Why this blog has been a lie lately...

My pants should totally be on fire, because a lot of my life has been a complete lie lately, both here and in the real world.

 

 

Let's face it -- the vast majority of bloggers lie. Or at least exaggerate the truth. We showcase the most interesting parts of our lives, publish the most beautiful photos of ourselves, and generally do our best to make our existence seem fascinating and fabulous. Ironically, I think it's often the down and dirty parts that people enjoy most... tales of our struggles, shortcomings, and heartbreaks allow others to relate to us, and make us seem more real. I try, for the most part, to be an open book here, showing you the good, the bad and the ugly, but let's face it... some days I'm just as guilty as the next person of sugarcoating my life.

 

The past couple months have been the worst... but hiding a pregnancy is tough!

 

Remember when I went to Port Townsend in August for a family reunion? I was pregnant, but didn't know it yet. And that whole weekend I remember being crankier than a 15-year-old with PMS. I could hear myself snapping at my relatives, but I literally didn't even care. Everything and everyone was irritating the crap out of me for two days straight, and I had no idea why. Oh, and that cider I'm holding? It was the last alcoholic beverage I had pre-pregnancy.

 

Oh, drinking alcohol... I'll miss it!!

I heard from my doctor the night before we left for the lake house for Labor Day Weekend, and Stew and I had a foolproof plan on how to hide the pregnancy from our friends. The first day went okay; Stew filled up empty beer cans with water and gave them to me on the sly to drink. But by day two, the girls had caught on. My excuses to get out of shots, beer shot-gunning, and my ability to make myself mixed drinks without breaking the seal on the vodka bottle eventually gave me away. So all those times it looked like I was drinking... I wasn't.

 

That beer can is filled with water.

Remember the weekend we went to a concert, a wedding, and a Seahawks game? I was absolutely miserable, and I puked the whole time. I wasn't used to morning sickness yet, and I was trying all sorts of random remedies that weren't really working. The tailgate was particularly agonizing, because I had to pretend I was drinking and run into a fast food restaurant to throw up. It sucked. In fact, I skipped the following week's home game against the Jaguars so I wouldn't have to go through it again.

 

Looks like I'm having fun, eh? There's ginger ale in that cup.

 

When I went to Denver with Brooke, I had discovered Zofran (but not it's side effects), which got me through the plane ride and the majority of the trip puke-free. However, I had an extremely terrifying episode of spot bleeding during our murder mystery dinner show that had us rushing back to the hotel early to call my doctor and spend a sleepless night tossing and turning. Spot bleeding is actually quite common in pregnancy, and everything turned out to be fine.

 

Behind this fake smile there is sheer panic.

 

It may have seemed like I had a blast at the Mill Creek garage sales, but my energy only lasted a few hours, and I actually spent most of the afternoon sleeping in the back of the van while my relatives were scoring cheap goodies. And the Saturday we crammed in four events, exhaustion literally almost killed me. Haley helped mix me fake drinks at the next tailgate, but boy did I hear it for not participating in the shotski fun (I feigned a hangover). Oh, and the week I worked 60+ hours, but no one at my office knew I was knocked up was not super fun. I fell asleep at my desk once, but no one seemed to notice.

 

I talked once about why I hadn't been blogging much this summer, but that was a partial lie as well. Really, the first trimester of pregnancy and all it's side effects were consuming my life, and it was hard to put together a post about anything else.  

 

Stew and I made the decision early on that we wanted to wait until the second trimester to reveal the big news. For us, it was just the right decision. So other than a few close friends and family members, everyone was probably wondering why I was so cranky, tired, and supposedly hung over all the time. I worry that some people were starting to suspect that I was an alcoholic.

 

So yeah... a lot of this blog has been built on untruths lately, but I can't really apologize. It won't be the last time I do something to protect my child, I'll tell you that much. But going forward I hopefully won't have any more reasons to stretch the truth, and I'm so happy to finally be able to openly share this journey with you. The good, the bad, and the ugly.