Thursday, June 16, 2011

Morning Sickness

Morning sickness is inappropriately named. It should be called "All day and night long sickness where you feel nauseaous or are puking all the time." I guess that name is a little awkward, but at least the meaning is clear. In Japanese morning sickness is called 悪阻(つわり) "tsuwari." The first character means 'bad' or 'evil.' The second character means 'obstruct,' 'prevent,' 'thwart,' or 'impede.' I think it means that my unborn child is nefariously preventing me from enjoying food. Feel free to post your literal English translation for "tsuwari" in the comments section.

The topic of this post is the misery I am experiencing right now. Stupid hormones! The baby is not big enough for me to feel him/her moving around and being awesome, so the only physical evidence that I am pregnant is the "sick-to-my-stomach" feeling I have and my complete lack of desire for sustenance. Plus the whole no period thing. Also the fact that although I have lost 10 pounds since becoming pregnant (the whole not being able to eat thing), my stomach and chest are definitely getting bigger. Apparently this is good for my baby because if I lose weight all the toxins stored in the fat in my body are cleansed from my system when my body is forced to use that fat for energy. There are other theories for why women have morning sickness, but you can just google "morning sickness" or better yet type it into wikipedia to find out more.

Japanese people just tell me that morning sickness is a sign that my baby is healthy and that I should do my best to endure the next few weeks. I am willing to endure anything if it means that our child will be healthy, but I don't have to be happy about it. I have been pretty whiny recently since the puking is getting worse than it has been, but Jonathan is being a real champ about it and he is willing to buy anything I want in the hopes that I will be able to eat it (recently we have found success with hard boiled eggs, cashews, and orange juice).

Warning : I will talk about vomiting in the following paragraph so skip it if you have a delicate constitution!

I have found that any food I have puked up I have been unable to eat again. Notable examples include peanut butter sandwiches (peanut butter sticks to your throat coming back up as much as going down), bitter orange-like fruit and by extension all relatives of the orange, oatmeal, and a tiny cup of artificially flavored (coffee flavor) shaved ice with some ice cream in it. Here's a tip: don't eat anything that is largely comprised of artificial coloring if you may be feeling nauseous because it is really gross coming back up and is probably not supposed to be eaten anyway judging by how gross it looks in the toilet. Whew! Puking rant over!

So I guess things are going well for us now. I have a doctor's appointment after work today, and we might get a video with sound of the little dude's heartbeat, which would be awesome. I am surviving work, although it is awkward when you are puking at a squatter (Japanese style toilet that is like a urinal on the ground instead of on the wall) when a co-worker comes in. Then all the ladies in the office give you pitying looks all day and whisper "Are you ok?" Then they tell you about someone else they know who is pregnant now and say, "頑張ってローラさん!" Which roughly translates to "You can do it, Laura!" or "Hang in there, Laura!"

Well, that is all for today, folks! Love you and miss you all!
xo
Laura (and Jonathan!)

2 comments:

  1. Dear Laura,
    Congratulations for the coming baby! If you continue with the morning sickness what I usually found helpfull was to suck lemon, the sour and the smell gives you somehow a confortable feeling. And the other is to try to identify what is making you feel bad, i.e. in my case men lotion is terrible for me, as well as fish, in all my 4 pregnancies.
    Good luck and take care.
    Betty

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  2. Thanks, Betty! I have been drinking a lot of Vitamin water because I find that the lemon does soothe my stomach a bit. I will try sucking on lemon slices now!

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