I thought I’d had it easy and the barf boat had sailed. The first three months of my pregnancy, I was queasy, sure, but I didn’t puke and had almost no aversions to food and smells. I’m five months pregnant. And out of nowhere, smells make me spew.
This morning, I opened the pantry at my parents’ home. My mom sat at the kitchen table typing on her lap top, either on Facebook or researching European cancer treatments. A cute fuzzy fuschia cap covered her cute fuzzy head. My mom can’t smell. That’s another story. I can. Pregnancy has left this sense, shall we say, a bit over-developed? In the pantry, an onion was rotting. I got one whiff and gagged, ran to the trash can nearby, and hurled. My mom didn’t look up. Facebook has her engrossed these days. She is skipping this round of chemo, because it makes her sick, and she’ll put that on Facebook. And she is researching treatments for late stage esophageal cancer that don’t involve chemo. She’ll put that on Facebook, too.
“I just puked,” I announced.
“Oh, you just spit up,” she said, not looking up.
“No, ma, look in the trashcan! I puked!” I said, desperate for a mother’s sympathy.
Unlikely. I think she laughed.
“Hey, why’d you puke in my trash can? Don’t do that! It’s new.” Yes, she has bigger fish to fry. Like, oh, curing an impossible cancer. “Puke in the toilet.”
I returned to the pantry to continue making my lunch. I thought the episode of morning sickness was a fluke. I opened the door, was again hit by rotten onion, and ran to the bathroom, this time, losing the whole breakfast, but at least I made the toilet.
My husband wandered upstairs, stirred by my melodious gag reflex, no doubt.
“I puked!” I announced.
“Oh, poor Ju.” He hugged me. Sympathy. At last!
