Or, how I
learned to stop worrying and love the Zofran[1].
Before I went on
vacation, my OB prescribed me some just-in-case Zofran. A small bottle of tiny
4mg tablets. The anti-nausea wonder drug. Mommy’s little helper. No, I
wasn’t throwing up. No, I don’t have what Kate Middleton had. But I AM A
GIANT WIMP was existing in a kind
of perma-nausea that made basic social interactions and eating anything outside
the cracker-spaghetti-oatmeal foodgroup a difficult chore. Also, I’m a wimp.
But I am a wimp with a strain of hippy-granola-anti-prescription-drug-ism. An intolerable hypocrite who has
regularly relied on all kinds of terrifying prescription drugs to keep my
Crohn’s disease in check. And, um, to like, get
pregnant. Hello Clomid, my old friend…etc.
What I’m getting
at – bare with me now, we’re going deep – YOU GUYS I WAS CONFLICTED.
<Let the
insufferable navel gazing begin!>
I had set up
some kind of bizarre and convoluted self-righteousness construct wherein nausea was my badge of
first-trimester-honor, despite no one giving me a sticker for my incessant
suffering[2]
and everyone being sick of hearing about it. But in my head, taking Zofran was
for wimps. Especially the non-throwing-up kind of wimp[3].
What’s more, taking Zofran would create unnecessary risks for the microscopic
grain of rice[4] pulsing its
little baby galoshes[5] inside of me[6].
Zofran was weakness/failure/selfishness/the-first-indication-of-poor-parenting-to-come/judgment-judgment-judgment!/recklessness
and OHDEARLORDDOIREALLYNEEDTHISADDITIONALANXIETY?
On the other
hand, there comes a moment when you are force-feeding yourself plain, cold, sticking-to-itself
spaghetti out of a Tupperware in an airport lobby at 10 pm while gazing
longingly at your sea bands, only able to respond to your husband’s sweet words
of encouragement with a grunt – less of appreciation and much more of leave-me-alone-because-speaking-to-me-makes-me-want-to-vomit
– that you begin to feel that there must be a better way.
