Taking it easy, hardcore

I'm taking my relaxation seriously. Today I started with an hour-long qi gong class, three hours of yoga, and then an hour of acupuncture which stretched into 90 minutes when I fell asleep on the table and the therapist didn't have the heart to wake me. I was snoring, he said. Well. Thanks, acupuncturist. I needed it.

My brain is tangling with the complex but pleasant puzzle of how to stay perfectly nourished and perfectly relaxed over the next six months, whilst travelling in Asia and Europe. I'm not actually going anywhere I haven't been before, unless you count a new city or two in countries I already know pretty well, so I have it pretty much mapped out in my mind. I'm always a pretty relaxed traveller, so really it's my normal routine with a lot more first-class tickets and massages thrown in. It's a write-off . . . and anyways, this is probably my last chance to travel first-class for awhile . . . soon I'll have children, which means I'll be poor. That's how it works, right? Anyways, when you book this far ahead, the price difference between coach class and business class is about 20 bucks.

Today's yoga class was a scream. I was really out of place there, like by asking what simple exercises I could do on a series of eight long-haul flights over the next month while everybody else had questions about the utility of homeopathy and raspberry leaf tea, but that was fine. Everybody else was white but had names like Indra. What was interesting in that context was that at the conversation bit toward the end, when people started sharing their snuff flicks birthing stories, was even these absolute hippie types had no problem reaching straight for the pain killers and C-sections as soon as they started feeling it was necessary.  Nobody had managed shit without nitrous, which was encouraging.

I guess I've been inculcated with the idea that I really have to do everything naturally or else I'm somehow a failure as a woman, and I've had to come to deal with the fact that there's a fairly high chance for me in particular that things are not going to happen naturally in the least, if I want Ren and I to live, anyways. That's made me sad, or testy, or something, but the more fucking horror stories birthing stories I hear, the more it's coming home to me that childbirth really has been to women what war has been to men in martial societies - something that just happens, and back in the day you couldn't go into it confidently expecting to survive, unless you were a bloody fool.

But Ren and I happen to be happening now, when childbirth just isn't as awful as it used to be for people of our income bracket and nationality, just as war isn't as awful as it used to be for all those guys flying around other people's countries and dropping bombs on them without getting too close. But I'll probably still make a good and thriving baby, and you won't find too many aerial campaigns that have made a good and thriving war. So. I guess my point is, if I have one, that thank fuck things are as they are.

Spoiling away the worry

My slide into champagne socialism continues. I've just cashed in most of my airmiles upgrading all my overnight flights during this big China/Europe/Singapore trip to business class. That's right . . . business class. On purpose, not because of getting bumped up, which has happened to me a big fat once in my fairly airborne life, and that was on a two-hour flight before my drinking days started, so I think basically I got some nicer orange juice out of it. And it's Singapore Airlines business class. I'd be lying if I wrote I wasn't excited. I have a feeling being able to actually lie down and sleep is going to make long-haul air travel a totally different and much more pleasant experience.

I'm spoiling myself. Having moderately high blood pressure whilst pregnant has pitfalls, like being advised to dial back the running to half an hour of lighter cardio every day (today I ran in the grocery store to get some eggs while the F-word was already lining up at the cash and realized how much I missed it), and like worrying about the baby and I both dying in a big pre-eclampsia storm, or wondering if I'm going to get a stroke or dead kidneys, or wondering if the theoretical possibility of fucking Ren up forever by taking drugs for my high blood pressure is outweighed in terms of his or her well-being by me not dropping dead all of a sudden.

All of these, besides missing running, are nonsense thoughts. My blood pressure really isn't that high, the drugs really aren't dangerous - especially at the tiny doses prescribed - and the risks really aren't that big. But for the first time I'm dealing with my health and my choices having an impact on someone else who doesn't have a choice about them, or a choice about their relationship with me, but to whom they're as important as they are for me. Frankly, it's a little stressful. And so, spoiling myself. Giving up on the Asian Studies certificate for now, besides finishing this joke of an international terrorism class, and eating whatever I want that's reasonably sensible, and cashing in a few years worth of air miles so that I can sleep while I travel. Spoiling myself helps. At least half the mental space I was spending worrying I'm now spending looking forward to about 22 hours of business class flight.

