dearest first trimester,

i’m here because someone has to say it. you suck. like a lot. you make the sanest of women go completely insane. i hear you denying it. i see your coy smile, your whispered promises of the most magical miracle nature has to offer. i’m drawn in by the promises of the pregnant lady glow. i wish i could say this is the first time i have fallen for your charms. but that would be a lie. you keep women so wrapped up in pregnancy announcement ideas and promises that the nausea will go away before you know it, that rarely does anyone call you out. but it needs to be done.

i started planning for you months before you showed up. i counted days, tracked ovulation, held my breath each month waiting for my period to crush my dreams. then when my period showed up i secretly breathed a tiny sigh of relief because as desperately as i longed for a baby, a little part of me was thankful for one more month of freedom before the first trimester took over my life. then came the month where my period was a day late. probably nothing. just an off month. then two days late. i finally grabbed my box of thirty dollar pregnancy tests, because the insanity has already begun and i automatically assume that more expensive means more accurate. sneak a test into the bathroom for the first morning pee. take the test. the fancy digital kind. prepared for two words. after the three longest minutes of my life only one word stares back at me. PREGNANT. wait what? then i take approximately twelve more pregnancy tests, different brands and varieties, just to be sure. i’ll never be able to send my kids to college now, but at least i am almost positive that i am indeed pregnant.

excitement and horror intermingle and i think i might be sick. flashbacks to my first and second pregnancies cripple me with fear. why would anyone voluntarily make themselves ill for anywhere between four to nine months? oh right. me. because i love my babies. but it wasn’t until this exact moment that i remembered how desperately i hate being pregnant.

the next two weeks are a blur of waiting for the worst to come and praying maybe i’ll be one of the lucky ones this time. one of the ladies who gets to say, oh nausea? well one time i felt a little sick when i skipped lunch but then i ate a cracker and felt brand new! but i know i will never be one of those.

i feel like a storm watcher tracking tornadoes in oklahoma. no one knows when the next one will hit but everyone knows it’s coming.

it starts with the underwear check. no one wants to say it out loud but every single mama who has recently peed on a pregnancy test, and gotten that big fat positive, checks her underwear for blood every single time she goes to the bathroom. and sometimes goes to the bathroom for that purpose only. like two hundred times a day. it’s crazy. and insane. and it’s part of being a mother. because we already love that tiny microscopic life so damn much that the fear of losing that child is already a part of who we are. sometimes we make it through that season of fear and get to the ultrasound where we see a heartbeat and know all is well. for now. sometimes we never make it that far and hearts break and grief is our journey.

around ultrasound time, or for me long before that time, the exhaustion and the nausea set in. for most of us, the exhaustion is all encompassing and the nausea makes daily life nearly impossible. i see women online doing crossfit or running marathons through their pregnancy and all i can think is, someday i’ll have the energy to shower.

slowly my life becomes filled with rice cakes and ginger candies and peppermint tea. i lose weight. i lose the tiny bit of muscle i had. i scroll through facebook and instagram and envy my friends who are out in public and interacting with real human beings. i throw up basically always. this time with kids old enough to follow me to the bathroom, the one with the lock that doesn’t work. i throw up daily to a soundtrack of, “mom! can i have a snack!” “mom when you’re done throwing up i really need to show you something!” “mom can i sit on your lap?” and on the really lucky days they both crowd around and lean over my back while yelling, “I WANT TO SEE YOUR THROW UP!!!!” i want to scream at them. i want to tell them to get the crap out of the bathroom. but each time i try to speak i just heave and throw up more and more. so with all of my dignity gone they discuss the size and color and volume of my vomit. while i wipe sweat from my brow and remind myself that this is so going to be worth it someday.

you see, my dear first trimester, over four pregnancies, i can say with confidence, you are one of the worst experiences of my life. you have put me in the hospital multiple times just to keep enough fluids in my body. you have made me so physically weak that i could hardly stand. you have messed with all of my hormones and caused me to have debilitating panic attacks so severe i was positive i was dying. you have forced me to miss out on multiple weddings for some of my best friends. you have secluded me from real life for months at a time. you broke my heart when i lost a baby i loved so deeply. and i am only one person. i have heard countless stories from other women who have braved your horrors multiple times. each story is unique but almost always with the same theme. you are hard. you are often miserable and long and too often heartbreaking.

you are the worst.

but you bring the very, very best.

suffering through you brought me my boys. choosing you once again gave me the gift of my baby who i never got to hold but who forever changed our family. today marks the first day of my second trimester with our tiny rainbow baby and i mean it with all of my heart when i say i hated every second of you this time around also. but i chose you. because i needed you. you are awful. but deeply important. and the truth is, i would choose you all over again a million times.

we all would.

every mama i know. some who hate you as much as i do. some who have suffered loss after loss after loss. some who face debilitating health issues themselves. some who invested every single penny they had to endure you. some who still dream daily and ache just as often, because they long to have the chance to hate the first trimester as much as so many of us do. some women i love never personally lived through a first trimester themselves but another women somewhere else in the world did, and then my friends suffered through days, weeks, months, of waiting, hoping, and living through a different kind of first trimester just to hold the babies.

it starts long before we ever hold our babies.

the second the dream of being a mama enters our hearts, we are preparing for the first trimester. the second. the third. a lifetime of loving someone more than ourselves. a lifetime of worrying and fretting because that’s what we do. a lifetime of joy and heartache and trials and triumphs. a lifetime that is so very worth every single thing we have to walk through.

so the truth is, dear first trimester, i will never love you. but i would endure you a thousand times if that is what i had to do.

being called mama is so many dreams come true.

but know this.

i screw up every single day. i fall short. i am terrible at consistency. i lose my patience. i forget to play. but my prayer, and i’m certain this is the prayer of every mama reading this, is that every single day i will love better, laugh louder, forgive easily, admit my mistakes, and live a life worthy of my children’s respect.

happiest mother’s day to each and every mama heart out there. no matter where you are on your journey, you are uniquely designed to love in a way that only a mama can. and it is okay to hate the first trimester. or all of them. it is okay to struggle and ask for help. it is okay to mess up and apologize. it is okay to admit that it takes a village. because it does. and it should.

what makes mama’s so amazing is that motherhood is one of the hardest jobs in the world. it takes all we have and then asks for more. and the amazing part is that we would all choose it again and again. every. single. time.