Belly Laughs_ The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth - Jenny McCarthy [4]
So if you succumb to becoming best friends with your toilet, don’t fret. Just remember you’re not alone. All women are right there with ya holding your hair up, cheering you on. For most of us, it all passes in a few long months. The max is nine months, I promise.
Niagara in My Pants
(Vaginal Discharge)
Okay, like there isn’t enough shit going on down there, we have to go through this, too. Ever since the day I got my period I thought, “God, I can’t wait ’til I’m pregnant. I’ll go through nine months of no period. Yeah!” Bullshit. Vaginal discharge—as the doctor calls it—was just as bad if not worse because it didn’t come for a week and then disappear like dear old Aunt Flow. Instead, it just flowed. And flowed and flowed. At least it did for me. I called it the “snail trail” because it’s gooey and slippery and nasty. And it made me feel like I had wet my pants all the time. You could be reading this right now saying, “Damn, Jenny had a real problem in this department.” Good for you if you didn’t discharge all day and night but, well, I did. And I’m sharing.
It drove me crazy. I went through a few pairs of underwear a day until one of my friends said, “Why don’t you wear a little panty liner?” God, sometimes I am a true blond! It didn’t take the annoyance away, though. I swear that shit can burn holes in your underwear, if you let it.
Of course, as with all things nasty and inconvenient, there is a “medical” reason for discharge: I’m told it softens the membranes so your vagina can stretch and let the baby through later on. Same reason your nose might be stuffy all the time. Not the baby delivery part, of course. But your nose is a membrane, so it’s creating its own discharge for no purpose at all. Mind you, this could be totally wrong. I’m not a doctor. It’s just what I picked up here and there.
Take it from me: The “Niagara” flows at its best in the first trimester and last, at least that’s how it went for me. That is, you only get a very short break in the middle. So, make sure you pick up some panty liners to pick up the snail trail. You’ll save those undies (Granny though they may be . . . see page 23).
Psycho Chick
(Hormonal Rage)
If I had been offered a movie role when I was pregnant, I could’ve played an amazing Psycho Chick. The first trimester is when Jenny “cuckoo in the head” first showed up for work. And she honestly scared the crap out of my husband. He thought he had lost me forever. And I thought I’d lost myself. The thing is, you know what you’re saying is crazy. You are very aware that you’re screaming and the veins in your face are pulsating, and it’s all over something as stupid as running out of mayonnaise. But knowing that you’re being crazy and doing anything to stop yourself are two very different things.
Case in point: One particular evening I was sitting on the couch enjoying a warm cup of tea. My husband decided to join me in my tea drinking. (We almost sound like an English yuppie couple having a cup of tea. We are so not. We had probably just run out of cherry Kool-Aid.) Anyway, he walked into the kitchen and began to read the tea box. He proceeded to tell me, in an alarming manner, that the tea I was drinking was LOADED with caffeine. Well, I’m sure you’ve all read how caffeine is bad for pregnant women, and I had, too, so I started freaking out. He continued to tell me how much caffeine the tea had. I told him to shut up because I didn’t want to hear it. To wind me up, he started shouting that the tea had more caffeine than any other tea in the world. I closed my ears and started screaming for him to shut up. He saw that I had steam coming out of my nose and he was clearly getting a kick out of it. He continued to taunt me, and “Psycho Chick” simply emerged. My face turned beet red, veins popped out, my teeth started