Losing My Head

This is something I am becoming quite adept at lately. That is, losing my head: losing all sense of perspective in the face of a pot of beans I don't really want to eat, or my husband's request that I watch two extra children for most of the day while he has cream tea with colleagues at the local teahouse.

This is not a feminine affectation to win pathetic interest from my spouse. To prove it:


PUPPPs are back. I am not referring to sweet little doggies-in-the-window. Today my midwife swiped the heart-beat gook from my uterus and announced, "Looks like you've got the beginnings of PUPPPs there." I looked up and responded: "I think I'll throw myself into a fire," which is precisely what I began mumbling in the middle of the night when I was pregnant with Merry and covered with scabby, red, flushed, itchy bumps. Talk about adding insult to injury. Look, you're a hippo; look, you're a hippo with a highly inflamed rash all over your lower body!

According to Heather Brannon, MD, and according to Merry's midwife: "Thankfully, PUPPP does not usually affect subsequent pregnancies." PUPPPs occurs in 1% of pregnant women. I can not as yet get a book published but I have had PUPPPs twice. My friend Lindsay's sensible friend, upon finding she had been exposed to poison ivy, arrived home, scratched open her skin and sprayed in bleach. This is horrifying but somewhat understandable when you have had a rash like PUPPPs.

So yes, the PUPPPs are official, and so are my bursts of insanity. I sincerely hope Martin has a big umbrella and that my storms don't get any worse.