Morning sickness 2

Here is one of the things I forgot to write about morning sickness.

I hugged this fact closely for a while, and proudly offered it up to people, because it is about science and therefore made me feel valid.

We had a private scan at nine weeks, because I was beginning to think that feeling so intensely nauseous and ill meant there was either something wrong, or it was twins. And, frankly, I was going a bit mental.

Having mentioned to the sonographer that the morning sickness was bad she pointed out that I had an ‘active’ corpus luteum. Which either causes or at least correlates with above-average nausea. Something to do with hormones, and the lining around the follicle that produced the egg being thick. Look, the details aren’t important. What mattered was, I had PROOF! That I wasn’t making it up.

A little bit of science is a dangerous thing to a hypochondriac. I felt so pleased, I bravely managed to go with Jon to Pizza Express afterwards and eat three courses, which was unusual and foolish.

Even better, when I googled it, I found some article that said bad nausea was usually associated with an active corpus luteum (I’m going to abbreviate this to ACL, because I’m going to mention it again, and because we love initialising things down in our family) on the right hand side, as opposed to the left. Guess which mine was on! Happy days.

Sadly it didn’t disappear for good then and there, which disproves the Lorraine Kelly theory. But it is substantially better now, at 13 weeks, which backs up the ACL theory. Once you get into your second trimester, the placenta takes over making the progesterone and all the busy stuff, so your ACL can relax, slim down and watch a bit of X Factor on Sky+, whizzing through all the blah bits.

The Lorraine Kelly theory was told to me, by Lorraine Kelly, by coincidence, when I was first pregnant. Apparently some study has shown that lots of women find their morning sickness disappears after they’ve had their first scan. Something about seeing the foetus is reassuring. Obviously this was never very appealing to me as a theory, because I don’t like any sort of ‘all in the mind’ inferences, and I wasn’t nauseous last time. But as Lorraine is officially the nicest and most sensible woman on telly I would repeat it. Also because I got to mention in passing that I’d had breakfast with Lorraine Kelly (porridge, toast and marmite, since you ask).

Anyway, we have now had the regular 12-week scan too, where the bean gave us a big wave, and things have been perking up ever since. But I think the timing is just a coincidence. I only tend to get the quease in the afternoons or evenings, which is partly why I am making the bol for our lasagne this morning. Such early prep makes me feel like quite the little housewife.

The other reason I am doing it now is because the carpet and sofa-cleaning man has been here for over two hours making The Most deafening noise, so I can’t do any work. It’s so bad that I just spelt deafening wrong twice, and had to think hard before working out how to correct it.

I have just been into the sitting room to have a pointless conversation. He wanted to show off his handiwork at removing some of the stains from the cream sofa (yes we have a toddler and we both tend to spill whatever we eat, but it’s a really nice sofa and it came from the Harrods sale, and my mother even haggled for it, while I hid in the loo) and to ask me what the dark brown marks are that wouldn’t come off. We ruled out chocolate, because he was pretty sure he’d got some of that off elsewhere on the cushions. With hindsight, I realise the point of this conversation was to shift some of the blame back on to me, rather than it being his fault he couldn’t remove some stains, at great expense, off a sofa he had previously scotchguarded to prevent marks staining permanently, at great expense.

Oh god, this is dull. This is a really bad post. I’m sure I used to be funnier. I heard this woman on the radio the other day, and her words have been ringing in my ears ever since. She basically said she went back to work after having a baby, because it was a choice between that and staying at home and writing a blog about poo.

It’s because of this noise. The industrial hoovering is taking place on an epic scale. It is audible nausea.

 I have now assembled the entire lasagne, because I can’t concentrate on anything, and to prevent me from eating the component parts. I’m quite pleased with how it looks, and the possibility that my culinary ability may have returned – last week I muffed up roast chicken, which shouldn’t really be possible at my age.

But noise is better than nausea, and cooking is better than feeling too sick to contemplate it. Moreover, I am jolly lucky to be pregnant. So it’s time I shut up.