Hi, this is Monica Packer, and you're listening to About Progress, where we are about

progress made practical. When I had my baby a year ago, I expected a lot of things.

I expected to be very sleep deprived, to have to learn a lot of things all over again,

breastfeeding, I'm looking at you.

I expected that I'd feel really anxious and possibly

even depressed that I'd have a hard time figuring out what to put on my body and

how to move it again and I also expected that I love that little face more than I ever thought possible and so with my kids.

And all of those things ended up being very true.

But the thing that happened that I was not expecting

was an insatiable hunger.

I think most women feel voracious after giving birth and I expected that but for me it was this

kind of hunger that felt all-consuming and endless. I was never satisfied. I always wanted more. And that feeling

of wanting more really terrified me. You see for the previous nine months I experienced this perpetual state of nausea,

a nausea that was on a spectrum that spanned from deathly ill to end of the stomach flu ill.

And it was the kind that not only made it a challenge to eat, but I also stole all of my hunger

cues and my cravings alongside it throughout the entire pregnancy.

Now I was sick with my other pregnancies too but my morning sickness, can we just do away

with this term by the way?

It started sooner and it lasted longer and got worse with each child.

But I personally think it didn't help that I was much older than when I had had my last child

five years prior and I was also

considered a geriatric pregnancy which is another term I think we can do

...