The first Christmas party has been thrown!

Twenty friends and their kiddos arrived on Sunday for a holiday party, hosted for the first time at the Johnson residence. My sister and I co-hosted the event (with, you know, our husbands) and began discussing details back in October. In fact, Kate had me send out a “save the date” in early November. We were on it.

And then I got sick.

Early last week, my throat began to feel itchy. Within two days, I was wallowing in a congested-sneezing-clogged-nose hell that had me Googling every medication under the sun with “safe for pregnancy” afterward.

Spoiler: none were.

If I thought being sick was awful before, being sick while pregnant pretty much sent me into an existential tailspin. Everything is deadly; nothing is safe. I’ve never been a “natural remedies” sort of girl, but by golly was I searching for anything under the sun to get relief by Friday morning.

I’ll freely admit to once rolling my eyes at others’ dramatics when it comes to the common cold because, you know, I was tough. Chug a little DayQuil, grab an extra pack of tissues and keep it movin’, you know what I’m saying?

Yeah. Well.

I got mine, friends. Several times over. After suffering through a few work days and grossing out everyone in my vicinity, I finally called uncle and stayed home on Friday. What followed was a day of crying, cursing and throwing myself a holiday-themed pity party complete with bad daytime television, mugs of half-drunk tea and texting my husband repeatedly to learn when he’d be back to bear witness to my continued freak-out.

I’m so fun.

In my defense, I didn’t realize how much I rely on medication for comfort. Got a headache? Advil. Back hurts? Advil. Congested, hard time breathing? Decongestant. Bad cramps? Advil.

With nearly all of my go-to drugs off the table, I felt helpless. And pregnancy hormones? No joke. I have been a big, steamy mess of nonsense for the last few weeks — even before I became infected with this scourge. After going through three boxes of tissues in two days and calling my doctor repeatedly for something, anything I could take (finally got permission for low-dose Sudafed), the cold began to break on Sunday morning.

Just in time to host the party.

After disinfecting and de-cluttering everything we could, dear Spencer set to work making food while I read recipes from a bubble in the corner. I pumped myself full of water and baby-safe drugs before everyone arrived, then dissolved into a puddle of gratitude as my sister and brother-in-law showed up to help take over responsibilities.

And then I could just have fun!

And so we did. Mostly because I couldn’t believe we’d pulled it off and actually had everything go as planned. In a panicky moment on Friday, I was convinced the whole thing would fall apart because I was too weak to do more than reach for another tissue. Spence and I had looked forward to hosting our friends at our first shindig, and I didn’t want to cancel.

But I rallied, everything went off without a hitch — and I’m only feeling about 30 percent ridiculous today. The cough is sticking around, but I can handle that.

Hug your NyQuil a little closer for me, friends. You never know how much you love something until it’s gone.