Super Ren

Feeling rather less grim today because we had our 11-week ultrasound yesterday, which turned out to be a 13 week ultrasound. WTF? Every time we check on the due date it seems to move up a week. I don't know how that's possible. I mean it's not like we weren't doing the deed at that point but - well, just more evidence against the rhythm method meaning a damn thing. Ren is growing by leaps and bounds and moving around like he or she knows what she's doing in there. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

And Ren - so far, Ren is normal. Ren is unfrightening. Ren isn't posing any difficult moral questions. Ren waved at us. I'm 100% relief - and relieved Ren's development has progressed this far, so that if I do have to start blood pressure medication, I'm going to worry a little less about things going wrong. I'd really rather hold off until the third trimester, though. We'll see.

Also less grim because I met my midwife. Or a midwife, anyways, who'll be tracking me and who'll take care of the delivery if it turns out to be a normal delivery. And she was great. It was the first time in this whole cunt of a thing that I've seen a medical professional who inspired me with more confidence than doubt. Even sister-in-law buggered me up bad for no reason by pulling out the molar pregnancy card, a really statistically negligible possibility for someone of my age and ethnic group, when I first found out about the high blood pressure. I mean, fuck.

The meaning of joy

Feeling a little grim. My blood pressure is back up a bit this week and yesterday hit absurd levels at the doctor's before falling back. The doctor and I will be having a little confrontation this week, I think. They seem to be leaning toward putting me on medication, but thanks to a little privileged access to obstetric literature via the sister in law I know where my blood pressure is at the moment - even with the spike at the office - definitely wouldn't call for that if I was in Canada or if I was going to be staying here for the next two months. They've said that themselves. And it's not as though on my travels I'll be heading to darkest Africa - I'll be going to a series of cities bigger and with better medical resources than this one. So we will have to have a frank discussion about that, I think, when I go back there Friday.

The other reason I'm feeling grim about all this is that I can't get life insurance now. I've checked, and having this blood pressure while pregnant disqualifies me. Fuck, I should have got it before I got knocked up, but the F-word was just shooting too straight. Obviously that's grim. I'm not horribly worried but I know that my risk of pre-eclampsia is way higher than other women's, and that makes it quite a bit more likely I'll die and leave a baby for the F-word to fend for on his own. It's still a pretty unlikely prospect. Just more likely. I should have thought about it before. Oh well, it's done now. 

A symptom of how grim I'm feeling: yesterday morning was a bit of a freak-out. I had, basically, two hours of deja vu. It was quite pleasant, but being familiar with the mechanisms of seizures and brain problems through Lexie's mum it was also a bit unsettling. There've been no other signs of problems - no blank-outs, no dizziness, no smell or sounds hallucinations - just a very odd morning. But then, three times over the course of the morning, I experienced the most overwhelming feelings of joy, well-being, contentment with my life, and profound awareness of my love for the people in it - joy of that sublime degree where you feel it's not so bad if you die now, because everything's been really great and it's a really great universe you can trust.

And my reactions to these moments of unmitigated joy? "I'm having a stroke." For fuck's sake. So few moments of perfect happiness in life, I get three in one morning, and I have to react to them by thinking I'm having a fucking stroke.  I told the F-word about it when he got home, and he pointed out that I finally may be benefiting from the happy hormones now that I'm reaching the end of the first trimester, instead of getting my ass kicked all the time by the pukey tired ones. That honestly hadn't occurred to me. Somehow the idea that I was having a stroke made so much more sense. 

All rather shocking

Week 11. Oh my god. That means I'm nearly a third of the way through this gestation, and given my blood pressure and the likelihood I'll pop some weeks early, more than a third the way through. What. The. Fuck.

Children have already made me aware that time operates differently. When I was herding Niece and Nephew around Europe, it got clear really fast the only way it was going to be nice was if I accepted Child-Time, and the fact that less gets done in more time when people are that age. At the same time the weeks with them whizzed by like a cheetah on meth.

And here we are - puking notwithstanding (I forgot to have a midnight snack last night so I was revisiting my misspent youth in the toilet again this morning), feeling like cancer notwithstanding (which I don't anymore), time has once more whizzed by and I'm for-realsies showing now. And soon - soon! - despite the worries, the preoccupations, the blood pressure - the odds are soon Ren won't just be a lovely little twitching white shadow on the ultrasound anymore, but will be a person who I'm holding in my arms. And soon after that, a person who's too big to hold in my arms. And soon after that, I'll be an old person who dies and leaves Ren without his or her mother. That's the optimistic projection, anyways. What a fucking world it is. I'm not complaining. It's just all rather shocking when you think about it.

