Sunday morning, I’m up with the sun as usual – except I’m not. A sickeningly sour pain in my abdomen is now rapidly also making itself at home in my lower back and thighs. We should be old friends – we’ve known each other, slept together, been to parties and exams and every major life milestone for the better part of 20 years.
An image of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan flashes in my mind – this poor soldier gets his stomach blown open and people are tramping all over his intestines with their great big army boots as he screams and screams.
In one of the Saw movies this girl digs open a helpless prisoner’s stomach as she frantically roots among his innards for the key that will unlock the helmet she’s wearing that will otherwise detach her jaw from the rest of her head in one minute.
Wait. I didn’t even watch the Saw movies. I overheard that scene while I passed Kings-and-the-sound-of-cracking-kuah-chee on my way to the kitchen for a late-night yoghurt bar after putting Rockstar to bed. (He’s a natural late bird – sometimes he only falls asleep 11pm, but then he’d sleep thru the whole morning the next day if we let him.)
Amazing what a little pain can do. I have almost zero PMS or mood swings, but I’ve also been in various gynea clinics since I was 14. I’ve been scanned and monitored for Endometriosis, and prescribed all manner of anti-cramping pain-killing medication. I know in which countries you need a prescription to buy Naprosen Synflex, and in which you wouldn’t. But nothing’s more effective than The Pill.
“Mum. I want watermelon, mum.” Rockstar’s awake. I accept (mild) rudeness when he wants something that’s relatively good for him.
I trudge, almost doubled-over, into the kitchen where our helper has laid out egg sandwiches, a homemade soybean drink and Tupperware of grapes before going on her morning walk with JD.
(In Hong Kong it’s the law your helper has to be off a full 24 hours every week, but we can’t seem to stop her leaving food out in the morning or washing dishes when she gets home at night – another colleague formally reminds his helper it is their own choice to wash those dishes on their off-day – that’s how wary employers are here of helpers suddenly dragging them to Tribunal when they’re fired.)
Papaya and durian in the fridge, but no watermelon. I cut some papaya into little chunks in a bowl, then lay it out with the rest of the food and switch on CBeebies, hoping it’ll distract him enough not to want us to play catch or something.
Another wave of pain hits. I stagger back into the bedroom and shove Kings awake (he works late Saturday nights) before collapsing on the bed. Idly I wonder if I’d make it to the toilet if I can’t keep from throwing up.
At first, I only took The Pill around exam time. Because Murphy’s Law Of Periods dictates you will almost certainly get yours right before your toughest paper. Or the piano exam where you have to sit with perfect posture at the keyboard right when you’d rather ball up under the examiner’s table and cover your freezing, cramping legs with the rug she has primly placed her loafers on.
Besides, back in Nanyang Technological University (in Singapore) it j-ust didn’t feel right putting it on the grade-appeal form. There are all these idiots who appeal Cs just because they think they should get an A. Just Because. I don’t even know why they had the grade-appeal forms since no one listens for all these C-phobes.
Reason For Appealing Grade: Had My Period.
Like, Why Bother? Sigh.
Kings shuffles into the bathroom without a word, emerging only slightly more lucid than when he went in. He observes me for a moment. “……Food poisoning?” I’d laugh if I could – he hasn’t registered a word I said the last 2 times I spoke to him.
“Honey, can I run away with the guy who cuts my hair as soon as I determine he’s actually straight?”
“Darling, can I use your (superpowered, highly expensive, hasn’t-been-out-of-your-sight-since-you-bought-it) laptop for Shopbop.com? The pictures load faster.”
Then, as my career morphed into the kind of job where period pain can cost employers money, I took The Pill religiously – and always asking the gynea for the lowest dosage she could recommend. Mind you sometimes I still had to take painkillers, but way not as much as before.
And at least they uh, worked.
I had been on The Pill religiously for at least 5 years when an unprecedented run-up in the Hong Kong stock market brought heavy overwork, not of the work-all-night kind, but of the price-and-stuff-every-trade-in-before-the-closing-bell-goes-and-don’t-you-dare-make-a-mistake-you-will-have-no-time-to-fix kind. My period wouldn’t stop. So I stopped The Pill, waiting for one cycle before getting back on.
I never completed that cycle. My natural period never came. That’s how I got pregnant with Rockstar.
“You’re coming in for a consultation because your test shows positive? Right, and how many days since your last period?”
“I don’t know. I never got it.”
The delicious smell of frying garlic fills the air. Kings is standing at the foot of our bed with a bowl of rice noodles and egg in one hand, a snuffling Rockstar on the other arm. After helping with the noodles, he repaired to the living room, where Kings found him crying quietly in the sofa because he thought he’d been neglected.
“Mummy’s sick, darling. <pause> Not working.” He brightens visibly and climbs into bed with me, bringing along his Giraffe jigsaw to work on. (He likes zero soft toys.)
So now people ask us if we’d like another child, would we think of having a girl since we’ve already got a boy, do we want Rockstar to be this or that, etc etc etc – we get to say “It’s for God to give” like we really mean it. Because He blessed us with Rockstar, just the way he was, before we ever knew how much we wanted him.
And he is perfect.
