Mummyology

‘Morning’ he’d said, on this particular morning.
‘Why are you saying it like that?’ I said.
‘Like what?’
‘You’re so self righteous! It’s not what you’re saying, it’s the way you’re saying it’.
‘But I just said good morning’ he said, clearly confused, because he was stupid. I’d got dressed and he’d taken me to work. I might have given him a kiss goodbye, or poured boiling hot tar in his lap, I can’t remember, but I do remember feeling a bit sick and not wanting anything to eat, which basically never happens. But I still didn’t twig.

Later in the day I was sick twice, and then ate a lot of white bread. Convinced I’d picked up a bug, I went home early, shouted at Ed a bit and then went to sleep.

The next day was no better; I woke up and ate some white bread, brought it back up and decided enough was enough and I DEFINITELY had a bug and would need some drugs. I called in sick and put some clothes on. Ed came in the room.

‘Where are you going?’ he said
‘Oh it’s all about you isn’t it’ I replied, ‘YOU want to know where I am going so YOU know how long you’ve got before I come back’. This seemed a reasonable statement, to me, but Ed walked away.
‘Go on, off you go, you don’t care about me!!’ I’d screamed, probably, at his poor flummoxing body as he flummoxed (is it possible to flummox?) back to the kitchen’. I walked out of the flat and slammed the door as hard as I could.

Then I popped to Benests (that’s the shop, if you don’t live in Jersey. It sells, amongst other things, pepto bismal, which was what I was after).

Whilst there, I had a conversation with my brain. It went something like this:
Brain: Do you know, you’re about 17 days late now for your period.
Me: Ah yes. Do you know which aisle the pepto bismal is kept in?
Brain: I think I am going to make your feet walk in another direction. Don’t fight the feet. They are going to the pharmacy. We are going to get a pregnancy test.
Me: Ok, no harm in that. May as well rule it out I guess. Can we get some white bread too though? It’s all I seem to fancy, when I’m not feeling nauseas. Which is basically all the time. That’s a bit strange isn’t it, feeling sick all the time. I thought bugs only lasted a couple of days, but I’ve been feeling like this for 2 weeks. Maybe I’ve got multi-bugs? Or like a massive, mutant bug?
Brain: stop thinking. Just walk.

I’d managed to get home safely and was downing pepto bismal whilst I waited for the pregnancy test to register negative. But that’s the funny thing you see. Instead of a straight line, there was a cross. And then my body did that thing where shock takes over and you basically have no control of yourself. I sort of slumped down until I sat on the floor, holding the stick and staring at it, waiting for it to go back to a line. Although I held off as long as possible, I eventually had to let reality permeate, and it did, and then the shock moved up from my body and into my mind, and I thought, ‘oh fuuuuu’.

A problem shared is a problem halved they say, and with that in mind I legged it to find Ed. He was doing something annoying, like washing up or breathing in and out, and I sort of threw myself on him in a very dramatic style, and said ‘I’m pregnant!’

And then it all became extremely real. So I burst into tears and cried hard for a while. Then we sat down and tried to work out how we could afford a baby. We concluded quickly that we couldn’t, no way, totally impossible. Then we thought of names. Then Ed ran me a bath and I sat in it whilst he called his cousin, and his sister, who both cried a bit, so I cried into the bath too. Then I realised that actually, Ed is quite nice and hadn’t done anything wrong for 6 uninterrupted weeks, and instead it was probably a poisonous mix of my hormones and a simmering bad temper.