The Worst Week Of My Pregnancy So Far

I've already recapped my first trimester, but I have told this story IRL so many times that I feel like it's worth sharing on here as well. You see there was one particular week that was basically AWFUL during my pregnancy. The week between week 11 and week 12, so the week of March 5th was just brutal. It was a culmination of everything and the crescendo was becoming so ill in my own home that I had to vacate for a week.

What the Heck Happened:

I've always been sensitive to smell, but of course it is heightened during pregnancy (I think pregnancy basically just magnifies your normal tendencies and takes them to extremes). So here I am, able to smell EVERYTHING within a 20 mile radius, and my nausea is at an absolute peak, so everything I smell that I think is yucky, is then associated with the feeling of being queasy and well yea, its not delightful. So there had been this smell in our home, it was faint but always bugged me a little, it was a lingering construction smell, maybe drywall, maybe paint, almost so faint others could hardly notice but to me it was like it consumed all the air I breathed. For a couple of days I walked around managing with a scarf wrapped around my face, spending as much time out of the house as possible. But then I came home on a Monday night, late after teaching at Spenga and the second I walked in the door I started uncontrollably gagging. There was no stopping it, there was nothing I could do.

So What Did I Do?

Immediately my husband wanted me out of the house, he didn’t want this to be an association that lasted. Side Note: When I was 12/13 I had Hodgkins Lymphoma and subsequently 6 months of chemo therapy. During that time I had terribly smell associations, so much so that just stepping onto the hospital floor before even getting my treatment I would start to dry heave from the cleaning solutions and perfumes that were every present. So the fear in both of us set in: What if I could never live in our house again? *second side note: our downstairs neighbor was also doing construction at this time and staining his floors when made a horrendous chemical smell seep through the walls for a good 2 days that didn't help*. So, my husband said, pack your bas your going to a hotel.

Hampton Inn West Loop:

My husband travels a ton and has lots of points so while I was packing he quickly hopped online to get me a room. Mind you it is 9pm and I have to be up at 6am to teach. I still haven’t showered from teaching etc, I'm exhausted, frantically packing, gagging my way through it. He said there was a brand new Hampton Inn that had just opened about 8 blocks away and was booking that. I said great, hopped in the car and headed over. He wasn't planning to stay with me because he had work to do an an early flight out of town the next morning but of course he got me settled. I lucked out and randomly got upgraded to massive room that couldn't have been more perfect.

What about the rest of the week:

I felt too guilty to spend an entire week on a staycation so with my hubs out of town I spent Tuesday & Wednesday night at our good friends house just a few blocks from our place. The crumby part was that I was living out of a suitcase that I mostly kept in the back of our car, and it was like 20 degrees out so all my clothes kept being FREEZING. By Thursday night he came home and we stayed again at the Hampton Inn. By then we had a plan in place to have a cleaning crew come on over the weekend to clean up and do a fumigation of sorts using air purifiers, so we headed up to the burbs to stay with my in-laws.

Luckily that turned out well and during that week on Thursday I had my 12 week check-up where I told them all about my awful smells & nausea and they prescribed me diclegis which I started taking over the weekend. 

The big return:

When we got home Sunday night I was so nervous to enter. But with 2 days of nausea meds under my belt and this massive cleaning I was determined to get back to normal life after a week of feeling like a vagabond/gypsy. For me I could still smell it but it wasn't as strong and the nausea meds kept me from gagging. it took a few more weeks of constantly boiling fruit and cinnamon on the stove top and getting a few lemon essential oils to diffuse but I have worked through the worst of it.

We did just do some more painting and we have more work coming and the smells are still there but I'm finally able to deal with them and not gag every time I walk in the house.

So curious if anyone else had similar smell issues during their pregnancy? I've heard from others in real life and on mommy blogs/boards that this is NOT uncommon, even specifically with construction smells!

I'm hoping the worst of it is behind me and I can finally move on but big thanks to the Hampton Inn for being LOVELY and my friends and family for letting us stay with you during those rough days!