A Primer

If I were trying to explain morning sickness to someone who has never had it, I think I would bypass the never-strong-enough description of the physical illness aspects (think chemotherapy treatment) and would instead focus on the one word that best encompasses the entire ordeal for me:

  

DIRT.

  

Morning sickness is just ... so ... dirty. There is the obvious dirt of retching every half hour or so. There is the dirt of being so weak that even standing in the shower takes too much energy and so hair doesn't get rinsed as well as it should. There is the dirt of not being able to find clean clothing because you haven't made it downstairs to do laundry for, well, far too long. There is the dirt of stinky diapers, the dirt of retching yet again at the thought of changing the stinky diapers, the dirt of dishes that are awaiting some kind of glorious cleansing, and the dirt of floors that haven't seen a vacuum in ... months.

  

Despite all of this, I have to say that these past four months have been the easiest in dealing with morning (and yes, I have to say it..."morning" HA!) sickness and all of the accompanying dirt. I am the kind of person who always has to tell people that I am pregnant when I am about 6 1/2 weeks along. It's not that I'm that excited...it's that I'm that green and they always fear I'm dealing with some terrible disease. But this time, it was 11 weeks before we told my parents (who, admittedly, called and said, "Is there SOME REASON you've been so tired lately?" -- a nice way of saying, "Is there some reason your house is such an ABSOLUTE WRECK?" after they stopped by unannounced); and it was 15 weeks before we told anyone else. While I could easily attribute this to the chemical 1/2 Unisom and Vitamin B6 I tried to take every night, I have to say that I know it has to do with my husband.

  

Ethan orchestrated the dirt beautifully. He never mentioned it, taught the kids to wade their way through the paper plates (wonderful invention!) lining the floor in order to heat a bagel for themselves, picked up a sandwich for me on the way home every day so that I wouldn't have to smell dinner cooking, kept small "protein bites" (yummy steak and hamburger cut in bite-sized pieces) in the fridge that he could pull out in a moment's notice if he thought I was looking pale(r), promised us a big outing when Mommy was up to it when we would go to a LAUNDROMAT (this is still a place of wonder to our children) and wash what turned out to be all fourteen loads of laundry, went to work, prepared for his seminary classes, preached his senior sermon in South Carolina, took five licensure exams, and got his preaching license at the December presbytery. And he never once commented on my being more helpless than our nine-month old.

    

And in the midst of this, he helped our 5-yr. old turn 6, our 3-yr. old turn 4, and we celebrated Christmas. WITH A TREE, EVEN.

   

So if someone asks what morning sickness is like? First, it's messy. It's dirty. Stress just makes it messier and dirtier. It's nothing like the movies where the beautiful mother-to-be suddenly grimaces, grabs the nearest trashcan, loses her grilled chicken salad from lunch, wipes her mouth, says, "I'm fine, really," and then puts her lipstick on. It's more like the scuzzy mother-to-be who is lying on the couch, her twisted face twisting even further, a loud "GET OUT OF MY WAY!" erupting in a monster-like manner as she pushes her hands to her mouth, dashes in an amazing rush of adrenaline to the nearest bathroom, pushing children and toys and, yes, food from the floor in order to get there, counts it all joy if everything makes it into the toilet (and by everything, we mean nothing close to grilled chicken salad...try a Burger King Whopper or some Pringles or whatever it is she could actually fathom eating), and then after she loses her lunch, she loses anything additional that might have been in her stomach as she glances at the state of the bathroom.

  

I'm just saying.

  

But now, at 16 weeks and counting, things are finally starting to look better. Not necessarily cleaner (although I am wearing all clean clothes and my  hair has been washed, rinsed, and COMBED!!), but we've got all afternoon to work on that.

      

Hee hee hee.