If you don’t already know, I’m pregnant with my third child. And one of the most annoying side effects for me, are the unexpected bouts of emotion that come on suddenly. It�?Ts not just a little tear here or there, it can sometimes be heart wrenching, in your gut, I cannot take it anymore crying. The worse part of it is that I never know what might trigger it.

When I was pregnant with my first child, old carrots did me in. My husband made me a grilled cheese sandwich with baby carrots on the side. His big mistake was that he gave me old carrots. You know the ones that are starting to crack and have white stuff on the side. Let this be a lesson to all men making dinner for the women carrying their child… Don’t give a pregnant woman carrots with white stuff! To say the least, my pregnant self was lost in tears. In my pre-baby days, I would have had no problem telling my husband what he could do with those decrepit carrots. However, those days are over, as you will soon read.

My second child brought on even stronger uncontrollable emotions. I’ve seen every episode of ER, minus the last two seasons, at least twice. They play two episodes a day on TNT and sometimes on Saturday afternoons. I always watched the show, but it became my addiction when I couldn’t work very much during my first pregnancy. One Saturday afternoon, my husband and I are watching TV and before the intro plays, I knew just by the title which episode was coming up. Once again, I lost it. I really lost it. My husband didn’t know what to do. I tried to explain that it was the episode where Dr. Greene dies and he’s trying to connect with his daughter, but he just didn’t get it. Men just don’t get it.

If you’re are still reading and connecting to what I’m saying, then get ready because this one tops them all. Recently, my husband and I were over at my sister and brother-in-laws house. My other sister-in-law was also there and she was reminiscing about a funny story that had to do with her sister. It wasn’t as amusing to me, because it was one of those stories where you had to be there. My sister-in-law who the story was about was crying so hard she couldn’t talk. This made my other sister-in-law cry as well. That’s all it took, because before I knew it I was smack dab in the middle of an ugly cry. And not just any ugly cry, the kind where I could barely breathe and I could feel it coming up my throat. This just made them laugh and cry harder, including the husbands. I literally had to go to the bathroom, cry it out and try to compose myself.

The saying, “A baby changes everything.” is true. Thanks to all three of mine, I now have an open channel of emotion. Granted after this, my last pregnancy is over, I’ll be able to not freak out on carrots, realize ER is just a show, and control the dreaded ugly cry. That is unless I watch Terms of Endearment… that gets me every time.