I teared today. So much.

Within a week, I'm on sick leave again. I hate to be so negative but I can just imagine the bad mouthing of the environment going 'orang lain pun pregnant jugak tapi takde la lembik sampai macam ni'. Prior to conceiving I've heard stories of how some people can be rendered useless during their pregnancy, especially in the first trimester. But back then I thought it can't be that bad. The fact is most people in my circle seemed to be pretty okay, albeit looking slightly exhausted, while they were expecting. Add to that, I've always thought that my being a fairly active person could have some advantage to coping with pregnancy. Surely if I could run with sandbags and lorry tyres on my shoulder I'd be strong enough to handle a few extra ounces of a tiny foetus in my womb.

Or so I thought.

The past few weeks have been really a big challenge. Just today I cried at the doctor's for I'm just too tired of vomiting stomach acid till the wee hours of the night, of which would render me almost lifeless the next day. Save for lying down I can barely do anything much, not even to sit upright for more that 10 minutes at a time when bouts of vomiting start. If it starts early enough in the day my last meal would probably be something I had in mid afternoon and nothing stays down after that. Hence the pain would escalate to gastritis and all that I harbour in my stomach is pure gastric juice. It's this yellowish-green substance that goes up my cavity and burn my throat and will potentially rot my teeth soon after. An appetite is the last thing I have after rounds of this stinging green vomit.

They say try this, this and that. And so I did. None tremendously works so far. On a good day, apple cider vinegar works to neutralise the stomach acid so I purge somewhat less lethal slime. Sometimes ACV wouldn't even have a chance to do its miracle and I hurl the whole glass of tonic out along with whatever else I ate that day. Almost always it surprises me that whatever I ate hours earlier never gor properly digested and out they go again. I'm hungry, dehydrated, exhausted and at my wit's end. If it's my call to put a limit to all these, you would see the usual me at work, at home and in school. But you don't now.

I wonder if some people at work would think of me as a drama queen because no one else have shown such dreary response to being pregnant as I have. I have tried and I'm still trying to be stronger so it doesn't affect my work much, and I hope they understand. I wish they know how much anti-vomit medication the different doctors have prescribed me. I wish they know how some of them work one day but on other days render me so dizzy I could barely lift my head. I wish they know how much I'm trying by taking small snacks as much as possible or by sipping diluted juice to quell the nausea, even if it means my stomach would hurt a little sometimes. I wish they knew that I was working from the bed when I took a sick leave because it was crunch time and I couldn't let my immediate boss down. I'm effing trying here.

There are times when I already feel like a bad mother because I find this experience very harrowing. How could I not bear with this supposed short-term endurance test when I've been through so much physical and emotional challenges of recent years? I feel so ungrateful as I've always wanted a child long before I knew for certain that I was gonna be married. I've loved this baby long before it was conceived. And yet now I just want this to be over and done with. It feels like a second one would only happen (God willing) if I've thought of all of these a thousand times over.

I read of so many people's equally unpleasant experience over many sites, yet nobody says they're too mortified by the experience. And the more I feel like a bad mother.

Right now I'm just counting the days till second trimester knocks on the door. People right and left have convinced me that it will be over by then, that I'll be eating normally again and that I'll regain my energy. I'm hanging on their promise but at the back of my mind I'm so scared that I'll fall amongst the unlucky few who go through this for the whole 9 months.

I'm scared. That's all I feel now.

Guilt. This too. Guilty for troubling my husband so much and he never once complaints. Guilty for showing up at work with a long face, almost daily. Guilty talking about nothing else with my best friends but vomit stories.

And guilty for making my mother so miserable throughout my 30 years of life, and 9 months in the womb. Had I really known what it took for her to have me...

Perhaps, it's all about conscience. And my lack thereof over the years.