The morning sickness is a lie. It's not morning sickness. It's ALL DAY sickness. It's 'I wake up nauseous and I go to sleep nauseous and in between I am also nauseous' sickness. The name is propaganda designed to make pregnant women feel bad for being sick at 3 PM.
Jen has become my pregnancy guru. She's been through it — Dylan was born at Lejeune, she knows the base hospital, she knows the OB clinic, she knows which midwife is kind and which one is brisk and how to navigate the military healthcare system when you're growing a human and also trying not to vomit on the intake paperwork.
First prenatal appointment was Wednesday. The base clinic is efficient and impersonal, like everything military. You check in, you wait, you pee in a cup, you wait more, you see a nurse practitioner who confirms what the plastic stick already told you: pregnant. Due date: November 28th. Approximately.
'Your husband?' the nurse asked, checking boxes on a form.
'Deploying in June.'
She nodded. No reaction. She's heard it a hundred times. A thousand times. She wrote it down — 'spouse deployed during pregnancy' — in a checkbox that exists because enough military wives are pregnant during deployments that there's a checkbox for it.
A checkbox. My life is a checkbox.
Ryan has been incredibly sweet, which is saying something because Ryan is always sweet. He makes me toast before he leaves at 0500 (plain, dry, the only thing I can stomach). He bought ginger ale in bulk. He rubs my back when the nausea is bad. He's reading a book called 'The Expectant Father' that Torres gave him, which is heartbreaking and adorable.
I've been cooking what I can stomach, which is limited. The smell of most food makes me gag. Mom called and walked me through her 'first trimester survival menu': plain rice, saltines, dry toast, ginger tea, chicken broth, applesauce, and — this surprised me — lemon popsicles. 'Suck on a lemon popsicle when the nausea is bad,' she said. 'The cold and the sour trick your brain.'
It works. The lemon popsicle thing actually works. My mother, who never went to medical school, has pregnancy remedies that outperform the military healthcare system.
The only real food I've eaten this week is Mom's potato soup — the simple one, potatoes and broth and a little salt. Nothing fancy. Nothing that smells. Just warmth and starch and survival.
This is what the first trimester is: survival. You survive the nausea and the exhaustion and the checkbox and the husband who's deploying and you eat what you can and you don't ask for more.
Mom survived this with me. Mom survived this with Megan. Mom survived.
I'll survive too.
Mom’s potato soup wasn’t a recipe so much as a lifeline—the only real food I managed all week, and I kept coming back to it because it asked nothing of me: no strong smells, no complicated flavors, just warmth and starch and something that felt like being taken care of. Now that I’m on the other side of the worst days (or at least surviving them), I wanted to write it down—the actual version, with actual amounts—because this is the kind of meal that belongs in your back pocket whether you’re fighting nausea, feeding someone who is, or just needing a bowl of something that doesn’t demand anything from you. Meat eaters, skeptics, first trimester veterans: this one’s for all of us.
Best Vegetarian Meals for Meat Eaters: Simple Potato Soup
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
- 4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
- 2 cups water
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon white pepper (optional—omit if sensitive to smell)
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1 clove garlic, minced (optional—omit if nausea is severe)
Instructions
- Combine and boil. Add the cubed potatoes, vegetable broth, and water to a large pot. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
- Simmer until tender. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 18–22 minutes, until potatoes are completely soft and beginning to fall apart when pressed with a spoon.
- Mash gently. Use a potato masher or the back of a large spoon to mash roughly half the potatoes directly in the pot, leaving some chunks for texture. Do not blend—the rustic texture is what makes this soup feel substantial without being heavy.
- Finish and season. Stir in the butter until melted. Add salt to taste. If using garlic and white pepper, stir in now. Simmer 2 more minutes to meld.
- Serve warm. Ladle into bowls. Best served plain, exactly as it is.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 195 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 39g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 420mg
About the cook who shared this
Rachel Abernathy
Week 111 of Rachel’s 30-year story
· San Diego, California
Rachel is a twenty-eight-year-old Marine wife and mom of two who has moved five times in six years and learned to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with half her cookware still in boxes. She married young, survived postpartum depression, and feeds her family of four on a junior Marine's salary with a freezer full of pre-made meals and a crockpot that has never let her down. She writes for the military spouses who are cooking dinner alone in base housing and wondering if they're enough. You are.