On an only slightly lighter note. I have a lot more perspective in the BP issue now, BTW, since I got back in touch with Lexie's old mum, who is herself battling through the first trimester now. One of the reasons she had to give up Lexie was because she had a bit of a brain problem. Now she's got it all in control with medication. The problem, of course, is that the medication is contraindicated for pregnancy. Not just a little contraindicated, like the blood pressure medication I might have to go on if mine doesn't keep dropping, but quite contraindicated - like, won't-let-you-absorb-folate-and-it-is-quite-likely-there-will-be-problems contraindicated. However, if she starts having grand mal siezures again - well, that's not so hot either. Babies are well padded in there, I know, but having a grand mal siezure whilst driving or walking across something hard your head would make a jolly smash on - that's really not the way one would want to get through a pregnancy, to say the least.

I'm not facing any dilemnas or choices like that - my BP is too low right at the moment for me to need drugs, and since I'm almost out of the first trimester Ren's almost out of range for when BP medication has been suggested to occasionally cause problems. As generally futile as it is to make comparisons between people's problems, I understand - and draw some selfish comfort from - the fact that whatever choices I have to make about this matter are just not in the same league as the choices Lexie's old mum is going to have to make, or the choices women with chronic hypertension they've been on drugs for a long time for have to make, or the choices diabetic women have to make, or . . . well, most things, really. Perspective, Jessica, you fool. 

The perils of responsibility

I miss grass. A lot. It took awhile for it to really kick in - I haven't got high since I was in Belgium - but here it is. I think it's the blood pressure thing. I've always tested normal or low for blood pressure, and thinking back the main difference between all those tests and now - aside from the obvious little Ren in my belly - is that I don't smoke anymore. When all the breastfeeding is through - and since I'm hoping for long nursing followed by Ren's little brother or sister and more nursing that could be fucking aeons - I think I'll start smoking again. Or during business trips when I can pump and dump to make sure I'm not contaminating my offspring before they're ready to start contaminating themselves.

Of course, if my blood pressure goes back to normal after I pop, I won't have an excuse. Nor will I need one. I'm a big girl and I'll do what I like. Except I won't, of course. The deal I'll make with the devil inside, or the angel, or whatever the fuck my sociopathic excuse for a conscience amounts to, is that if I manage to keep not drinking coffee, I'll reintroduce the grass. One recreational carcinogen at a time's enough. And at the moment I miss grass far more than I miss coffee. At that, my dears, is a sentiment I never expected. I've always loved weed but I've loved coffee more. No interest at the moment, though.

Another part of it is the Great European Trip will be through the Netherlands for about a week, and I'll be stopping in towards its tail end with some people I used to do a lot of getting high with. And then Berlin. Most of this trip will be spent with friends and family but in aid of my blood pressure and just out of self-regard, I've decided to treat myself to three days on my own in a forest outside of Berlin. Not a spirit quest or anything. It'll be in a really nice B&B with awesome restaurants nearby. But I've always really, really loved being high in Berlin. I've loved being anything in Berlin, really. And gosh, going there for a few days in July is not gonna help with my nostalgia for it in the long term.

But that's fine. I just want to chill for a few days by myself in a forest in Berlin. This could be my last chance to do that for 22 years. And yes, a little weed would be nice with that. Oh well. The things I don't do for love.

Golliwhaaaa?

My blood pressure is noticeably down. It'd be nice to know which of the things I was doing to make it come down, if any, are working, especially given the acupuncture costs $50 a week (and that's mates' rates). But I'll just take the "down", and keep not eating salt.

I'll have to keep monitoring it over the rest of the pregnancy, but the one place in town that sells blood pressure machines - the place where I got my rental from - sells golliwogs too. I'm aware of the cultural arguments for golliwogs not being a disgusting memento of a racist past that hasn't quite ended yet. And you know what, if they were for sale in some other country with a different history with its black people maybe I'd be less utterly creeped out.

