by Melissa Uhles

While no one can argue, pregnancy is a necessary evil with a (hopefully) positive end, it doesn’t stop me wanting my husband to carry the next baby. Pregnancy has made me realize how much I took for granted in those pre-pregnancy days. Here are a few things I wish I’d savored more before they were gone, girl.

• Savoring a delicious cup of coffee without guilt, paranoia or heart palpitations

• Eating more than one tuna sandwich a week

• Eating deli meat with reckless abandon

• Imbibing with that sweet grape elixir that makes everything just a little more tolerable.

• Drinking all the herbal tea I could get my hands on for anything that ails me

• Not vomiting regularly

• Wearing something other than a bathrobe

• Being able to walk upstairs or through the grocery store without feeling like a 90 year old asthmatic

• Smelling ordinary things like banana peels without running to the bathroom and obsessively needing to take out the trash

• Hormonal balance, i.e. not wanting to push my husband off the balcony because he’s using a soap that has a smell I suddenly can’t stand.

• Breathing normally

• Sleeping without a pile of strategically placed pillows and without waking up to pee every hour.

• Being able to wear normal pants and bras without sewing extensions in everything

• Riding roller coasters

• Being free of leg cramps

• Living without sea bands, spearmint gum and bags of nuts in the pockets of all my hoodies

• Never burping so loudly and constantly I can be heard in Afghanistan

• Living heartburn free

• Having energy to work or make social plans or load the dishwasher

• Driving without feeling that I might collapse at the wheel from lightheadedness

• Having to be responsible for only my own health and body

• Going to the doctor once every 3 years instead of once every 3 weeks

• Sitting down and standing up with ease and effervescence

• Eating ice cream knowing it might stick to my thighs but wouldn’t travel through my placenta to my unborn baby who now may be addicted to chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream which I later realized I shouldn’t have eaten in the first place because of the raw egg in it.

Now I’ll half glass full it. Here are a few things about pregnancy that are a-ok:

Getting to moan to my friends and get their sympathy about my pregnancy aches and pains.

Creating a life that is part me, part my patient husband and part unique individual that I can’t wait to get to know is the best part of all.