Pregnancy Sucks: What to Do When Your Miracle Makes You Miserable by Joanne Kimes, Sanford A. Tisherman

From the Publisher

Pregnancy Sucks, by Joanne Kimes and Sanford A. Tisherman, M.D., gives you real solutions to all the annoying and somewhat awkward situations that can unexpectedly arise during your pregnancy. Full of insight, hilarity, and practical solutions on every page, Pregnancy Sucksshows how, through it all, you can survive-with your health, dignity, and sanity intact!

Joanne Kimes has written for a number of children's and comedy television shows. A resident of Studio City, CA, she has one daughter.

Sanford A. Tisherman, M.D., has been a practicing OB/GYN since 1966. He is the Senior Attending Physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and serves as Associate Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles.

Library Journal

As the title indicates, Kimes wanted a child, but she did not enjoy pregnancy. Using the month-by-month format common to pregnancy books, she emphasizes the discomforts associated with impending motherhood rather than fetal development and newborn care. Morning sickness, gas, mood swings, and back pain are among the "joys" awaiting pregnant women. The author offers a few hints for dealing with these along with advice about choosing a physician: find one with good magazines in the waiting room and a liberal attitude about using medications. She does provide a resource list that is current. Women will learn more and get better advice from two classics: Heidi Murkoff and others' What To Expect When You're Expecting or Dr. Miriam Stoppard's Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth. This is an optional purchase unless your collection needs a book about whining.-Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

One down, eight more to go! I know that one month isn't much in terms of gestation, but it was plenty of time for me to learn the number one rule of pregnancy: Don't complain! I remember my second month as a blur of nausea. But whenever I uttered a word of despair, people glared at me with eyes filled with disappointment and shock. I learned my lesson quickly that discussing pregnancy misery is thought to be unwomanly. Maybe even sinful.
I know what they were thinking. That here I was, being given one of the greatest gifts a woman can receive, and all I could do was complain. Well...they were right. But just because you're given a nice gift doesn't mean that it's necessarily "you". Don't get me wrong. I know how lucky I was to be able to give birth to a healthy beautiful baby. I don't take that for granted for one minute. But I learned an important lesson from Mike Brady, who told Jan: "Find something that you're good at, and be good at it", and the thing that I'm quite good at doing is complaining. And being pregnant gave me so many opportunities to use my God given talent.
Whenever I discussed my bodies' increased state of woe, people said "Aw, c'mon, it's not really that bad. Besides, look what you're getting in return."
Yes, I knew that I was getting a baby in return for all of this agony. But it still didn't seem right. How come being blessed with a child meant having to suffer through so much discomfort? It's like being offered a great promotion at work that's conditional on a bout of Montezuma's Revenge. Sure, you're grateful for the promotion, but should one be expected to enjoy the cramping and diarrhea?
In the scheme of things, I didn't have that unusual a pregnancy. I was never hospitalized for morning sickness. I wasn't bedridden for months at a time. I never got hemorrhoids or toxemia. I didn't even poop on the delivery room table (or so I choose to believe). But even without these experiences, I consider my pregnancy to be a miserable journey, and this first trimester to be the worst trek.
If you're not feeling sick by now, chances are that you're not going to be. For whatever cosmic reason, your body will bypass this horrific aspect of pregnancy. You are the gold medal winner of the Olympics games of procreation. But be warned, there are many more games to be played. And, in the words of Caesar, "Let the games begin!"

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN WITH CHILD

We've all seen the stereotypical pregnant woman portrayed in movies. She can go from angel to devil with one fallopian tube tied behind her back. In real life, things are much different. There is no "angel" stage of a mood swing. At least there wasn't for me. It's pretty safe to assume that whenever a mood hits, you'll become quite an unpleasant person. It's not surprising though. It's hard to feel all warm and fuzzy when you lie in bed moaning in morning sickness agony. Just like morning sickness, the mood swings that hit during pregnancy hit hard and fast. They're very similar to PMS in that they're both caused by hormones. But if PMS is like the irritating sound of a jack hammer, pregnancy mood swings are like that jack hammer pounding away during a Metallica concert.
As sick as you are with morning sickness, you'll no doubt manage to have enough energy to pull off several mood swings. You'll probably get upset with your husband over anything and everything. Either he isn't being considerate, or he's being too considerate, which is even worse.

"I didn't know I was pregnant. All I knew was that everything my husband did bugged the hell out of me. When I found out, I was so happy to be pregnant and not headed for divorce court." Beverly

I have a two bits of advice, one for you and one for the horrid beast you may now consider your husband to be. For you, I suggest that you make a blanket apology to cover any atrocious words that may spew from your lips in the upcoming months. For him: leave her alone whenever possible. And for God's sake, don't just discount your wife's attitude as a mood swing. Remember what used to happen when you told her she was cranky because she had PMS? It's going to get her even madder now. If you feel you must speak, don't argue, don't react, don't say anything at all except, "Yes, dear" or "Whatever you say, dear". My husband repeated these phrases so often that it became second nature. I'm tempted to tell him that he doesn't have say them so often anymore, but then again, why ruin a good thing.

YOUR SUPERHERO NOSE

A funny thing happened to me on my way to becoming pregnant. I became a super hero. Or at least I developed a super hero sense of smell. Just as Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound, I could smell small bulldogs at the local pound. One day, I opened my front door and was able to smell Chinese food cooking from a restaurant several blocks away. Same restaurant. Same location. Super hero nose.
I don't know why it happens, but for some strange reason, every pregnant woman develops a super human sense of smell. It's like the "Gilligan's Island" episode where the castaways eat radioactive food that intensified their senses. One of them ate carrots and could see a ship miles off shore. If I had been on the island, I could have smelled the varnish on the poop deck.
It may sound like a cool thing to experience, sort of like being able to lift a car over your head during an emergency, but most times, this talent wasn't at all enjoyable. It was actually quite awful. You take a woman who is nauseated by the mere thought of food, and give her the power to smell every meal cooking in the neighborhood. It was yet another cruel trick of Mother Nature.

"I thought my husband was having an affair because he'd come home smelling of perfume. He's a high school teacher and said that his students were wearing it. Even though I believed him, he made his kids promise never to wear it in class again." Allison

I have no advice on how to lessen your sense of smell (short of clamping a clothes hook on your nose), but I will point out some interesting advantages.
1. You can kiss your husband hello when he comes home from work, and tell him what he had for lunch that day.
2. You can walk past your coworker and notice that she's changed her brand of fabric softener.
3. You could get a job sniffing luggage for drugs at your local international airport.
4. You can offer your assistance to rescue teams scaling mountains and hillsides looking for missing hikers.