But considering European Australians have spent their history genociding all their black people off and otherwise being absolutely inhuman in a way that they don't need to face because it's been so thorough there's just a few thousand over left to complain and try to pursue lawsuits (ever heard of the Maralinga tests? I doubt it. A settlement of $13.5 million for a whole fucking community - that wouldn't cover giving one of them cancer in a country where they counted as human. Mind you, they fucked over their own white servicemen too in the service of the Mother Country's nuclear programme, so maybe it can't all be written off to racism).

Anyways, whatever the abstract rightness or wrongness of the continued commercial existence of golliwogs, I'm not giving any more fucking money to an Australian shop that sells them.

One of my colleagues in Shanghai, who I could make two of when I was still fit, had the same blood pressure issue I did, and she and the baby were fine after a non-induced three-week early delivery that turned into a C-section because the baby wouldn't take her silly little hand off its crown. Squidsy's wife, who popped over last night, had undiagnosed high blood pressure and descended into full pre-eclampsia - she got a C-section too, obviously - I guess when you're hemorrhaging and doing whatever other awful things happen at that point they don't wait for it to come out of its own accord. And she and the baby, ultimately, were fine.

I'm finding these stories, especially my co-worker's, incredibly reassuring. I know I could mess around on the internet and find unlimited happy and unhappy stories of how high blood pressure was or was not dealt with by pregnant chicks, and I've done a bit of that, actually, but when it's people you know, it's so much more believable, somehow. So much more real. There are a lot of things the internet can't do. It doesn't help that that all these forums seem to be full of messages from people who can't spell, punctuate, or otherwise write, and who I therefore find unreliable. God, the internet brings out the snob in me.

Airmiles and airport books

I have enough of them for a round trip to Rome. I just bought some tickets instead. I mean to say I'll be in Rome, but not flying in and out of there. Feeling a bit of an abstract urge to scarper. Lots of women love being pregnant but I suspect I'm not one of them. Now that I'm not particularly worried anymore - forewarned forearmed, etc., and Ren seems to be ticking along nicely down there as we round out this beginning 1:4 miscarriage risk period - I'm just sort of sick of being pregnant. I want to go for runs and camping trips and eat food with sesame oil, not to mention coffee. But lethargy, nausea and blood pressure's in the way, not to mention the tail end of that fucking plague I contracted in Melbourne. 

And I want to not be so fucking fat. I'm back up to the weight I was before I started running, and wondering how I stood it back then. I feel like a fucking elephant. It's not an aesthetic thing. I look pretty great, with my porn boobs and glow and minibump and all that. It's more the feeling - this feeling of being some sort of clumsy, loose-limbed mastadon. And I'm just at the beginning of it, too. Oh well. I think things'll get better in that respect when the goo clears out of my lungs well enough for me to run and jump in the pool, and we've got a Pilates instructor buddy who I'll learn some matt tricks with. I'm just so bloody sleepy and dopey all the time.

The good thing is that all the enforced relaxation is reintroducing me to the world of light reading. I'm reading Dashiell Hammett's short stories for the first time. I like Raymond Chandler's better, for their emotional richness, but not much. These are pretty damn sweet. Not Dorothy Sayer's though, which aren't particularly emotionally rich compared to either - not at all - but are fucking awesome and which I've also been reading. Also reading The Art Forger's Handbook, by a very interesting man called Eric Hebborn. The linked documentary is very interesting, worth a watch, but nothing to the book. While it's got a lot of quantity of methodology not immediately interesting to those of us who don't draw or paint much, its conclusions on modern art versus older art and the intrinsic value of artwork are absolutely fascinating. Despite or because of being written by a sociopath, no dissection of those topics has ever spoken to me better.

In the vein of slightlier heavier reading I've been going through Erasmus's Praise of Folly, which is a rather sweet read. I have a great-grandfather Erasmus who made it to 100 without breaking a sweat, named after him of Rotterdam I know not, but in case Ren turns out to be a boy I'm mounting a minor campaign for us to name him that. (Don't worry, it's going badly.) In the circumstances I should at least read some of his books.

The joys of unimmunity

Pregnancy continues pregnantily. I'm in Melbourne for a conference that I'm not at at the moment because I have no more immune system. Pregnant women don't have much of one, you see; that way, their own bodies don't turn on the embryos. Which means the common cold chews through you like a rabid fucking wolverine. Oh well. It looked like a crappy conference anyways. But I'd rather be home, of course, eating according to my very, very odd predilections, and not having to share a washroom with other B&B guests.

