The Wonnacotts’ March: On being pregnant, breaking things at Top Golf, and the elusive nature of motivation

Dear family,

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: I am pregnant!

The facts: my anticipated due date is September 5th; I’m 17 weeks along; I’m really hoping I’m not like my grandmother who reports, “I was throwing up all the way through my pregnancy. I threw up in the delivery room.”

So far, second trimester is much more enjoyable than first, though I still throw up every once in a while. I think I’m done, and then I have a day like this past Sunday, when I wake up after dreaming that I dry-swallowed my prenatal vitamin, spend thirty seconds swallowing nothing to convince my body that I didn’t actually do anything so stupid, and then resignedly running to the bathroom to throw up because my body refused to be convinced.

I threw up three times that morning.¹

I knew vaguely that morning sickness existed, but I did not realize how ubiquitous it was until I became pregnant. Rather than the question being, “Are you one of those people that gets morning sickness during pregnancy?” the question instead seems to be, “How bad will your morning sickness be compared to mine?”²

I should clarify that my morning sickness has not really been that bad. At my worst, I threw up perhaps five mornings out of seven, and it’s usually first thing before I’ve eaten anything. There have only been a few occasions when I threw up after eating, and several more occasions when I was really looking forward to a meal I made, ate it once, and then felt too nauseous to ever consider eating any of the leftovers that meal created.

Please do not try to feed me Cafe Rio pork³. I’m really sorry, I just don’t want it.

One of my most notable morning sickness experiences actually happened this week. I remember about six weeks ago when I asked Marianne, Luke’s mother, what I should do if I ever need to throw up while driving, and she said that you kind of just need to pull over and do your thing.

Let me tell you what I actually did when I had to throw up while driving to work.

One Tuesday in February, I decided to treat myself to a kolache before work. I don’t ever buy breakfast before work, but had made this whole plan to drive Luke so he could be at the SLC airport at 5:45 AM. I figured I could make it fun if I drove him, treated myself to a fun breakfast, and then just slowly ate and relaxed until my work started in Draper at 8 AM.

Luke ended getting a ride from someone who he discovered was on his same flight, but I had gotten myself really excited about buying a yummy breakfast. So, I got to sleep in until 6 AM and decided to grab a kolache in downtown Provo before driving up for work. I even bought myself TWO kolaches, just in case I wanted a second one. Because I deserved a treat.

I got my two kolaches in a brown paper bag and chose one of them to eat while driving to work. I was feeling great until around American Fork, which is when I realized that I was about to throw up all of kolache number one.

There was a time when I brought a plastic bag in the car with me while driving to work, but after a few weeks of feeling no need to use it, I stopped being so prepared. And I did not feel like I had the time or presence of mind to head check to get across three lanes and throw up on the side of the road. So, what I was left with was the brown paper bag with my second kolache in it.

I reached for the bag, threw the second kolache into the passenger seat (because I guess I had the time and presence of mind for that) and managed to get the bag in position for me to throw up in while actively driving. I’m proud to say that the wheel was steady, my speed was controlled (if a little slow), and my eyes were on the road as I lost what felt like much more mass and volume than makes up a kolache into my bag.

Unfortunately, my brown paper bag, while an excellent container for freshly baked, undigested kolaches, was not a strong receiver of whatever it is I put back into it.

So, I pulled off on the next exit, found a gas station, threw away my bag, and ran into the bathroom to clean off my coat, dress, face, and hands, which were not completely unaffected by my skillful but not immaculate kolache regurgitation.

I got back in my car, finished my drive to work, ate the second kolache with more successful results, and got to work with seven minutes to spare. I disinfected my clothes with some fabric spray in our classroom, had a mint, and no one ever had to know what happened.

Maybe you didn’t want to read that. But I suppose I wanted to write about it, so here you go.

So, all in all, I’m realizing that pregnancy provides exciting stories about exceedingly unpleasant moments in our lives that only people in our little (or, well, pretty large) club can exactly relate to. But you can’t complain too much because it’s all for something completely worth it and wonderfully fulfilling. You know, I hope.⁴

We don’t know the gender of the baby yet, though we have been offered a blood test that would be able to tell us. For those who don’t know, you can now find out gender as early as ten weeks because they can find the baby’s DNA in the mother’s blood. Isn’t that fascinating?

