If a person were being sick three, perhaps four times a day, we would consider that cause for concern. If they were nervous to leave the house, take public transport, attend work meetings or go into supermarkets in case they unexpectedly threw up into their own hands, we would think that a rather serious medical situation. If they could no longer drink water or eat fruit or stomach the smell of cooking for months at a time, we might perhaps urge them to seek some kind of treatment.
Unless, of course, that person is pregnant. At the grand old age of 39, I am delighted to be pregnant again. I feel purposeful, excited, lucky.
But I also feel queasy, a lot of the time. Since creating those two blue lines on a strip of litmus paper, I have been sick in the morning, evening, middle of the night, after lunch, once while actually cycling (it wasn’t demure). I have been sick on trains, on pavements, in bed, into mugs and just centimetres from a Morris Marina at an unexpected classic car show outside my local charity shop.
Weeks before I had actually told anyone that I was pregnant, I was sick while walking another friend’s child home from school; I had to stop in the middle of the park and throw up in a bush, while the man emptying the bins asked the two small children on the path if their mum was okay. He obviously worried I was drunk; my son, picking up on a private joke my husband has started making every time I retch, confidently told the waste disposal person that I’d been .