I'm keen on having my own kitchen back because not only are my predilections in terms of what I can eat odd, but eating is further complicated by how it's not supposed to involve much salt, due to my blood pressure, which continues borderline-I-gotta-see-an-OB-instead-of-a-midwife-hey-maybe-I-can-get-a-C-section-instead-of-pushing-a-bowling-ball-out-of-my-insert-whistling-sound-here. Of course this week it's involving salt, because it's involving restaurants. And that's fine by me aside from the health issues. Pregnancy isn't giving me a sweet tooth, sadly. I could sit here eating french fries all day, no trouble. Best not to think about it.

Well, that's enough of all that now. Time for more sleeping.

Joynoyance

Annoyance the first: I've been asking for lots of advice, unashamedly, unabashedly, for getting through pregnancy. Nothing to worry about, readers, but it looks as though this pregnancy will not be the 100% uncomplicated push-it-out-in-a-manger romp through the hay all us Catholic girls hope and pray for. Because - it will turn out to the surprise of no-one who has waded through my frequent, inconsequential, but heartfelt rants - my blood pressure is bordering unhealthy levels and my third trimester will be a big fat pre-eclampsia watch. All that's not as bad as it sounds, but it's not so hot either. And in any case, I've never done it before, it's frightening, it's the first trimester so I feel like I've got fucking cancer, etc.

What I haven't been asking for advice for is how to live my fucking life when it comes out. Now, luck always plays its part, of course, but I've worked really hard to get to a point where I'll be able to breastfeed and cuddle whenever, besides some key hours on Thursday and Friday, and where the F-word only works part of the week. And he's worked hard to get to the point where he can probably take the full year of unpaid parental leave. I can't, or rather, I won't. I outearn him by 300% so it would be a ridiculous choice for our family if I did that.

And frankly, I don't want to. That might change, but at the moment I can't foresee a situation where I take a year off from a job I love, that I do from home and whose hours still let me cuddle, breastfeed, co-sleep, etc, so the F-word - a professional early childhood educator, BTfuckingW - can commute an hour a day to the next town over and support us on a fraction of the income my job provides, while my fucking brain turns to baby mush and I stop being able to afford wild-caught salmon.

Being in this state of mind, readers, being advised on attachment parenting being a woman's natural choice, and how I should take as much time off as I possibly can, is not what I want to hear. It is bullshit advice. It is highly subjective advice generalized to include my very specific situation. It is infuriating advice, frankly, when we've gone through what we've gone through to organize our present situation for ourselves. And it comes from a guy who I used to fuck and his stay-at-home wife who both reckon they're some sort of feminist and who don't have enough money, so it is also, to a degree, comical, I-dodged-a-bullet type of advice.

You know, people warned me that eventually the advice would start annoying me, but I wasn't expecting it until I started showing and strangers started telling me to stop running, or something.

Maternal slap-in-the-face of joy the first: to rule out anything wierder than a family history of hypertension causing my high blood pressure, we had our first ultrasound yesterday. It was lovely, the little thing. Heart beating, little limbs twitching, great big head. For the moment we're calling it Ren. For obvious reasons. Nine week old embryos do bear a certain resemblance to him. Suddenly what's happening to me stopped feeling like cancer and started feeling like growing a person who I'm gonna love more than I've ever loved anything.

Doctors, midwives, nerves and judgements

I'm cued up now with a doctor and a midwife. Good news, all in all. The midwife comes recommended from a good friend here who had her better pregnancy with her . . . the doctor is an unknown quality, so we'll see how that goes.

I expect to be a reasonably demanding patient. For example, when I was in Canada, I got to spend lots of quality time with Lexie, my cat, who has taken to my parents like a duck to water. Which was lovely. And she spent the winter being an indoor cat, in a place without mice, which means she wasn't likely to be tracking around any toxoplasmosis - but then Mum let her out a few times the last days I was there.

It's fairly ridiculous for me to be worried about toxoplasmosis. I spent years in France and Belgium eating raw-ish meat, and I spent years living in close quarters with Lexie while she was running around outside assaulting things and chomping down rodents in my Cabbagetown dive like a boss. The odds of me not having contracted toxoplasmosis years ago (when it would have been perfectly safe as far as Fetus is concerned) and then contracting it during the two days out of the three weeks I spent with my sweet Lex when she would have been tracking around toxoplasmosis she picked up in a couple of ten-minute walk-rounds the garden, or the one time I changed her litter box in that time whilst holding my breath and washing myself down afterward, are really quite negligible.

Nevertheless I'm concerned enough to ask for a test. My guess is the test will show I have antibodies, because I have not let a toxoplasmosis-free sort of lifestyle (see years of raw meat in France and Belgium) and then there will be another test to figure out how recent my infection was and then Fetus will need to get a blood test once it's born, just to reassure me, and all this fucking shit will be on my mind for, like, a fucking year.

The good thing about me as a patient is that if Fetus is really just Fetus, Singular, and not Multiple Fetii (which would explain why I've been eating my own weight in meat every day), and all things being equal, I'm going to spend most of the second trimester elsewhere, away from my midwife and family doctor, so their most pressing job in the next few weeks besides the introductory appointments is going to be writing down what they reccommend I pay medical people in China, the UK, Belgium etc. to do. I don't know if I mentioned but I have quite a travel schedual in the second trimester. DV, Fetus will have visited 10 countries whilst still in utero.

He or she might as well get used to it. I don't think it's possible to be my kid, or the F-word's kid, without understanding that the world is awfully, painfully big but not as big as it seems, and the tricks behind straddling continents. Which I suspect is a very unAustralian outlook, BTW. Yesterday Squidsy told us his grandmother in Adelaide had died. Adelaide's a two hour plane ride away. He didn't go, not to see her when she was dying and not for her funeral, despite her appeals and his mother's appeals. No time - despite being functionally unemployed - and no money - despite having the cash to sink a bottle of quality wine a night. I guess I have to stop thinking of Squidsy as representative of Australians. It doesn't do them favours.

No eating on an empty stomach, or with a bunch of assholes

I think I've cracked the riddle of why I'm not puking anymore, despite continuing to feel a little nauseous from time to time, and it does have to do with jet lag; since I'm not even close to getting an uninterrupted night's sleep and always have a little snack when I have to get up and around, my stomach doesn't get to that empty point where it starts puking. I'm avoiding, for the moment, that disgusting merry-go-round of empty tummy, puke, no appetite, more puke, try to eat, it's disgusting, empty tummy, et cetera. We'll see if this lasts but I'm pretty chuffed. Never thought it would feel so good to sleep so bad.

What I am a little concerned about, though, is getting as big as a fucking whale because I'm eating constantly. I already look like I'm showing, probably from a combination of water retention and having spent the last couple of weeks eating everything I could hold down and then falling asleep in exhaustion after something as easy as climbing three flights of stairs.

I'm not too concerned, though. My energy levels seem pretty decent now. And I'd rather be overweight than underweight while there's a bun in the oven, that's for damn sure. But I am a little concerned. Oh well. I'm just making sure that anything that goes down the hatch is wholesome, and I'll keep getting an hour of exercise a day, even if it's not all running anymore. The run yesterday was lovely. I think I'll keep going out for a half hour a couple of times a week until I'm too big. I take it really easy and my joints weren't playing up at all - they seem to get iffier when I'm moving around the house in a sudden-type of fashion.

Another thing on my mind is family, of course. How couldn't it be? Today it's the F-word's family. There's a whole big swathe he's become estranged from in the last year. I'm not getting into it, of course, but suffice it to say I don't blame him for the estrangement, and I'm a little surprised by how I wish it to extend to our children - I don't want my kids to have anything to do with this set of people.

That's not the way I ever expected to feel about members of my kid's extended family - I'm Italian enough to feel fairly strongly that family is identity to a very large degree - but there you are. They're the sort of people that I want my children to understand are not the sort of people you sit down and eat dinner with. I'm not talking drug dealers or slave traders or government assassins or merchant bankers or commodities traders. The world is more complicated than that, some of my favorite people are for-realsies fascists, and I'd sit down for dinner with a pig (although these non-vegetarian days, the pig'd probably be on the dish), because pigs can have quite decent dispositions. But these people . . . well . . .

Anyways, I guess the F-word'll be the one to decide if the estrangement continues or not, but in any case of course it throws my own family into relief. They're great. Not strange or estrange or anything. And they're so fucking far away . . . oh well. We'll get round to doing something about that before long.

