A simple refrain ran through my mind during the first four months of pregnancy: WTF?!

Before I got knocked up this past summer, almost everything I knew about pregnancy came from movies and TV. You know the drill: The female protagonist pukes once, on the day she finds out she's pregnant. Then, in the very next shot, she's gorging on pizza and ice cream.

The rest of what I knew I learned from my mom, whose pregnancies were so blissful that she says she conceived me, her second kid, in part for the opportunity to feel great for another nine months. 

It's no wonder I thought pregnancy would be glorious. I expected 40 weeks of indulging food cravings, running my fingers through my radiant hair and displaying a general joie de vivre.

How wrong I was.

So far, this pregnancy — my first — has been about one thing only: barf. For months, I've been deciding what to eat based on how it will taste, and feel, coming back up. I have ralphed it all: spaghetti, cereal, apples, saltines, rice cakes, strawberries, water, coffee. During the first trimester, I was blowing chunks multiple times a day, yet each puke was unique, like an upchuck snowflake.

There was the time I barfed under a small tree on the expansive green at Middlebury College while students streamed past me on their way to class. The time I squatted behind the door of my car in the parking lot of a Dunkin Donuts. The time my heartburn turned into a projectile acid volcano.