My sisters always believed that my issue was mainly psychosomatic. Maybe there is some truth there, I don’t know. But I do know this: I was the vomiting queen in my family. Bus trip, road trip, sight of poop, touching/tasting weird fruits/veggies like tomatoes, listening/watching someone do the act of collecting phlegm and spitting it out, anything and everything would make me gag. Ma used to make me take medicines in the bathroom. Smell of medicines made me want to throw up.
It’s quite strange because my mother never encouraged any kind of tantrums and if we fussed over food, she’d either let us stay hungry or tell us some weird tale that would freak us out so much that we’d eat it up. She would tell me that if I didn’t eat green veggies, I would lose my eyesight. Can you imagine? The scariest one though was about brushing and washing your mouth. She said if we didn’t wash our mouth properly after every meal, bacteria would grow in our teeth and then at night when we would be sleeping, they would wake up and eat up our teeth. So, it was completely possible that I would wake up and find myself toothless. This still gives me nightmares. But I couldn’t help it. Some veggies, just looking at them made me want to throw up.
My cousins had a field time with me. I was unfortunately saddled with mostly male first cousins who would insist on sharing “non-veg” jokes with me. That time we were still very young so non-veg basically meant jokes about shit and fart. And every time I heard one, I would gag. They would stop right before I actually ended up vomiting. I do suffer from vivid imagination which is the source of all my troubles. As I grew older, fewer things caused me to gag and vomit though some things stayed on with me. Road trips, especially on the hills make me very sick and if I see someone else throw up, I will still most definitely throw up. I have thrown up after watching my drunk friends throw up (and no, it wasn’t because of the alcohol in my system); I have thrown up after my niece threw up on me; I still gag when I see human poop and when men spit phlegm on the road.
I found out I was pregnant exactly they way they do it in the movies; I vomited two mornings in a row. Of course, my pregnancy was mired with my vomiting; I could smell everything like a dog and any smell that I didn’t like made me throw up. Throughout the pregnancy, I mostly prayed for my unborn child’s well-being, but there were times when I prayed that if the child were to take one major thing from each parent, let her take my looks and my husband’s temperament. But that was not to be. She looks like him and has my temperament. While the looks bit doesn’t upset me so much (but does a little. I mean, is it unfair to ask that after carrying the child for 9 months, going through all sorts of things, the child should look at least a bit like me??), the temperament does. She has the same issues and more.
Anything that has a non-dry texture makes her have convulsions. That’s why I can’t even feed her apples without hiding it in her porridge! She vomits on road trips, she vomits if she cries for more than three minutes. She gags if she touches anything pudgy. And whenever she wants to vomit, she invariably climbs on me and then vomits. Not papa, not anyone else. Want to vomit? Go to mumma! While you may say what’s the big deal, it is a huuuge thing for me. I mean it took me a full month to not gag at my daughter’s poop. Every other week I’m either covered in vomit or am cleaning it off the floor. Of course, no one who has borne the brunt of my random vomiting is remotely sympathetic towards me. My brother-in-law still talks of the yellow stain that’s left on the wall of his rented apartment after they tried to make me have haldi doodh (turmeric in milk). My mother keeps saying it’s your turn now. Arre, what logic is this?
But there are some good things that have come out of this. I don’t vomit when my daughter vomits. I gag and almost throw up but I’m always able to hold it back. I mean I have caught vomit in my hand with a sense of accomplishment! And I don’t even twitch my nose or breathe through my mouth every time I open the diaper bin. Also, she’s been cooperative once in a while. I puked 7 times during my bus journey from Ooty to Bangalore. I was travelling alone with her but thankfully booked a separate seat for her. That journey she decided to be an angel and slept soundly while I vomited in various garbage bags in peace. The fall in my stature is perhaps good for me.
The Zombie Cow 