The reassurance of pukery

Well. I've now been in Australia for something like 32 hours and haven't puked, or really seriously wanted to, once. Some nausea, especially last night, which I suppose my body has decided is the morning now, but nothing serious. And you know what I think of that? I'm fucking petrified. After everybody telling me it's just gonna get worse for the next month or so, I'm afraid this means there's a problem.

But I'm already tired of thinking everything's a problem. (Also even as I type I'm starting to feel pukey.) There is just so much "information" available about what to panic about, and what not to panic about, that I'm just gonna say fuck it; I'll panic when I feel like panicking, attempt to keep feeling like panicking to a minimum, and just enjoy my massive new porno boobs. Anyways, I've signed on with a local midwife, and Luke Duke's midwife-wife is accessible anytime with a phone call, so it's not as though I don't have experts to refer to when I lose faith in my own gut instincts and the creepily ubiquitous What to Expect When You're Expecting.

One thing I feel a bit funny about is running, not because of the fetus, but because of me. I'm hyperextensible, which has caused more fun than pain in my life, but was behind the tearing of my ACL a few years back, and I suspect is behind some common-ish loose-ligament symptoms I'm feeling now, like sneezing hurting my tummy and odd spots of back pain.

Last night I had grand plans to head to the pool, even though I kind of hate swimming in pools, and then didn't when jet lag hit me like a tonne of bricks around six pm. I guess I'll try a little run on a playing field this morning and see how that goes, but maybe I'll be better off focusing on kayaking and trying to develop a taste for swimming this next little while. Pools are fucking disgusting, though. It's like taking a chemical bath with hundreds of strangers. Eeurgh. At least when you're in a lake or river there are actual creatures in there that keep things regulated, which reassures me even though sometimes, as in Lake Nipissing, the creatures cause mild skin diseases.

Feeding the fetus, part 1

Well, vegetarianism, you and I will probably meet again. Godspeed and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Pregnancy continues carnivorously. Now that I'm back on my home turf and now that my rhythms of what's morning and what's not seem to have been utterly thrown off by massive jet lag, giving me a break from the really severe nausea I was feeling in Canada (I'll let you know if this continues as a cure; Diclectin is so fucking expensive that a trip to Australia could work out to be good value), I'm trying to control what I eat a little better. No more Cheez Wiz. But lots of organic meat, baked potatoes, and pasta carbonara, which, let's face it, is probably no better for me, but at least I know what's in it.

And now that I'm back in the tropics I'm eating more fruit, since it's tastier. The lemonades in our backyard are just about ready - still pretty sour, but always less sour than they start out as tasting, which is a really charming thing about lemonades. Bananas that always taste like bananas. Passion fruit. I'm not enjoying it all as much as sausages, but it's all going down a lot easier than the veggies, that's for damn sure. It's the cruciform ones whose bare idea makes me want to hurl up food I ate thirty years ago, but aside from cucumbers and red peppers, the whole institution is unappealing at the moment.

And joy of joys, the eight bottles of Mado's hot sauce I brought home survived the three plane trips unbroken. Last time I only brought two, and they lasted six weeks or so - the F-word and
I have a habit of spreading it on sandwiches so we run through it fast. Hopefully the eight'll last until someone indulgent visits us from Toronto. Get it at the House of Spice in Kensington, Indulgent Ones.

Crotches and their repurcussions

You know something about Labyrinth? It's justly famous for all that David Bowie cock. There are lots of sweet things about that movie, but David Bowie's cock is definitely in the top five. Frankly I don't give a fuck whether his crotch was stuffed or not. The thing is it's impossible to watch five minutes of most children's/young adult films without seeing vast riches of hyper-sexualized feminine erogeny, if you count boobies, which I most certainly do. And if you count boobs the odds of single one out of dozens of pairs being real in any meaningful way are laughable.

But I can't think of another such movie besides Labyrinth that showcases men's genitals in quite such an exciting way - as something so very obviously attached to some magic goblin dude who can control time, walk upside-down, and do all sorts of other crazy fucked-up shit, but who can still be managed with the application of a little logic, imagination and fearlessness. I either credit or blame - generally credit - that movie, at least in part, for the nature of my relationships with cocks today.

