bad cold
It started after Thanksgiving dessert, so I don’t know if it was all the food combinations that lowered my immune system, or maybe too much sugar, or maybe I ate something that my body was slightly allergic to, or maybe it was just so much (fun) work to cook everything and I was left exhausted, but after the (homemade, even the crust, and with pie pumpkins from our garden) pumpkin pie I started to get a sore throat.
Steve grew up with a Christian Scientist stepfather, so when I say my throat’s starting to hurt he says to me, No it’s not. Which is sometimes helpful, because really the more I pity myself at a certain pivotal point is going to determine to some degree whether or not my body and mind coordinate and I get sick. But usually it makes me feel frustrated to hear that. And this time my throat really was hurting, and by morning it was difficult to swallow.
And maybe I’m a weakling, or maybe my immune system is dealing with enough right now so anything else on top of being in the last month of pregnancy is going to push me over the edge, but this cold I cannot take. It has inhabited my whole face and chest, for Friday and Saturday and Sunday and now Monday. Coughing hurts my pelvis. I feel vulnerable and helpless, unable to take anything to help the symptoms and unable to both sleep and breathe at the same time. Pregnant, I can’t even take Afrin, and my neti pot isn’t working.
So last night I felt my strength cave. I just felt so bloated in every way — too big to bend over to get anything on the ground, too swollen in my face to leave any room for my brain. I crawled into bed before 11pm after a night of whimpering. I’ve been so good for a whole year, I whimpered. No wine since December 2008, I whimpered. No chance for a hot toddy now. No peanut butter or chocolate in the house at all. No cheetos in the house, even. No Robitussin. I poured honey and lemon down my throat. I sipped my chamomile tea and Steve kindly rigged his computer to point silly television at me. The television was so imbecile, all this yelling, maybe that’s why the baby turned and kicked and kicked. I found some vanilla ice cream and swirled it with sunbutter. I found some stale pita chips from a few months ago and munched on those. How come there’s never any junk food in our house? Steve tucked me into bed where I read a book about all the terrible things that could happen to infants before I turned off the lights and twirled the sheets as I slept fitfully.
The piece of brightness: Steve was on the phone with Jack before he came over to our house on Saturday, and Steve mentioned that I was sick and Jack’s alarms went off. He knows that pregnant people aren’t supposed to get sick. This kid who appears to be on a different planet most of the time was suddenly having compassion for me and the baby. He asked a million questions, he wanted to make sure I didn’t have a fever. When he walked into our house it was the first thing he asked about, and later while we were swinging at the park he asked again, wanting to know how I thought I got sick and what I thought about the baby’s health. I had no idea he cared that much, or really that he even noticed that I’m going to have a baby at all.
