Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Charitable Thoughts on Morning Sickness

So, something unexpected has come out of this whole well thing. I have come away feeling almost good about my morning sickness. It turns out that it probably did what it was biologically designed to do (if a bit overly enthusiastically). Very shortly after I got pregnant, I decided that the water from our tap tasted bad so I avoided drinking it. When I did drink it, it had to go through the Brita which is less than perfect but still is another layer of filtration. After just a week or two more, I could no longer tolerate still water at all. So, any tap water I did drink was boiled prior to making a tummy soothing tea and most of the time I was mainlining ginger ale. My extended bout with morning sickness meant that I cooked very little food in my home. When I could eat, it was often in the form of pre-prepared foods like crackers or (on really good days) take out. I also followed a rule that anything I drank had to contain calories since liquids were often my main caloric source- that cut way back on the tap water consumption too. This means that the baby was probably minimally exposed to well water during the entire 1st trimester and a good hunk of the 2nd. I never really thought I could look back gratefully on 6 months of puking but, apparently I was wrong.

Thank you so much for your reassurances. I hadn't thought about the filtering effects of the placenta. They spend so much time telling you about what will pass, thoughts of what won't didn't readily occur to me.

I also keep looking out the windows. We have had flocks of hummingbirds coming to the feeders this year and they don't seem to be falling ill from pesticides. We have oodles of other birds flocking to our yard as well as squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks and butterflies. It looks like we actually have markedly more than last year and more than other people in our neighborhood. I think that at least some of the birds are those that were hatched in our trees last year. It seems to me that if things were all that bad, our spring would have been much more silent.

The town seems to understand our urgency in needing to get on the town water and have been very helpful thus far. Forms are being expedited and faxed. Work orders are already in place. We are a little apprehensive about the actual laying of the pipe. We aren't terribly sure about the status of our road, legally speaking. The town won't or doesn't like to (which is unclear) tear up private roads to lay pipe. When we bought our house we were told it was private but if you look at official maps from the town it's not marked as private, nor is the street sign. It's fairly obvious when you look at the road that it isn't maintained by the city as it's gravel. But the water guy, the town engineer, and the work order guy all signed off on the work to lay the pipe so, we're not going to raise the issue. Our biggest worry is that the very odd man who lives a little further down the road seems to think he owns the road which, according to what we can tell from the deed and such, he doesn't. But, he does own part and real estate law can be murky. We plan to plead ignorance if the matter comes up and assume that trying to stop the town, once it is in motion, will take longer than the laying of the pipe and then, eh...

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