It’s Awfully Windy Around Here

So, one of the less pleasant aspects of pregnancy involves some pretty bad indigestion. Dave is quick to point out that this has always been a issue for me.  And my family readily admits that we tend to be a bit gassy.  I’d like to blame the high amount of healthy vegetables that I normally eat.  But, truly, it’s just in my genes.

It’s gotten to the point that half way through dinner, I’ve belched at least once.  Dave doesn’t even notice it anymore unless it’s outstanding or truly inappropriate.  Like Sunday night at the Super Bowl party.  I was on my third O’Douls Amber and I let out, what was for me, a gentle belch.  I then realized that I was in public and gave a mortified look to my friends and said “I am so sorry.”  Fortunately, there were a couple of other recent parents in the room who quickly forgave me and said “We understand.  You are pregnant.  Afterwards, however, you’re going to be in trouble.”

The pregnancy books say this is normal and encourage preggers to eat slowly.  It doesn’t help.  They also describe the most frightening aspect of this:  the girdle of gas.  Apparently, because the uterus is pushing all our innards up and around, we can get extremely bad gas pains circling the entire lower abdomen. 

To be quite honest, my biggest fear is that I will “pass gas” while teaching.  All professors and teachers have some fear of an embarrassing situation during a lecture:  teaching with one’s fly open (done that!), having an utterly inappropriate word pop out of one’s mouth (done that!), or generally forgetting the topic on which one is speaking (a regular occurrence!!).  None of those instances were really embarrassing for me.  My biggest fear, instead, is that I will fart. 

I recall a story from some years ago about an 8 month pregnant business woman standing in a crowded elevator when her baby gave a truly powerful kick causing her to break wind in front of all her colleagues.  She said there was nothing to do but own it.  That story echoes in my mind and scares me a great deal.  Other women say “Oh, that won’t happen!  It’s not really a problem.”  Have you seen the Sex and the City episode where Miranda was constantly farting?  In fact, she accidentally pulled her own finger trying to get a ring off and strained enough to pass gas.  I’m just saying that this my biggest fear of teaching in general and now that I’m my own personal windy city, it’s truly on my mind when I’m teaching. 

So with having constant sour stomach, belching like a sailor and being quite gassy, you’d think I’d have been bright enough to have passed by the vegetarian bean chili yesterday at lunch.  No, I didn’t.  5 hours of heartburn later, I’ve decided beans are going to be out for a while.  At least spicy beans.  Garbanzo beans in a salad still sound appealing.

Off to run in the water. 

6:04:06 AM