Morning Sickness

Sorry I haven’t written at all this week, I’ve been kind of obsessed with keeping the contents of my stomach from emptying themselves all over the place. This is a daily, hourly obsession that will be with me for at least another month and it is one of the least pleasant things I have ever had to live through. (Someone please tell me why I’m doing this again?)

I have low blood sugar, which tends to amplify the regular morning sickness to extreme levels of discomfort. I have to keep my stomach full, at all times, or I am overcome with unbearable queasiness. The sensation of hunger is indistinguishable from the sensation of nausea these days. The regular salivatory functions of my mouth in anticipation of a first bite of food go hand in hand with an ominous flip flopping in my stomach that is either the start of normal digestive processes or the onset of a summary rejection of all things I’ve consumed until now. (Excuse me, I have to go and sit very still for a while and maybe suck on a frozen mango chunk to keep the above mentioned flip-flopping at bay. I apparently can’t write about it without difficulty.)

Okay I’m back, the cold sweetness has done its work for now, but I will have to eat something real soon. (Like right now, excuse me again.)

Okay let’s try once more. The theory is that if I can manage to eat some good protein and high fiber combinations every two hours or so I will keep my blood sugar levels from plummeting into throw up land and technically it has worked. The only time I actually threw up was on Sunday after falling asleep for an hour or so without adequate snacking prior to resting. The problem is that as time goes by this becomes trickier. Certain smells and textures are enough to start me retching even if I have eaten recently. Last night it was soybean noodles, which was unfortunate because they are very high in protein and fiber. I forced them down anyway, and then sat up until midnight afraid to move lest they force their way back up. I had the most unbelievable indigestion. (I now have to hold my breath and wipe a poopy butt, which involves moving and smelling things I don’t want to while my stomach is already churning. Here goes…)

And I’m back and taking another bite of my dry matzo cracker, which has neither fiber nor protein but is the only thing in the kitchen that looked like I could eat it. I burp, a lot. The slower digestion cause by pregnancy hormones plus the constant churning means I always have gas, and I’ve learned from bitter experience that if I don’t let it out it will come out on it’s own in a much more unpleasant way. Perhaps the trickiest bit of all of this is cooking. I can’t cook hungry or the smell will either wake up my stomach in ways that cause it to rumble unpleasantly or just turn it to the dark side. I have little appetite and have twice this week made things for dinner that I could barely eat. But I don’t know what will taste good to me until it’s too late to shop, even if we had the budget for me to cook every pregnant whim that comes to mind instead of making meals out of what we already have in the fridge. We’re running out of the stuff I like, my daily staples are depleting and I have to wait until Friday to shop. It’s not like we don’t have food, just not food that assuages the volcanic god within who is very capricious and can turn with out an instant’s notice if the offerings are inadequate.

Sleep is the only relief I find from all of this but as mentioned before, I must plan my sleep carefully if the waking is not going to be extremely unpleasant. There must be food, at both ends of every nap, and then a little bit of time allowed for digestion so there is no gas build up, or there is the option of sleeping upright, something I can do in the comfy chair in our living room except for the times when the weird smell that I have never noticed before being pregnant is overpoweringly strong and I can’t stay there because it’s nauseating.

So my house is a mess because I’ve been too nauseous to bend over and pick anything up for the last 24 hours. I spend a lot of time in my pajamas after breakfast waiting for my stomach to settle so I can eat again and feel safe enough to move around and get dressed; something that hasn’t happened yet today. And my children are becoming these wild naked beings who forage by themselves for food; like eating the final contents of a jar of nut butter with their fingers, or eating all of the pears I bought to last a week in one pre-breakfast sitting and then having explosive diarrhea all day on one occasion next to the toilet splattering the wall, the bath tub, the floor, various hot wheels cars, the bathmat, the outside of the toilet, and the garbage can in excrement. That was fun.

I have to go and read to my little growling naked dragons; that I can at least do with out added discomfort. I dread making them lunch though, and they sound hungry.