Imagining disasters

Pregnancy is not the ideal stage for slightly hypochondriac people. Any book, web page, friend or colleague will enumerate a number of possible scenarios where your baby is born deformed, half dead or worse because you had a sandwich of parma ham, a hot bath, too much or too little tuna.

All that would still be ok, but hypochondriac people stretch it a little bit further. Creative hypochondriac people can stretch it way further. There is plenty of space for that.

We have toxoplasmosis in the parma ham and listeria in the home made desserts. There could be mercury in your tuna salad and too little fish will make your baby stupid, so you may want to stick to salmon, unless is raw salmon, or has mayonnaise, or looks suspicious for some other random reason. Because this is only about the known bacterias. What happen with the unknown? What happen with the army of imaginary parasites that are ready to attack your vulnerable pregnant body? Oh, yes, I can imagine all those uncatalogued viruses walking past the antibodies, who are too busy doing nothing in order not to harm the single parasite you would like to keep inside you.

One could stick to buying and cooking all her meals, but this is hardly a solution for Martin and I. Our cooking is probably as dangerous as preparing yourself a tea with the bottom of a McDonalds fryer and some herbs from the New Age store.

It is great. Now every time I sneeze I panic. And since I'm pregnant I sneeze a lot. Which could be caused by the extra blood running through my nose, or by a virus I got in a shushi dinner in Moscow, which could cause my baby to be born with a finger more or less. I already feel like a terrible mother.

Pregnancy Symptons: Needed to eat calamari in the way to Moravia. Not any calamari. I mean fresh and fried, with ali-oli and Spanish bread around. Boyfriend doesn't take me seriously
Mother instinct: 2. Because transferring my paranoia to the embryo means I care