Craving by Proxy

We've finally told the parental units that there are buns in the oven and they're baking. The responses varied from smugly wanting to know whether it was the act of God (yes mom, any kind of conception whether immaculate, natural or scientific, is an act of God), to loud cheering and guffawing to a strange "yup, we figured that out already". The last one of course, led to the question how was that figured out.

Apparently, my parents-in law, more specifically, my father-in-law suffers from craving by proxy. He figured I was pregnant because he craved oyster omelettes in the middle of the night. And the last time he craved oyster omelettes in the middle of the night, my husband was but a wee peanut possibly with stumps for hands and feet.

It's the most bizarre thing I've heard. Especially since I have absolutely no blood ties to the man. Speaking of blood ties, my mother is extremely disturbed by the fact that I'm suffering badly from nausea. Reason being, she didn't. So apparently, since she didn't, I'm not allowed to. Lest there be the whole suspicion that I'm not actually her daughter and someone and I swopped parents at birth. It's not like the nausea is not bad enough, I have to contend with my mother's neurosis about why I actually have nausea.

By her estimation, I should only have headaches. No cravings, no nausea, no feeling like all food is tasteless (pass the salt). Well, as of today, I have headaches, not so much cravings (unless you count the 10 minute craving for durian cake), extreme nausea especially in the afternoons and at nights and the bad habit of putting light sauce in all my food because it tastes bland.

So, all I can say is, it is not true that blood is thicker than water. Now dark sauce is though.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, cravings

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A whole load of crap

Whoever came up with the term Morning Sickness was obviously misled. It is a misnomer on a grand scale. You cannot call something morning sickness if it plagues you all your waking hours. And the only way to stop yourself from hurling, or wanting to hurl is really to just sleep. And even then, I dream about hurling.

The queasiness has been around for a couple of days, but the nausea took on new meaning yesterday when I threw up what was quite a yummy sandwich going down and feeling various shades of green through the day. The day ended with a grand hurl after dinner that reduced me into a puddle of tears on the kitchen floor wondering what had I gotten myself into.

That was followed by 12 hours of peace since Packrat insisted I go to bed and since I was tired out by the whole hurling experience, I wasn't going to fight with him. Yup, the other thing about this so called morning sickness is that it saps what energy you have in you, that isn't going toward creating that little life form in you. So, I'm not much fun to be with. It's too difficult to engage in long drawn conversations as I concentrate on keeping whatever I have in my tummy, in my tummy.

All the books say that this morning sickness will last through the first trimester and should get better after. I have my doubts. All this started when my brother, who so ominously predicted that the more I make fun of the boy, the more likely I was going to get together with the boy (he was talking about Packrat here), very confidently predicted that I looked like the type that would have severe nausea. And the next day, it hit, full force. I blame him and I don't look forward to however long this is going to go on for.

Right now, the nausea inducing list is growing in length.
1. Fishballs
2. Yong Tau Foo
3. Noodles with soup
4. Noodles with sticky, gooey gravy
5. Bean sprouts
6. Vegemite
7. Preserved sour plums
8. Water.
9. Porridge
10. Pork
11. Chicken

I'm screwed.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, morning sickness

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Topsy-Turvy

My world's turned upside down.

When Packrat and I were still dating, he used to float this idea of coordinating schedules with all his friends as to when to impregnante their wives. It wasn't a Boys From Brazil meets Gattaca idea. It was more that they were fascinated with the idea that pregnant women craved for strange food at strange hours. So their plan was to actually delegate different husbands to stock different varieties of food in their fridges, in case of a midnight craving emergency that Fedex wasn't going to be able to deliver on time. And all the girlfriends/ wives basically added fuel to the fire by tossing up impossible to get food items even though most of them sounded gross. My suggestion was something so far removed from my regular dietary preferences, it was funny. And it had the added advantage of being alliterative- which is always good. . I had told Packrat that my choice of pregnancy craving food was going to be Yaks' milk from Yemen. I thought it was a good choice because pregnancy craving is supposed to be weird and it doesn't get any weirder than yak's milk from Yemen. Especially for me, the psychologically lactose intolerant, averse to anything that smells vaguely dairy.

That led to years of speculation of what I would eat or crave for during the hormonally imbalanced, logic challenged 10 months of pregnancy. Packrat fantasised about a meat devouring wife. He also fantasised about knowing that I was pregnant when I asked him to take me for chilli crab.

Well, none of that has happened. To date, I have a vague distaste for any sort of food, especially Chinese food. I don't crave anything although food that is tasty and salty seems to rank slightly higher than bland food. So, the mere mention of the formerly staple bland food like fish soup, yong tau hu now put a look of rude revulsion on my face. Packrat quipped that the day I gave up fish balls, my all time comfort food, would be the day he would know for sure that the chicken was indeed in the pot and cooking.

Today was such a day. I was presented with fish balls in what would normally be tasty scallop and abalone based soup and I couldn't. I just couldn't make myself eat it. It was a weird sensation. The brain was trying to convince me that I could eat it, that it was yummy but my stomach recoiled the way it usually does with anything with dairy in it. Thankfully it hasn't quite gotten to the point where I'd rather dairy than fish balls. Right now, they're just on par. The day when dairy becomes more appealing, I think I will just spend the entire day in bed because I wouldn't trust myself to be able to stand up right.

Because by then, the world would have indeed become topsy-turvy and I might fall off my bed on the ceiling onto the floor.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, food cravings

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The story thus far...

When we get to a certain age, especially when people have figured out that we've been married for a while, the inadvertent question asked will be whether we've got kids or we are planning for kids or something along those lines.

It's a question I've hated over the last two years. Because the gnormless people who ask such a question forget that the situation at hand may be the third, unseen and undesirable option of wanting a kid, planning for kids but it not happening all that simply. So the put on response has had to be "Kids? What kids?" or "Who has time/ money for kids?" or some other brave front just to stave off these vultures. Unknown to them, the question causes a great amount of angst and discomfort, often followed by the irrational childish response of wanting to kick them hard in the shins and stamp my feet or theirs, depending on how annoying they have been.

So for the last two years, we've lived behind a facade. Some have known the truth of what's been going on but most have remained clueless. Of the some who have known, some have been a pillar of support, a barrel of laughs and a source of comfort. Some others whom we thought could be trusted turned out to be the most useless and insensitive oafs around giving us useless advice such as "Relax! Don't think about it. It'll happen!" or " Give up! Once you give up, you'll succeed!" or "Don't stress and don't worry!" or "Ai yah! Why give yourself so much grief?". And the absolute clincher, that came from one of the parental units, "Watch Korean drama, it'll make you feel so romantic and relaxed, you'll surely get pregnant!" Yup, all extremely useful and comforting. There are also some who mean well but have no clue that they're not helping the situation. The ones who bend over backwards and try to find some sort of explanation as to why something supposedly so simple was giving us so much grief. Explanations go along the lines of " You've done something wrong in your past life!", "God's punishing you!", "Someone's put a curse on you!" or some other spiritual mumbo-jumbo that makes us feel a whole ton worse.

So we've had to contend with that on top of being unceremoniously poked and prodded, with all sorts of fluids drawn from us and enough gas pumped into me that I could become a giant blimp. There've also been numerous jabs, an extremely uncomfortable experience of drinking two litres of water and not being able to pee after.

Anyway, hopefully, all that is behind us.

Gradually, when I have time and presence of mind, I'll fill up the gaps.

But for now, it's enough to say that according to a whole bunch of pee sticks, that have turned blue, shown two lines- pink, blue, purple-, flashed the words "Pregnant!" and the be all, end all blood test, I'm knocked up with the buns cooking nicely in the oven and this blog will be the chronicles of the next forty weeks till the oven goes "DING!"

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