In the wake of the mass freakout over Amber Miller running a marathon while ginormously pregnant (and subsequently going into labor after she walked the last 13 miles), I keep thinking how impressed I am by her dedication—and how utterly foreign it is to me. I don't hold the opinion that she did anything unsafe, I just cannot for the life of me imagine what it's like to run a half marathon with a full term belly. (For one thing, I'm pretty sure I would have slowly but steadily peed myself the entire time.)

Also, I was way too busy to take the time to train for and participate in a marathon. You see, during both my pregnancies, I had one very important task that occupied nearly all of my waking hours and most of my nighttime dreams: food. Food, and the act of shoving mass quantities of it into my pregnant pie-hole.

It's a question every green-around-the-gills pregnant woman has asked for decades: Why do they call it morning sickness when it lasts all day?? (Usually this question is asked while hunched over a toilet bowl.)

Of course, morning sickness actually is confined to the a.m. hours for some women, but for others, it's all queasy, all the time.

Even worse, in some women, this seasick feeling lasts for months. Like, a lot of months.

Such was the case for actress Bryce Dallas Howard (Eclipse, The Help, 50/50).

I adore tea. In fact, I love it about as much as I love coffee (which certainly says something!), and we have a huge stash of many different kinds. So imagine how pleased I was while pregnant to learn how many different types of teas are beneficial to pregnant women!

I'm not just talking about the mint tea that was the only liquid I could keep down in the first trimester, but other teas. Both individual types and also blends can help cure what ails ya, from morning sickness and heartburn. There are types that can even help tone your uterus to prepare for birth.

Not to mention, they taste great.

Jewel is one of the most down to earth celebrities of recent time. She came from humble beginnings and has never seemed to let fame and fortune take her off onto a course she knew wasn't right for her. So it's not surprising that in pregnancy, she's also staying true to herself and what she knows to be right, but it is refreshing.

In a recent interview with Fit Pregnancy, she talks in depth about how pregnancy has changed her body, and how she's coped with the changes as she anticipates the arrival of her baby this summer. While she sees medical doctors, she's found listening to her own body and seeking natural remedies from naturopaths have worked best for her.

I was shocked when an August heatwave hit during my third trimester with my son and my early pregnancy queasiness came back full force. "I thought this was only supposed to happen in the beginning!" I wailed to my OB. "It's the heat," she explained. "This isn't uncommon." Bummer. Everybody talks about pregnancy being a time of ravenous hunger and strange tastes, but hot summer temps can zap your appetite even when you're eating for two. Of course, you still have to keep eating (and drinking -- whenever I got dehydrated I would have a Braxton-Hicks attack strong enough to make me double over in the middle of the sidewalk!). After much experimentation, I found these snacks to be the easiest to stomach -- hope they help to get you through the summer, too!

If only Robert Pattinson had been around when I was pregnant! (Well, I guess he was, but he was younger than I'd like to admit ... not sure if he'd even made it to the Cedric Diggory portion of his career yet.) Anyway, I'm regretting the absence of R Pattz from my gestational days because pregnant Twilight actress Bryce Dallas Howard (Victoria) made a shocking discovery at the MTV Movie Awards: The mere presence of Robert Pattinson was enough to cure her morning sickness! (Temporarily, at least.)

All I wanted to know during my first trimester of both pregnancies was "Why do they call it morning sickness?" Whether you're queasy only when you wake up or 24/7, there's no question that morning sickness is one of the most unpleasant aspects of pregnancy. If you've asked your obstetrician how to ease the symptoms, you've probably gotten the standard "eat a few crackers before you get out of bed" advice and not much else, unless you're so violently ill that IV fluids come into play.

Luckily there are a few all-natural ways to keep that constantly seasick sensation at bay, and while they might not work for everybody, chances are at least one of these will give you some relief!

Over the weekend, a friend of mine went public with the news that she's pregnant. She and her husband are confident that they are having a girl, based on the fact that she was so sick throughout her first trimester. Once upon a time, I might have bought that logic, but I have four other friends who are having babies this year, all of whom were sure their morning sickness indicated extra estrogen, but all of whom are having boys. And I know several women who were sure their easy pregnancies meant they had a son in the oven, and ended up with a little lady. True, most who had it easy ended up with boys, but not across the board.

So, I decided to explore some of the other gender-prediction theories, aside from morning sickness, to see if there was some truth to any of it.