enjoying the affliction

Because I truly am an overachiever, I don't just suffer from morning nausea, I have morning-evening-and-afternoon nausea, with occasional vomiting to accentuate just how very well I do things around here.  It hit predictably at 6 weeks, just like last time.  Except, unlike last time, I recognized it this time and avoided all that worry about dying of some kind of septic shock.  I kid you not, the first time I was pregnant and the nausea hit, I thought that my uterus must be infected and killing me with a septic miscarriage, especially that I was coincidentally also bleeding.  I had never been this sick in my life, not even when I had the flu.  This time, luckily, I know and hence do not need to panic, but rather take it like a woman, lying down.

And lying down I am.  Today I tried four times to get out of bed, and the furthest I could make it without feeling faint and having everything in front of my eyes go dark, a buzzing high pitch sound in my ears, and the familiar vomit raising towards daylight, was about 2 meters.  Each time I had to lie on the floor, head between my knees, my favourite position when it comes to staying conscious in the face of adverse fainting spells.  That's how MrH found me when he got home, and, used to it by now, asked me to please get up slower next time, as due to my delicate condition I can't just hit the ground running like usual.  Although I hardly think that moving like a lovesick hippopotamus with a broken hip qualifies for hitting the ground running.

I don't know what you guys use in the United States, but here in Canada we have a nifty little white pill with a pregnant woman drawn on it (to reassure us that it is safe in pregnancy) called doxylamine, or Diclectin.  It is used for nausea, and it is not bad, if you don't mind sleeping about 16 hours a day.   In the US you can find doxylamine sold as an over the counter sleeping tablet, called Unisom.  Trust me, it works!  I have spent the past 48 hours in a coma, which is good, because when I sleep I generally don't do my other two favourite things, which are retching and fainting.

I hope I don't sound like I am complaining.  I physically feel like... the above description, but I am very happy.  It was entirely self inflicted, with full knowledge of what it would feel like.  And although occasionally I try to push out of my mind the fact that Charlotte Bronte died of this sickness (which, for some reason, is a scary thought), mostly I am a blissful blob gestating happily in my bed, thinking of the little ticking heart that goes on and on inside of me.  And I would not want a thing to change.