My Body is a Cruel and Unusual Mistress

I was making peace with the fact that I am not pregnant. Then this morning happens. What is my body trying to do to me? I don’t even want to be playing this mental game right now. I’m having my period for crying out loud! But my disease doesn’t care.

Last night, I stayed up late and ate lots of chocolate. It was my birthday. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even though my stomach grumbled a little bit. It is not uncommon after I have spent a day of eating too much junk (which doesn’t happen very often any more) for my bowels to complain about the poor treatment, but it usually passes pretty quickly. It is also very common for me to have cramps and generally loose bowels during my period. So I should be extremely prepared for and unphased by digestive troubles today.

I woke up and my stomach felt a little yucky. I chalked this up to a chocolate hangover and lack of sleep. I decided what I needed was a very nutritious breakfast and a normal morning routine with my kids. But as the morning went on (usually we get up and don’t eat for at least an hour as we all get dressed then have morning study—family scriptures, prayer, etc.—and we’re all just fine) I started feeling sicker and sicker and sicker. But I also felt really hungry. I was trying to think of something that sounded palatable, but I couldn’t even think of something that sounded stomachable. I thought I probably should not have a sugary breakfast since it was mostly sugary things I was suffering from. Salsa eggs sounded like the best option, even though it didn’t actually sound appetizing at the moment. I usually always like salsa eggs. But as I forced myself into the kitchen to prepare them I opened the fridge and was overcome by such a wave of nausea at the sight and smell of all the food that I quickly made excuses to my kids, shut the door on them upstairs and ran downstairs to the bathroom.

I didn’t throw up right away because my toilet was not clean. I have a weirdness that is powerful enough even to quell morning sickness temporarily. I can’t stand to throw up in a dirty toilet. I can do anything else in a dirty toilet—even put my hands in it to rinse diapers—which is why I have a dirty toilet most of the time, but I absolutely cannot put my head down there. So I always keep disinfecting wipes handy so I can wipe it down any time I need to make a call on the porcelain phone. This is why my toilet is always the most sparkly during the first trimester of pregnancy. Anyway, I got the toilet clean, which took quite a while—I haven’t been sick in a long time—then had a few dry heaves before I was able to go back upstairs to my kids. I fought down the nausea next time I opened the fridge and covered my mouth and nose while I cooked the eggs. The bread bag looked halfway inviting from across the room, so I put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster even though all happy feelings about toast vanished as soon as the waft of usually yummy bread smell came out of the bag.

I was relying very heavily on what I know about morning sickness, even though I know this can’t be morning sickness because I am not pregnant. I just figured this out for definite two days ago. But I was sure that the only way to feel better was to eat something, even though that was the last thing I felt like I should do. Besides that, I had kids who were losing it with hunger themselves, and they had no delusions about not wanting to eat this food I was cooking. I got the eggs ready and on the table, prayed and let them dig in, but had to go back into the kitchen to get away from those eggs. I remembered we needed something to drink, and then I remembered my mom’s secret morning sickness weapon—peach juice. There is almost always an open bottle of peaches in the fridge (in our house now as well as in my home growing up) and my mom said that when she was pregnant every morning she would take a drink of the juice first thing in the morning and it would help forestall the nausea that would only increase on an empty stomach. So I snuck a cup and opened the fridge door so that it would block the view of me looking in the fridge from my kids at the table—I didn’t feel like doling out juice and bottled fruit to everyone for breakfast. And there was the golden vial of nectar—a jar entirely empty except for a couple of inches of clearish yellow liquid with little white floaties and sediment in the bottom—bottled pear juice, which is absolutely close enough. It actually did not look appetizing at all. I didn’t feel at all like I wanted it, but I took it like medicine, hiding behind the refrigerator door so my children couldn’t see me and want some, too. As much as my stomach resisted me putting it to my lips, once it was there it was so sweet and cold and perfect and exactly everything I wanted. Ahhhhhhh.

After that I could stomach a piece of dry toast. Then while I was sitting between the kids nibbling my toast and keeping the eggs at arms length I had an urge (not a craving, because it wasn’t really from my stomach, more of an academical urge) for protein, and I remembered the remnants of last nights roast chicken in the fridge, so I got that out and picked at it for a while.

Yes, for breakfast this morning I had pear juice, dry toast, and cold chicken. And I’m sitting here typing this all up while my children are forced to entertain themselves (Willow just called out excitedly, “Mommy, I’m winning!” from behind me where she is playing Candyland all by herself.) because the next thing I have to do is clean up from breakfast and every time I walk by the leftover food and dirty dishes my stomach still wants to run the other direction. What is this stupid and ridiculous non-pregnancy morning sickness? It is way more than I can blame on a late night and one evenings’ poor diet. It’s not even like food poisoning or the stomach flu because it only increases when I don’t eat or when I am near food, which are contradictory for anything else but are exactly the recipe for pregnancy nausea.

You know what? I just thought of a reason why I might be feeling so awful. I took a multivitamin shortly after getting up this morning thinking that I would eat something right away, and then didn’t end up eating for a while. I get very nauseated when I take a multivitamin on an empty stomach (which is why I spent the first several months of my marriage convinced I must be pregnant—because I was sick every morning. That and I just got sick of the same cold cereal we had to eat every day but I didn’t realize that if there were something else available for breakfast, I wouldn’t have felt sick at all.) But if this is the case, I should be feeling better now after eating, which is partly true, but not entirely. It’s mostly just true because I am not hungry and I am not within smelling range of food. I’m still dreading clearing the table and doing dishes because every time I go near the food I feel sick again.

Someone, anyone, please, PLEASE give me a reasonable alternative reason why I am feeling this sick so I can stop convincing myself that I absolutely have to be pregnant right now because that is the only explanation I know of for the way I am feeling.