little green rocks.

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  4. Sadly, no ibuprofen allowed. Also, you'd think that apples grown in Washington would be good--but I'm still getting some mealy ones. Super lame. (And don't know how they line up, fiber-wise--but they're certainly a better choice than cheese on white bread--a diet staple around here.) Fresh grapefruit sounds like heaven!

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