On Morning Sickness

I would write a Reminiscence, but my brain is broken from all the nausea and vomiting.

I often think about Eddie Izzard while I'm throwing up. You can find several of his shows bootlegged on youtube and I would link to one, but I'm afraid my mother would click on it. You see, Eddie Izzard has a mouth on him. A dirty, British mouth. And, he's a cross-dresser. But, he's so funny that in the days of my youthful rebellion, I couldn't stay away. I was addicted.

Back to why I think about him when vomiting. He does a sort of irreverent bit about God assigning the body parts their functions and he gets to the inner ear and assigns it hearing and vomiting. The inner ear protests saying, "the stomach, surely, should be in charge of vomiting. Stomach, food..?" No, no. Hearing and vomiting. Mr. Izzard goes on to talk about how there's a lot of odd associations in life: like how seals are good with balls. Who figured that one out? How many failed combinations did they try before they got one that worked (lions with banjos?)

No one knows for sure why pregnancy makes women throw up. There are several theories that range from the plausable (hormones that help establish the placenta and prevent early miscarriage) to the crackpot (an evolved defense mechanism against eating plant toxins. (Yeah, like there's any less toxins in the normally disgusting Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits that are oh so good to my nauseous tummy (I don't know why) than in oatmeal which I couldn't choke down if my life depended on it)). I like the placenta establishment idea, but whenever I throw up, I think of God, with Eddie Izzard's voice, assigning the placenta to support the life of an unborn child and cause vomiting. Surely it must have protested saying that the inner ear already had the vomiting position covered. No, no. Life support and vomiting.