Hormonal Anarchy

“Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns. Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood..” -Annie Proulx, opening lines of The Shipping News

Maybe it’s because this is the first time in fifteen years I’ve experienced major hormonal changes, but I feel like I’m a teenager again. The thought occurred to me as I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror peering at my fourth major pimple. The last time this had happened my sisters called me “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer” for a week. My breasts are changing, and then there’s the nastier bloating, constipation, gas, excess saliva production, and the worst, nausea.

Morning sickness is about the worst misnomer I have ever encountered: my particular brand involves not ever actually vomiting, but feeling on the verge of doing so for the entire day. It’s undulating but unremitting, and with teen-like angst it feels like years since I’ve felt remotely normal, though in reality it’s been more like one month. Some triggers are predictable, like the thought/smell/presence/remote possibility of food. Others are idiosyncratic: humidity, the smell of my shampoo, being touched on the belly. For some reason the smell of our hand cleansers in clinic would send me into spasms of queasiness while focusing through microscopes and lenses all day would not.

The striking thing is how my world revolves around constant nausea, a major change for someone who’s never been sick for more than a few days at a time before. It’s like adolescence all over again: the moodiness, the self-pity, the sense of isolation, even the fantasizing. If only someone would do this right now, I’d feel better—“this” ranging from “buy me jewelry” to “cook clam chowder” to “get me out of work.”

But the reality is that I’ve no control over this riot of hormones, and worse yet, no understanding of what drooling and biliousness has to do with preparing to be a mother. It seems like some mysterious, aimless rite of passage, a brand of suffering forgettable enough that my own mother barely recalled experiencing it. Maybe there is something about all this that, like zits and training bras, is meant to drive home the point that major changes loom ahead, during a time when our bodies would otherwise seem the same. Maybe we are meant to begin learning how to focus past discomfort for the sake of someone other than ourselves. Or maybe to begin getting used to being inconvenienced. I’m not sure, but in the meanwhile, I’ll be nibbling Saltines and looking forward to the day it all passes.

Week Ten