Apparently my top-notch detective (read googling) skills are insufficient to uncover the identity of the individual who coined the phrase “morning sickness”. I suspect this is for his/her own safety. I was interested because I was eager to know who it was I needed to be cursing at 9pm at night whilst pondering whether or not I’ll be able to keep down that third dry cracker that has composed my dinner for that evening. Before I get to the horror that is the pregnancy pukey feeling, let me give you an insight into my impressions about the topic before dealing with it first hand.
Firstly, like everyone, I knew it was called “morning sickness”, foolishly I assumed this to mean that the vomitty feeling would predominate in the – you know – MORNING. Pop culture has a weird way of depicting morning sickness as well. I’m sure most of us are familiar with the hilarious comedy sketches dealing with the issue – the newly pregnant lady head deep in the closest lavatory; or hurriedly running off to violently regurgitate the contents of her stomach. Why do these people think it’s funny? At the risk of sounding like a big fat hairy feminist*, my guess is because they are MEN.
So these were the elements that informed my personal knowledge about morning sickness. They did little to prepare me for the reality of pregnancy.
Have you ever had a stomach bug or food poisoning? Not really a good time is it? Not really something you would recommend to your friends. Right, so “morning sickness” is like having that for around 1-2 months. Imagine not being hungry for 2 months. Nobody told me that! Oh, also, it doesn’t let up in the afternoon or evening. Morning sickness is a horrible LIE.
Also, cruelly, it generally occurs at the beginning of pregnancy when you don’t necessarily want to let anyone know yet. This means very little sympathy – which as we all know is one of the only effective remedies for debilitating nausea. Most half decent partners will be understanding, but it still means you have to wake up in the morning and go to work like nothing is the matter. Hilarious isn’t it? I suspect that if men suffered from morning sickness, references to it in pop culture would look something like this:
* I’m only mildly hairy
(actually a funny story related to my hairiness is as follows: when I was a teenager I had a crush on one of my brothers friends, and to torture me he told me that his friend had asked him why my face was so hairy. It was untrue, but left me with a deep-seated psychosis regarding my facial hair. Lol, brothers.)
How to grow your very own human 