Morning Sickness

When the heroine of a novel finds out she's pregnant, it's always by throwing up first thing in the morning, followed by a joyful *gasp* best get that crib down from the loft again Cyril.

I'm lucky, I've never really had morning sickness. I appear to favour the low-grade all day nausea reminiscent of recovering from a nasty bout of stomach flu. It has been particularly bad with this pregnancy - and I'm not jumping to any conclusions here about different symptoms meaning different foetal sex - although crikey moses you should hear my father-in-law with his questions about whether I 'feel any different this time round'. I'm so glad producing a son and heir is the genetic responsibility of the father. I'm just the vessel. Don't shoot the vessel if your son is the last remaining male K in the family (LK is fresh out of male relatives of breeding age. No pressure).

Maybe it feels more like motion sickness, it's hard to say. It certainly gets worse with stress or fatigue, which would more than explain why I've been having such a rough time these last 6 weeks or so. The only things that make it go away are rest (ha!) and simple carbohydrates. I've been munching my way through an entire Italian province-worth of pasta with cheese. No wonder my belly is already beginning to 'pop' a fact not entirely explained by the baby being the size of a small kiwi fruit at present.

Some women have an absolutely dreadful time with 'morning' sickness, mine is just a constant low-grade irritant. I do struggle a bit in certain situations, such as, hmm, when I was 7 weeks pregnant and LK took Anna and I to the 'marine mammal rescue center' bizarrely located in a sleepy residential area in Santa Barbara. We struggled for years to get building permits to update an already existing building. This outfit managed to get planning permission for an entire seal sanctuary in their back garden?!

Anna was in hog heaven. She is obsessed with animals at present (pronounced animaux), and 'sea creatures' are at the top of the pile. To have the opportunity to show her round the seal sanctuary, where they were nursing baby seals and sea-lions back to health was all she could have wished for. Except, have you ever caught a whiff of a seal? They chuffing reek! And sick seals? If anything was to confirm or deny the start of early pregnancy nausea, it was a visit to this place:

















I realise this photo makes it look like sea-lion Auschwitz, but the pups were in very good hands and were merely baying because they were hungry.

Hungry for this:























I was just barely keeping a lid on the bile, when they showed us what they fed the seals that were too weak to digest a whole mackerel. A mackerel smoothie!! Fish mashed together in a food processor to form a vile reddish-brown liquid. I didn't even have time to take a photo I'm afraid - I bolted.

Of course, at 6 weeks pregnant we weren't really announcing our good news to all and sundry so my mad dash made me look like a delicate Daphne when in actual fact just writing the above has me eying the toilet. Bleurgh.

Still, all this good stuff will pass, and I'm teetering on the brink of my second trimester so I'm hopeful that it's some point bloody soon. Because sheesh, it seems only with pregnancy are people so cavalier about you feeling awful. Nonstop nausea? *Chuckle* Don't worry love, it'll pass in a month or so, not long!!

Six weeks and counting....