Being a pregnant law student (1st trimester)

When I was thinking about thinking about having a baby in law school, I scoured the internet searching for blogs of women who had done the same thing, hoping to get some information on what it would be like. This is pretty much pointless because anyone will tell you that no pregnancy is like another and each law school is different, but it was an obsession anyway. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this topic later, but I figured that I'd write about things so far:

The absolute biggest complaint is exhaustion. I had a severe case of mono in college and I was nowhere near this tired. Its the kind of tiredness that comes out of nowhere and absolutely knocks you out. I will get 8 hours of sleep, be awake and perky all morning, and then around 2pm my body will start shutting down. There is pretty much nothing I can do about this. During those first few weeks I used to worry it would happen while I was driving because I wasn't sure it was safe for me to stay on the road (I live less than 20 min. from the law school). I also had 2 afternoon finals and I was terrified I would involuntarily fall asleep halfway through. I read everything I could find about the dangers of caffeine while pregnant and decided a few diet cokes wouldn't hurt anything. Diet coke combined with sheer will got me through those exams. I'm now at 11 weeks and the exhaustion has gotten better- I still get really tired, but I can push through it if necessary. The reading takes me longer, but I don't actually slump over the library table in a narcoleptic fit.

I have been very fortunate with morning sickness. While I woke up every morning feeling like I'd been out all night drinking (and then hugging the toilet), I never actually threw up. I credit this partly to the Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy which told me, in its infinite wisdom, that unlike when you've drank too much, throwing up because of morning sickness does not actually make you feel better. I hate throwing up, so even though my body was pretty sure I should, I would force down flat ginger ale and try to remember the days where I woke up to an alarm and not nausea. (I was quite lucky- some of my friends couldn't keep it down no matter how hard they tried.) The queasiness continues off and on, but pretty much went away by the time classes began (I was 9 weeks). There is still a lot of food that I feel like I'll never want to eat again (basically anything that isn't a carb covered in cheese), but I am able to choke down salads and fruit. A benefit is that things like cake, ice cream, and brownies all sound terrible, so while I eat pizza for most meals, at least I don't add on dessert!

Two of my professors know of my "condition" as do a lot of my classmates. Pretty much everyone has been quite congratulatory (even while thinking- "she is nuts")- in fact, my worst reaction so far remains my own family. Even the in-laws were thrilled. One of my professors, who has a 2-year old himself, wrote an incredibly kind email about how wonderful it was and how this matters so much more than school. I have saved the email to remind him of his wise words come exam time...

So that's about it. The hardest thing is battling the urge to fall into a deep, long sleep every afternoon. I can't imagine being pregnant while working- at least now I was able to schedule all my classes to be over by 12:10pm. If I go home and sleep all afternoon, all it means is that I have to hide behind my laptop when the professor calls on people the next day. I have no clients or partners who need me to be productive. I really don't know how they do it.