Morning Sickness
August 18
I guess I must have laid it on too thick, for Patrick, feeling the responsibilities of fatherhood resting heavily upon him, called the doctor today and got a first-hand report. It’s guffaws now, I get, instead of concern.
August 21
Sick!
This can’t be me, it must be two other people.
Anyway, two. people.
Sick. Sea-sick, air-sick, car-sick. Sick morning, afternoon and night. My stomach, the same that I used to boast about, seems to be on a see-saw. The slightest little thing-and the slightest little thing is the sight of one of these darn pills. Just to hold it in one hand and a glass of water in the other is enough. Pat says it’s all mental. Could be! So I decided to fool it, sneak up on it in fact.
August 25
Sick. And I took no pill at all.
It seems that early in the morning when my stomach is empty, I’m going to be sick no matter what I do. At the toothbrush stage of dressing (whether it’s 7 or I I) along comes a feeling of my strong-as-a-horse stomach galloping down the stretch. I can feel it flying through the air. I can feel it distinctly! It finally settles behind an ear and nothing I can do will send it back where it belongs. But this is not the kind of morning sickness the books tell about. My stomach seems to suffer from perpetual frustration. It struggles for self-expression but never gets beyond the stage of wishful thinking. It produces a horrid symphony of queer gurgles, choking coughs, and retching gags (which I hide from Lucretia by turning the shower on at full speed). But that’s all. Having exhausted itself in the effort to accomplish something notable it tires of the whole thing and goes back where it belongs. Just another weak character.
I read how a dry cracker before rising would do away with all this. ‘Tain’t true! Breakfast in bed, with puffing Lucretia glaring over the tray and looking mighty suspicious, doesn’t do the least bit of good. Nor does rushing down to a hearty breakfast with the inevitable gay morning music reeling out of the radio.
Lucretia looks suspiciouser and suspiciouser with me bustling down to a breakfast of orange juice, cereal, tea and toast, dashing upstairs again to play the shower, and then reappearing with a coy request for more orange juice, cereal, tea and toast. Up to date she hasn’t said anything and now that my stomach has resumed its original, or near original size, I have hopes of fooling her a while longer. But now there’s the business of the kitchen. The books say I should eat six times a day, but every time I sneak out in the kitchen, quiet as a mouse, and slide open the cupboard door-Lucretia catches me. At this rate she won’t be long for our life. I’ve got to get away from it all. Maybe Pat will take me somewhere.
August 27
Lucretia, my lorgnette! Dr. Reiner really meant what he said that day in the middle of my swan dive. He wants us to live in his house while he conducts the Pittsburgh orchestra this winter. Me in that colossal Normandy castle, with its Olympicsize swimming pool, twenty-seven landscaped acres, two streams, two waterfalls and half a mile of drive-way! Half a mile, half a mile- Too bad it’s not a mile, but I suppose we can’t have everything. It’ll be a break for Pat, though, with only half a mile of driveway to shovel snow off. And I can see the expressions of some of my friends as they pull up to our “little place in the country”. They won’t need to know we’re living rent free. (Dr. Reiner doesn’t like to have the house empty while he’s away and he seems to think the Government can go on doing without Pat, but I dunno.) And Michael, our little wandering Michael, who has recently graduated to the stage of taking an interest in blondes and has had to be tied up. In that twenty-seven-acre park he could run his head off and still be far from temptation. But, Michael or no Michael, I won’t turn landed gentry unless we can rent our barns. So why not be a landlord and collect some rent?
Visions of life as millionaires darn near make me forget I’m still being sick. It’s getting to be such a routine that I don’t seem to mind much any more. I’ve discovered it’s simpler to let my stomach have its exercise before breakfast than to battle against it, and then really live up to the scheduled pregnancy symptoms after breakfast.
As for W.P.B., nothing new has been added.
Just drifting along.