{My bestie bridesmaid Julia, her bun in the oven, her sweet sweet baby Avery + awesome husband Rob}

I am SO EXCITED to share the latest installment of the Coffee With Friends series because it is a guest blog written by my dear childhood friend, bridesmaid and mom extraordinaire, Julia Bohn. (You can read about my love for her here.) Her stories of pregnancy are as hilarious as they are horrifying… So, when she announced she has a second baby on the way, I asked her to write a blog about the real truths of pregnancy. Her brand of honesty is rare – as you can see below, her take is so funny, but also something women can take comfort in if their pregnancy wasn’t like Gisele’s. Thank you for writing this beautiful piece, Julia!

{Avery helping me shop for wedding dresses}

I was so excited when Annie invited me to do a guest blog about the truth of pregnancy. From what I’ve read (and I never miss a blog), she typically asks celebrities to do guest blogs, so those of you who know me can refer to me as your celebrity friend from now on. As much as I dislike being pregnant, I love talking about pregnancy. It’s taboo to say (which is ridiculous), but I do not enjoy being pregnant… And I have a feeling I am not alone.  Yet somehow this cute face has convinced me to do it all over again:

I am now 19 weeks pregnant with my second baby and all the horrors of pregnancy have come flooding back to me. Here are my truths of pregnancy:

{Me, 40+ weeks pregnant with Avery, maybe 3 days overdue? She was a week late and I was a ball of fury.}

1. I am not glowing. It’s sweat. I’m either sweating from walking up stairs, which leaves me completely winded, or because my body temperature seems to run at a new furious rate of HOT, like I am growing a tiny Hot Tamales factory inside of me. It could also be leftover beads of sweat from constantly throwing up.

{Editor’s Note: She’s totally glowing. Here, literally.}

2. Nausea is the worst. My nausea lasted until I was 16 weeks pregnant each time.  Whoever named it “morning sickness” was a real ding-dong, because it lasts all day, every day (and every night).  It is the most all-consuming, terrible feeling and even the thought of some foods leaves me sick to my stomach.  I’ve tried every last remedy out there, but for me the only thing that works is eating carbs, barely moving and waiting it out. If one more person suggests that I try ginger, I might go Tanya Harding on them and whack them with a stick of ginger. My grandmother, the toughest woman I know, felt sick for her ENTIRE first pregnancy in the 1950’s while living in the Philippines. She couldn’t even get her hands on a bag of Bugles and some blue Gatorade, so I don’t know how she survived. This time around was especially eventful for me because I had to dodge my 15-month-old daughter shoving her fish crackers in my face while I was puking. I can no longer stand the sight of fish crackers. Avery saw me throw up so much that she now does this impression daily…

{Pretty sure this is what she thinks the toilet is for. Potty training should be interesting after this.}

3. Food consumes my entire life. The cravings are real – this morning I ate steak nachos at 9am. I’m going to visit Annie in L.A. next week because I love her, but she knows it’s mainly for the watermelon juice at Taqueria Escuela that I’ve been fantasizing about for the last five days. Now that my belly is big enough to be considered “definitely pregnant” and not just “possibly overweight,” I have reached the stage where I can’t eat more than a toddler in one sitting. This means that I have to find something to eat every 1.5-2 hours or I am famished. It’s a never-ending battle that sometimes ends in me going to bed at 7pm just so I don’t have to think of something to eat for a third dinner.

4. Brushing my teeth made me barf for the first four months, so I had to go caveman-style and go without most nights (sorry to my dentist, Dr. Buchan… and Rob). Now that I can finally brush my teeth without gagging, my gums are SO sensitive. They bleed like crazy when I brush or floss. It’s my understanding that pregnant women have about 50% more blood than non-pregnant humans, which really grosses me out. My only solace is that I loved The Twilight Saga. So, when this happens, I obviously just imagine that I am Edward’s exceptionally beautiful sister, Rosalie.

5. I’m SO Tired. Seriously. I’m so tired I barely want to type out an explanation of it. Just trust me. Growing people is tiring.

6. I can’t eat soft cheese. To me, this is more tragic than giving up wine or sushi for 9 months. I love cheese like Annie loves frosting. I literally had a dream about a giant hamburger topped with a mountain of blue cheese last night.

7. Heartburn hurts so bad. The first time I got heartburn, I thought I was having a full-blown heart attack and I lay on the ground, writhing in pain, yelling at my husband to call 911. Luckily, he is slightly less of a hypochondriac than I am, so he calmly asked me all the right questions and we narrowed it down to heartburn, instead of my imminent death.  Although I still think that first time may have been a tiny heart attack, I continued to live with the pain of heartburn for 9 months. I could look at a burrito and get heartburn. I can’t even imagine how people live with it on a daily basis with no end in sight. You have my sympathy and respect.

8. Everything is terrifying. One day your baby kicks and moves constantly (which is amazing), and then the next day it barely moves. WHY!? I am constantly over-thinking everything. “If I eat a hotdog, could my baby die?” “OMG, I just used a Clorox wipe without gloves!” “Should I switch to a deodorant without antiperspirant? Or should I just stop wearing deodorant all together?” (Sorry again, Rob.) “Was that bath too hot? Did I just hard-boil my baby?” The other day, I made cookies and (like any normal person would) I ate half of the dough. Afterward I Googled “Can pregnant women eat cookie dough?” and the answers I found were NO, NO, and NO. CUE THE TERROR!

9. I have to pee all the time. In the beginning, hormones make you have to pee constantly. It’s embarrassing because no one can tell you are pregnant while you are doing the pee-dance in line for the bathroom. In the later months, you have to pee all the time because it feels like there is a piano sitting on your bladder. I pee every time I sneeze, and trampolines are out of the question. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I considered placing a bucket next to my bed so I wouldn’t have to hoist myself out of bed and down the hall 15 times in the night to pee, but my husband vetoed the idea. I might try again this time.

10. I cry all the time. I will preface this by saying that in my normal, non-pregnant life I cry often. I cry anytime children come together in any type of assembly. I cry when groups of people sing, and I cried at every single episode of Parenthood. When I am pregnant, my hormones are up more than a few notches. I cry when I plan a dinner and forget to pick up one of the ingredients. I recently cried out of hysterical laughter when the lady at Jack’s Urban Eats tried to offer me fries or soup as a side and she said “Froup” and then looked mortified (sorry, lady). I cried when I put on my husband’s biggest t-shirt to sleep in and it fit me like a leotard. I even cried this morning when I accidentally killed a bumble-bee.

This time around, while I look forward to meeting my baby at the end of all this craziness (I’ll save the joys of birth for another blog), I also get to look forward to being in Annie and Tony’s amazing wedding at 38 weeks pregnant! While I hope to look like a version of Blake Lively when she was pregnant:

{image via}

I have a feeling I will look more like this….

{image via}

If I am on bed rest again, I plan on making the groomsman wheel me down the aisle, like I made my sweet husband do for Annie and Tony’s TONANNIE show at the Groundlings. If I’m not on bed rest, I will be there in my dancing shoes (flats, obviously) ready to dance the night away!

Editor’s Note: Julia’s wonderful husband Rob, a U.S. Marine and 4-time prom king, spent part of his childhood in Vanuatu and a lot of his family still lives there. Vanuatu was recently devastated Tropical Cyclone Pam; if you’re able to help, please visit Save the Children.