Luke and I aren’t super impatient to learn the sex of our baby. I remember feeling early on that I would have a girl first, and Luke is, of course, convinced that we’ll have a boy. Unfortunately, Luke is joined by his whole family in wanting us to have a boy, so while I would actually be very happy with either, I feel inclined to stubbornly hold to my assertion that the baby is a girl.

Part of the reason Luke’s family wants us to have a boy is because the two existing Wonnacott grandchildren are both girls. And two girls is just too many girls apparently, which I suppose could be fair for a family of four sons and one final daughter.

There’s also the fact that our baby will actually be the third Wonnacott baby born in 2026, as both of Luke’s sisters-in-law will be having their babies in June and July of this year. The first mother-to-be to discover the sex of their child is having a boy, which means that it would be fun for all the rest to be boys, too.

Hopefully Alex Willis will confirm my story that male and female cousins can be pretty close. Honestly, I think the primary factor is proximity rather than gender. But I’ve also never been a boy, and maybe they feel differently.

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Now that I’ve gotten all of that off my chest, I can write about what we’ve actually done these last two months.

Our most exciting adventure was trip to Los Angeles to visit various aunts, uncles, and cousins over Presidents Day weekend. Rick, Mimi, and Josie are my relatives there, while Luke has Steve, Lisa, Beth, and Gregory and all of their children. With so many families to visit, it was a busy weekend and so very fun.

We did most of our exploring with Rick and Mimi on Saturday. They took us to the La Brea Tar Pits (or, as my old girl scout troop affectionately calls them, “The ‘The Tar’ Tar Pits”) and the beach, as well as treated us to some great bagels and thai food, both of which are more plentiful in LA than in Provo, Utah.

I had been to the tar pits once before, but it was Luke’s first time. It’s kind of amazing how such an old site for natural history lives right in the middle of the downtown LA.

Rick and Mimi were excellent and amusing tour guides and Luke and I loved walking around downtown LA with them.

Then we spent a more stationary but no less exciting day with Luke’s side of the family, with a nice Sunday dinner (at 3 PM, ”as the Mormons do it”) and plenty of play time with Luke’s ten-month-old twin cousins.

It was during this trip that we started to reveal to our extended family that I am pregnant, largely because we didn’t feel like lying when they asked whether I was looking for teaching jobs in the fall, or because we didn’t want them to be too concerned or offended when I ran to the bathroom to throw up the very yummy 3 PM Sunday dinner they had made for us.

The weekend we spent in LA also happened to include Valentine’s Day, which is one of my favorite holidays.

I think I probably wrote about the way I was raised to view Valentine’s Day last year, so I won’t spend too much time on it now. Suffice it to say that I’ve always viewed it as more of a family holiday than a romantic holiday, and so I was happy when Luke accepted my suggestion that we send hand-written valentines to my parents and siblings, and raised me the suggestion that we also send cards to some friends and family who we had stayed with over the last year.

This was a larger scale than I’d ever created valentines on before, but Luke seemed pretty enthusiastic about it, so I figured it would all work out.

Unfortunately, Luke wrote one Valentine and immediately realized that it really did not feel natural to write extensive letters to his brothers explaining why exactly he loved them so much. After about a week, he managed to get cards written to everyone. He then successfully decorated one of these cards before realizing that he really felt no skill or desire to decorate the rest of them.

So, unless you are Ellie, the card you may or may not have received was decorated by me. Not that they’re anything to be particularly proud of, but I’m proud of them anyway.

For the first time, Luke and I exchanged gifts on Valentine’s Day, which was not something planned or communicated before about 9 PM on Valentine’s Day itself.

It’s safe to say that we don’t really know what our holiday traditions are yet, but we’re slowly figuring them out, and I think that’s a lot of fun.

It is unlikely that going to LA will be a regular part of our Valentine’s Day tradition, but I could see it happening. Luke is especially fond of road trips, a tradition he picked up from his family growing up. It’s not that my family didn’t go on road trips, but Luke’s just sound more intense than ours were.

