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I kiss the ground of the 21st Century and thank it that it requires that I bear no more than two children. It is not that these offspring frighten me, although annihilating my salary whilst fattening others, but rather the process by which they arrive.
I’m talking pregnancy. During this period, surrogate mother’s and off the shelf babies become rational, ethical choices, particularly when I stare at my momentary well-stocked fridge and know that nothing therein is going to stay within.
I take a moment to reflect on my great-grandmother’s, not 15 children, but 15 pregnancies. A mere feat of sanity and bodily strength, not largely uncommon in her century. Hail to the 21c again and its Woolworth’s “just shlop it in the pot soup”, its Spar “stuff it in before you get home potato salads” and the crisps in the immediacy of the garage shop across the road. Hallelujah that I am not in a bush town in 1887 with no coca-cola to soothe me. (Yes, I admit to emptying that stuff into my neonatal body, some women eat coal!) I suppose it’s more than this century I should learn to embrace, but rather my city life. The horror of being stuck anywhere in the non-supermarket world!
Has anyone ever had a cat with morning sickness? A dog? A goldfish? Am I a wimp of my lineage? A result of centuries of de-animalising us?
And what of the women, who, with a gasp of relief proclaim, “fortunately I didn’t have anything like that”! (They will pay for it later though!) There are even members of one’s own family who sidestep the nauseous hunger pangs, the intimacy with the toilet bowl and the loss of income to the supermarket. Fortunately this reveals that there is no genetic link, so they can stick to traumatizing vegetables for research.
Have you ever deposited the contents of your breakfast into a frisbee on the way to work, had to run out of a movie half way through (and not for fear of the characters on the screen), lurched the car to a halt in a nice leafy suburb and behaved very unsuburbanly? Have you ever had to do the bathroom reconnaissance before greeting your hosts? Not pretty is it?
Then there are the causes, the reasons, the explanations... psychosomatic, lack of zinc, too toxic, emotionally uncertain, you name it. Or rather, those who have never experienced two months of quasi-gastro-enteritis have named it for us. Bully for them!
Following the causes are the remedies. The books proclaim that a snack before rising will help to ward off nausea. Well, perhaps they could slip a perfect partner in between the book covers who comes alive at the first inkling of nausea, rushes downstairs and prepares an appetizing snack before doing the household chores and taking children to school!
“Just have an apple, my dear, it always helped me” claims my mother. Thanks, but my apples join the underground! And what about ginger biscuits, mint tea, homeopathic solutions and I suppose the cat’s pajamas. Forget it, this affliction remains beyond centuries of folklore and white coated laboratorians.
There is one solution, however. A two-month stay in a hotel of your choice, with24hr room-service, videos, magazines and a library that comes to your door. Perhaps an occasional massage for bodies that will relent and strict visiting hours for the family. Regrettably my bank balance doesn’t extend that far, nor my husband’s compassion or my two year old’s grasp of motherhood.
And so I continue with the greatest battle ever fought between tight mouthed purity and desire, that is, between my mouth and my stomach. Whilst pangs of hunger drive me to spectate the contents of the fridge, the mouth finds nothing desirable. And we all know what punishment the mouth receives should it send something down not to the stomach’s content. Ah, for a drip and a hotel room with DSTV.
Whilst the rest of life, work and other human beings become blurred and hazy, a light emanates from my couch. If I can’t have the hotel room at least the blue/green art deco couch is mine. The sofa being a most familiar piece of furniture in the lives of many pregnant women, as they lie waiting for their partners to usher meals to the neonatal queen, who burrows in the cushions to avoid the smell of food cooking and submits to the post natal child’s trampoline treatment of her.
Goodbye, life as mother of one....
And finally, the haze begins to clear. Slight, but possible. The world gradually returns to you. There are people in it who can hold down every meal and who walk into the kitchen and make peanut butter and jam sandwiches as if it were normal behaviour. The toilet becomes a place where you read frivolous magazines and the couch can now seat three.
Yes, this is not entirely the end of discomfort, but at least a Frisbee can look me in the face again!
Source of article - Sandy Mitchell is a freelance writer and illustrator and mother of two children, aged 4 and 7, and one step-son aged 14.
She enjoys writing on parenting, environmental issues and gardening. Her book "Wild Iris Herbal Handbook" was published by Quiver tree in 2002.
This piece on morning sickness describes quite accurately how she felt for 3-4 months of both pregnancies. Twice was enough!
Sandy lives in Observatory, Cape Town and can be contacted via -
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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