Alright, after a bit of cock talk I think in good faith I can now continue to write about being pregnant. I'm in the middle of the trip back up to L_____, which pisses me off on every level except that of being happy to be returning to the arms of the F-word. I started Canadian Sunday Night, and will arrive back in L____ Australian Tuesday Afternoon. And once again, couldn't be doing it faster. It's been shit - the five hours to Vancouver followed by the 15 hours to Sydney followed by this hanging about in an airport full of Australians. I won't do that again if I can help it - definitely will break the journey in Vancouver with Elvis and Co. But I'd already resolved that, of course, and couldn't help it this time, given that the trip was executed impromptu and in haste. And who knows how many more such emergencies will come?

 Every time I leave Canada I feel a little dumber for doing so, and now I feel super-dumb for doing so, given that I was leaving an environment full of friends and family full of concern and love sparked off by my present delicate state, returning to an environment where - well, where we have some really good friends. But this distance is starting to seem bigger and bigger. The idea of doing what I've just done with a baby makes me want to vomit. I mean, more so than already. Which is less than I had before, happily.

Eating at the moment:

-unlimited helpings of pasta carbonara
-ABSOLUTELY NO cruciform vegetables besides crispy picked cabbage
-most deep-fried things
-FUCKIN' NO cruciform vegetables. GROSS GROSS GROSS.
-Rice Krispies
-Montreal-style bagels. Except now I'm back in fuckin' Australia, with its fucking lack of Montreal  Jews and the attendant Montreal-style bagels.

Ah, fuck this fuckin' place.

Give me the drugs

You know what's remarkable about pregnancy in modern media? Nobody ever tells you how miserable and rotten the first trimester is. From all accounts so far it seems nothing blows like the first three months and the last two weeks, when the baby is too big for the tummy and kicking the shit out of you, and otherwise it seems reasonably pleasant. But nobody likes the first trimester, I get told now that I'm smack in the middle of it myself.

First and worst is the constant worry because the odds at this point are really only a B (75%) that this embryo inside you is going to go to term. I've never been satisfied with Bs and I'd like a surer bet. But there's nothing for it. If the egg was badly flawed or the winning sperm was badly flawed it's just not going to happen, which is perfectly natural and perfectly right, but goddamn, is it ever a headfuck. Especially these days in which I find myself are worrisome. My midwife sister-in-law tells me the odds of not carrying to term go right down if you make it past weeks six to ten. Yeah, okay, great, I'm in week six, so I get to spend the next month shitting myself if I get a tummyache.

Anyways, considering the body spontaneously aborts something like 30% of the fertilised eggs it gets going just for not being good enough, I'm wondering how long it'll take for pro-lifers to start arresting healthy uteruses, the most ruthless aborters of all. But that's a rant for another day.

Then there's the puking of course, and the worries attendant on that. In a situation where you'll eat anything that you think is likely to stay down, it's hard to think about actual nutrition in a useful way for either mother or child. I have a good appetite for:

1. Bacon
2. Tornado rolls from Spring Rolls
3. Sriracha hot sauce
4. More bacon

You know what the nutritional value of that is? The F-word and I actually usually eat almost obsessively well. I mean, no ingredients we don't recognize, as much as possible from scratch, etc. etc. But at this point I'd eat MSG-flavoured android cock if I thought I wouldn't puke it back up. There is something distressing in that, to the purist part of my Jessica-brain that's nervous about over-processed food. But put a plate of crispy store-bought bacon in front of me and it is gone in three minutes, nitrates and all, fuckin' gone, Purist Jessica being reduced to an annoying little background tweet as Pukey Jessica and Hungry Jessica wade into it, mouth-open. In a way it's reassuring; I'm still planning to spend the first month of the second trimester in Shanghai, and anything that doesn't have pig in it there is either Uighur food or not food.

So I got a prescription for a sort of anti-puking pill called Diclectin, whose mechanism doesn't seem too frightening - it's more or less an antihistamine combined with a B vitamin - and started it last night. Today it seems to be working, and I have high hopes of being able to choke down some sort of vegetable product that isn't part of a B-heavy BLT. But of course I'm nervous about that, too. So many historical horror stories about anti-puking medication turning out babies with dreadful problems. Nevertheless I'm taking it. It turns out I have more or less zero patience with severe discomfort. Any bets on how fast it'll take me to demand an epidural, given I'm presently absolutely opposed to getting one, but apparently seem to be one of the biggest sucky babies in the universe?