There comes a time in every woman's life when she has to break down and admit that digestion is an ugly thing. It's ugly at the start and ugly in the end. Pregnancy exacerbates this problem and we won't talk about what childbearing itself does.
Suffice it to say that once you have been pregnant, things just never go back to their proper order. Organs literally shift to make room for a growing fetus and I think they just don't have the werewithall to put themselves back into place. So, the digestion circus (the literal latin and vernacular meanings of the word) is set in motion.
Shortly after the process begins, there is a chain of events: mommy tries to eat food, mommy's stomach gurgles, mommy needs a Tums (or six), mommy waits to see whether Tums can save the evening or whether progesterone has foiled them again. All the while fetus is happily sucking his/her thumb, excreting waste into the umbilical cord and testing the amniotic boundaries with death-defying gymnastics routines.
In a futile effort to avoid this battle, various foods are blacklisted in growing numbers correlated to the size of the protrusion. It starts with the obvious things like spicy, ethnic foods: anything Thai, most of the Indian menu, a lot of Mexican, and pretty much anything else produced by countries that use spice as a replacement for refrigeration. Gradually it becomes almost everything you knew and loved including scrambled eggs, burgers of any variety, souvlaki sandwiches and any kind of bubbly beverage. By the end, you may as well be sucking mashed potatoes through a straw with a side of applesauce and warm milk. This must be preparation for serving these foods to the baby not long after her/his arrival in the air-breathing world.
All this is to say that I couldn't live without my chemical friend, calcium carbonate (better known as Tums, Rolaids, etc.). It reminds me of a little ditty I learned from my friend's refrigerator magnet when I was 12 (her dad was a doctor).
Doxidan in the p.m.
For a b.m. in the a.m.
I'll leave it to you to create your own rhyme about Tums and how they help Bums (the Canadian kind, not the ones that hang out on Hollywood Blvd.). They might be chalky, but at least you can...walk--y?
Suffice it to say that once you have been pregnant, things just never go back to their proper order. Organs literally shift to make room for a growing fetus and I think they just don't have the werewithall to put themselves back into place. So, the digestion circus (the literal latin and vernacular meanings of the word) is set in motion.
Shortly after the process begins, there is a chain of events: mommy tries to eat food, mommy's stomach gurgles, mommy needs a Tums (or six), mommy waits to see whether Tums can save the evening or whether progesterone has foiled them again. All the while fetus is happily sucking his/her thumb, excreting waste into the umbilical cord and testing the amniotic boundaries with death-defying gymnastics routines.
In a futile effort to avoid this battle, various foods are blacklisted in growing numbers correlated to the size of the protrusion. It starts with the obvious things like spicy, ethnic foods: anything Thai, most of the Indian menu, a lot of Mexican, and pretty much anything else produced by countries that use spice as a replacement for refrigeration. Gradually it becomes almost everything you knew and loved including scrambled eggs, burgers of any variety, souvlaki sandwiches and any kind of bubbly beverage. By the end, you may as well be sucking mashed potatoes through a straw with a side of applesauce and warm milk. This must be preparation for serving these foods to the baby not long after her/his arrival in the air-breathing world.
All this is to say that I couldn't live without my chemical friend, calcium carbonate (better known as Tums, Rolaids, etc.). It reminds me of a little ditty I learned from my friend's refrigerator magnet when I was 12 (her dad was a doctor).
Doxidan in the p.m.
For a b.m. in the a.m.
I'll leave it to you to create your own rhyme about Tums and how they help Bums (the Canadian kind, not the ones that hang out on Hollywood Blvd.). They might be chalky, but at least you can...walk--y?