This is mostly because Luke’s family, as far as I’m told, never stayed the night anywhere during a road trip. The parents would merely take driving in 4-8 hour shifts and drive through the night(s) until they got where they were going.

That is how we do our road trips now, although Luke’s shifts are almost always longer than mine.

Because I had an event I wanted to attend on Friday night and because we thought it would be less obnoxious to arrive at Rick and Mimi’s house at 6 AM instead of 3 AM, we didn’t begin our drive to LA until about 9:30 PM on Friday night.

Luke, luckily, is much better at staying alert and driving for long periods of time than I am, and I think is also less likely to be irked by people on the road than I am. Trucks, especially, make me angry by their very existence, which I probably inherited from my dad.

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On a happier note, Luke and I have been continuing to find time to entertain ourselves and others now that we don’t have school to keep us busy anymore. A friend of Luke’s (from LinkedIn) offered him a place on his TopGolf Platinum membership, which gives Luke the chance to practice his driving, as well as gives us an easy activity to plan with friends that costs us and them nothing.

Luke has started taking a few of his coworkers to Top Golf every Wednesday after work. I sometimes join them, but I sometimes have conflicting plans. I’m not sure I’m really getting any better, and if my performance during our last jaunt through a par three course is any indication, my putting is still my strongest golf skill. I’m not sure I can give Top Golf credit for that one.

Luke, while working on his driving, managed to break a $500 Callaway driver this last Wednesday.

I had left Top Golf early to audition for a local production of Frozen (I didn’t get a part, but I’m proud of myself for trying), and apparently he and his friends decided to watch a video of Tiger Woods driving to give them some ideas on how to improve. The Tiger Woods technique was working pretty well for Luke, but his hands were slowly getting sweatier as he hit some pretty long drives over and over again.

One of his fellow golfers suggested a slight change to his technique, and I guess the combination of the sweaty hands and the attempt to try something a little new led to him completely missing the ball and letting the club slip out of his grip. The club (which was a Top Golf rental that comes complimentary with Luke’s special membership) flew into the ceiling and split in half, the head of the club flying out fifteen yards into the range and the grip getting stuck in the netting overhead.

Luckily, the nice people at Top Golf don’t charge for the destruction of their clubs if they can look back on footage and confirm that the damage was unintentional.

Luke was still laughing when he told me about the experience forty minutes after the fact.

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We were lucky enough during these last two months to participate in Christmas presents that were scheduled out in advance for us. First, we watched Fiddler on the Roof at Hale Centre Theater, courtesy of Marianne.

Next, we got to feed penguins at the aquarium with Hannah and Emma, which was one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had.

We had half an hour in this little room that penguins had the option of walking in to. I was a little worried at first, because the nice penguin employee explained to us that they this experience was optional for the penguins and no one would force the penguins to come in if they didn’t feel like it.

Luckily, the penguins know this weird little side room with fascinated humans is a reliable food source, so there was nothing to worry about.

We were all very happy, and I officially am glad that I have teeth so I don’t have to eat fish the way penguins do, because it looks quite uncomfortable.

Now we’ve used up all of our Christmas presents, but we’ve also gotten through March, so I think we can say we successfully survived the hardest part of the year.

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I’ve struggled these last few months to feel very motivated to do…well, anything. Waking up has been more difficult than it has ever been. I grew up in a household where both parents were up by six even on weekends, and I always felt like I’d wasted the day if I slept in until seven. Nowadays, my job requires that I leave the house by 7:15 at the latest, so I’ve slowly crept from waking up at six o’clock every morning, to six-fifteen, to now six-thirty, with the occasional six-forty-five sneaked in. 

I like to blame this on being pregnant. It very well could be the effect of the hormonal changes associated with pregnancy, or the fatigue of growing another human being, or it could be a lull in my motivation as I still have no interest in most of the things I spend my time on now that I’ve graduated from college.

Not that I have no interest in teaching, but I often find myself resenting the way APA asks me to do it, or the distance I have to travel to get to the school, or just the general culture that the administration strives to create for the students.

