ME AND MR SHANKS

I hate my toilet and, as I’m currently having an intimate relationship with it, life is proving a little trying. Every time I yodel down the bowl, I curse myself for having put re-doing the bathroom lower down the list than the kitchen, garden, new car, even the children’s food and clothing. If only I was canoodling with a groovy, shiny state of the art orifice instead of the clapped out, old pine-lidded monster that I’m lumbered with. It’s the “don’t fancy yours much” in the toilet disco, and I’ve ended up doing the slow dance with it.

Why? Well I’ll tell you. I’m six weeks pregnant. And in the frighteningly spooky way that your body has of showing that you and it are just NOT the same entity, Saturday morning, exactly six weeks in, I began to puke. It’s like trying to wrest the controls when the plane is on autopilot. Friday night I was tucking into my dinner, slightly worried that I didn’t ‘feel’ pregnant but frankly more interested in my plate than my state of health, then Saturday AM - wham! Not that it’s a total shock, as being pregnant with both Olly and Billie made me sick, but isn’t it strange how you forget how truly awful morning sickness is? It’s just so grim. I suffer badly with travel sickness and the feeling is the same. It reminds me of how I felt on a cross channel ferry once, when I accidentally went downstairs to the lowest deck and ended up clinging on to the stair rail, unable to move for nausea.

So I’m writing this lying flat on my back and hoping that my touch typing skills are up to scratch. The kids have taken my sudden attachment to Mr Armitage Shanks with their usual aplomb. Every time I head to the bathroom they race to their colouring box and produce a ‘Get Well’ card for me, which I have to be delighted with even if I am still throwing up. I remember that when I was being sick with Billie, and Olly must have been about ten months old, every time I heaved he would stand beside me and mimic me; it must have made a strange sight.

I wonder why some people get sick and others don’t. There’s not much information on that, I guess, as it’s only women being sick who care, but it does seem a rather terrible luck of the draw. However there is tons of stuff about dealing with it and I’ve grabbed every remedy I can get. The ginger is in the fridge (I prefer the pickled Japanese stuff), acupuncture sessions booked, pressure bands applied. I’ve sent off for a tape of music and special sounds which are meant to help. But as anyone who’s been through this will tell you the only real remedy is time...as I recall with Bill, about nine months!

Steve and I are absolutely delighted about the pregnancy; we’ve had a decidedly mixed reaction from everyone else. My mum and dad practically started banging the ‘For Sale’ sign into the front garden as I told them. Poor things, you can hardly blame them. Five years ago they had two thirty-something daughters that they couldn’t pay anyone to take off their hands, and now they have three grandchildren with two more on the way. (Emma, my sister, is due three weeks before me and yes, she is being sick for England). From friends, there was quite a bit of the “but you’ve just got your life back” but also tons of love and support and congratulations.

So I’m back on that ferry, heading off to more foreign shores, some of them familiar and some unchartered. Trying to brush up on a language I’ve learnt but forgotten, to remember a culture I was once immersed in but see now only in photos and mementos. So wish me Bon Voyage - I’ll send you some postcards.

Quote of the Week

Me: “Steve, Steve, oh my God, I’m being sick blood.”
Steve walks over, examines toilet bowl, says “strawberries”, and walks away.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 2 and a half) in Hertfordshire.

NEXT INSTALMENT: MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER