Alien Baby

Three years ago, nearly to the day, I made a very serious error in judgment.  I was just leaving my first trimester of pregnancy, and I had a chocolate craving with no chocolate in the house.  So what was my Einstein solution to this dilemma?  I made sludge.  Sludge is the term I give to my chosen Ovaltine ratio.  It's about an ounce of milk to every 2 tablespoons of Ovaltine powder.  Usually I just have a little bit of sludge to get my fix.  After all, it's really, really thick.  That day I had 3 mega servings of sludge.  Each cup was like 1/4 cup of Ovaltine powder and 2 ounces of milk.  And I had 3 of them.  It had to be at least 10 servings of Ovaltine powder when all told and maybe 8 ounces of milk.  In other words, really dense sludge. 

About an hour later I started to not feel well.  My tummy started to hurt.  Well, I was pregnant, and being that it was my first time pregnant, I had no idea what to expect.  But then my stomach really started to hurt.  As in, I couldn't walk upright, and it felt like the baby was clawing out my insides with her teeth.  Since she was only about an inch long at the time, I realized that wasn't a likely explanation.  I started to freak out.  I thought, oh no, just my luck to be one day out of my first trimester and have a miscarriage.  I seriously could not walk without writhing pain.  And I didn't want to freak out my husband, who was already highly freakoutable with the whole pregnancy thing.  So I said I was going to lay down and take a nap, which is very typical behavior for me and wouldn't raise any suspicion, and I laid in bed and whimpered...for about 5 hours.  After 5 hours the pain started to ease, and then all became right with the world.  Aaaaaahhh...  My oh so scientific method determined that it had to be the insane quantity of sludge that I consumed about an hour before the writhing pain started.  I hadn't eaten anything else strange.  After that, I decided that perhaps I should stay away from excessive quantities of Ovaltine, or perhaps no Ovaltine because the pain was THAT bad.

I feel compelled to note that since 3 years ago I have had major abdominal surgery once (the whole baby getting yanked out "thang") and sinus surgery, but I still consider those 5 hours of Ovaltine aftermath more painful than either subsequent surgery or recovery.

Last night I made chili.  I had a bit of an accident with the onions, and I ended up putting in more than expected.  There was a tomato sauce base (well, duh), and I put in some dried chiles as well.  Other than that, it was the standard low fat ground turkey and black beans, which I eat all the time.  Yes, the chili was spicy.  But I like spice.  Last night after I ate it I felt a bit off.  My tummy hurt a little.  I could still walk just fine, but some twinges.  Well, this morning I royally screwed up.  I took the leftover chili to work and ate it for breakfast.  About an hour later, writhing pain started to set in.  It increasingly got worse, and I felt like the alien baby was chewing my insides.  But this time I don't have an alien baby.  Huh.  I decided to walk the mall at lunch, but I couldn't walk to my car.  The pain was too distracting while I drove.  I still couldn't walk upright when I got to the mall.  I lumbered along well enough to try not to cause a distraction.  Every few seconds the pain would radiate around my stomach and I'd have to pause.  I seriously thought I was in labor despite, well, the whole no baby thing.  I even had to sit down on a bench when it got really bad.  Somehow get back to work and sit there whimpering. 

At 2:30pm, the pain magically lifted as I sat there.  It was amazing.  I could finally walk without pain, sit without pain, ahhhh relief. 

Since I only had chili in my system this morning, versus last night when I had more than just chili, I'm presuming that something in the chili irritated my stomach.  I pulled out those dang food allergy tests I took, and I scored really low on onions as an irritant and low on tomatoes as an irritant.  The only other things in there were the dried chiles, chili powder, ground turkey, and black beans.  So I guess I'm just mystified about what my tummy doesn't like.  Why can't I just ask it and have it tell me?  I really don't want to avoid chili for the rest of my life.

Or maybe I have an alien baby.