Then I go home and have no desire to cook, clean, read, write, or do anything to better myself. I just want to sit and do nothing. I tell myself that I really want to develop some kind of hobby, but in reality I just want to sit there, and I’m pretty satisfied doing so. Though thinking about it makes me sad.

I share all this to acknowledge that it may be an unseen consequence of oh-so-many things, and I’m now happy to report that I’m feeling optimistic about finally feeling a little better.

This week, I started and ended several days by doing yoga along to a few quick, ten-minute YouTube videos. And I felt so much better. 

I was more grateful for my job and less resentful of everything the school chooses to do.

I was quicker to get out of bed, less dizzy standing up, and generally ready to go in time to not feel terribly rushed out the door. 

I was more excited about whatever social engagements Luke and I made for ourselves most evenings of this week. 

And I finally actually wanted to write this letter. 

I’m not giving yoga all of the credit for these things. It could, again, be a hormonal change, or the result of a particularly strong influence from the Spirit last weekend during stake conference, or the guilt of not exercising at all while pregnant finally growing strong enough to lead to action.

It was also teacher appreciation week at school last week, which may be the reason I was less resentful about my job. I’m hoping to keep my gratitude up this next week though.

I had a whole letter pretty much written for February, and some of it is included in this letter as well. But the end of February came and went and I couldn’t get myself to polish the letter enough to feel comfortable posting it. So here we are. 

There are several things that I am grateful for and that I believe truly do motivate me and make my life better:

1. My family — My dad’s letter, written while jet lagged in Greece and published out of habit, motivated me to just get something written, and he has often inspired me just write about what I want to write about, even if I’m not sure anyone else will care to or feel comfortable reading it. I also frequently get calls in the morning from Ari. Sometimes I don’t feel like taking calls, but I’ve made it a rule that I never ignore a call for any reason besides actually being unavailable to take it. And talking to Ari, or my mom, or Grace, or Hannah always makes me feel happier and more excited about life.
2. My husband — Luke is one of the most self-motivated people I know. If you follow him on any social media, you’ll notice that he’s recently become active on his platforms besides LinkedIn. He’s working with a friend of ours to create video content for every week, often creating things that he would be too embarrassed to post himself, so he has our friend do it for him. But he’s expanding, trying something new, and getting himself out there, and I think that’s really cool. Even if we’re both sometimes a little mortified by the prospect of it. He also encourages me to get out of the house, go to the temple, spend time with friends, help him clean, and really do anything that I’ve done over the last two months. I’m grateful that he loves life and loves people so much, and that he loves me enough to drag me along.
3. Church — I’ve realized that my responsibilities at church are nearly the only duties I have that I have a true intrinsic motivation to see through. I want to contribute to my church community and I want to have some kind of impact on the lives of some of my ward members. So I go to church, I go to ward council, and I do my best to magnify my calling there. I also might as well be called to the music committee, since Luke and I are the most faithful choir members, I’m a frequent organist, and both Luke and I have performed in multiple musical numbers upon request. I love the feeling of contributing to a community and to feel appreciated by that community.

So, while I know that saying I lack motivation sounds concerning, I think I’m coming around to feeling healthier and happier. Whether any of this has to do with pregnancy, I’ll probably never know, but the feelings are real regardless. I’m grateful that I have so many people and communities to support me and help me keep finding ways to enjoy life even when, for whatever reason, I feel inclined to be irritated by it.

So, thank you all for being part of my list of things to be grateful for. Happy Easter. I hope you have a wonderful Holy Week and a wonderful April. I look forward to sharing more news about our growing family with you soon.

Love,

Sophie et al.

1. This, admittedly, may partially have been due to some emotional distress I encountered later in the morning. ↩︎
2. I’ve met a few unicorns who casually mention that they never had any morning sickness, and I’m happy for them. I really am. ↩︎
3. I recognize that the meal for the last Willis potluck was Cafe Rio pork. I was not offended and enjoyed myself anyway. In fact, I ate enough that I felt a little sick afterwards. ↩︎
4. As I wrote this, I realized that this same paragraph could be written about LDS missions. ↩︎