More Than Morning Sickness

When I think about my pregnancy it is mixed with nausea, sleepless nights, anxiety, joy, euphoria, and angst. I associate this time of my life with this really melancholy song called Alone by Trampled by Turtles, yes I promise that is a real band name. It must have been a part of a movie or a playlist I landed on at the time, but the song stuck with me forever, after my ears heard it while rubbing my pregnant belly.  

It goes like this: 

“Come into the world

Alone.

And you go out of the world 

Alone. 

But in between, there’s you and me.”

I started uncontrollably sobbing, and yes I know pregnancy hormones, but also just envisioning the ‘in between’ with ‘you and me’ once this little one was welcomed into the world was overwhelming, yet joyous at the same time. 

I remember then being enraged by thinking this band, this artist, would think we truly come into the world alone because hello… What am I chopped liver?! Am I just a vessel to aid my daughter in taking her first breath?! I know that’s not what the artist probably meant, to offend a very pregnant woman, but again that’s where my brain went. 

Then the next lines came through the speakers: 

“The summer breezes blow 

So tall. 

And the winter nights are cold 

And so long. 

In between, the falling leaves.”  

I found out we were pregnant with Jules in summertime. Everything felt so grand and exciting. Then the winter months hit where I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and gave myself daily insulin shots.

But before that, the falling leaves, the changing leaves, the seasons changing if you will… was a reminder of how temporary this all is. Seasons. Our Lives. My Pregnancy. I started visualizing my pregnancy as a season, and oh how that thought process would carry me through every single season of Motherhood. 

But it wasn’t till I was almost due and then early postpartum that I truly understood the next words: 

“The days and nights are killing me,

The light and dark are still in me, 

But there’s an anchor on the beach, 

So let the wind blow hard, 

And bring a falling star.”

Jules was my falling star & my husband was my anchor. There were glimmers between the pregnancy haze, and between the postpartum anxiety + PTSD, that would shine through like a falling star across a dark sky. Her flips and kicks inside my belly. Her hiccups that I could feel like a small tickle. Once earthside, Her lips after she finished eating, pouty & red. Her eyes looking up at me with such awe and wonder. Her fingers wrapped around mine. The smell of her hair after a good bath. The sound of her first real laugh.

I forget about the glimmers sometimes when I think about how difficult my pregnancy was. After processing it repeatedly in therapy for the past 6 years I can confidently say now the haze is thinner, and the glimmers are brighter. When you’re in the trenches through it's hard to see anything else at the time. It’s also hard to truly visualize the glimmers when they’re still not earthside. 

The power lies in the duality of the moments. It’s part normalizing that the days and nights truly can be excruciatingly pregnant or postpartum, and quite literally painful, while also recognizing there is an anchor or maybe a falling star on the horizon - all at the same time. Holding space for all the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful allows pregnancy to be what it is without judgment which in turn is an anchor in itself.  

So as I sing this song now, I smile. I laugh when the artist makes me feel like chopped liver, and I smile when I remember the days and nights that made me the Mom I am today.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejfMrZQU3Eo&list=RDejfMrZQU3Eo&start_radio=1

-- Jordan O'Brien | Owner of Carnation Counseling LLC | October 7, 2025