For those of you playing along at home, you may have noticed I had a baby in March, which means that I got pregnant last June. I had a very strange pregnancy. By strange I don’t mean, “Man, did I crave that nasty kraut-in-a-jar,” or “Hoo hoo, I dreamt I had sex with a vicar, but it was actually Desmond Tutu (what would you do?).” I mean it got STRANGE strange about halfway through.

Exhibit A: The Poisonous Snack on Saturday

The first month was normal. As was the case with my first pregnancy, I knew I was up the spout before I even peed on the stick. I was queasy and almost barfed in the park on one of our normal Sunday strolls. I was happy about this (the baby, not the park-barfing), despite the fact that I was still snarled up in unholy matrimony with Seattle Federline. At this point I believe I have broken 90% of the Ten Commandments. Murder doesn’t have a check-mark next to it yet, but it’s a long life. Do we understand each other, Seattle drivers?

My companion and I spent some time in bookstores poring over pregnancy books. I wanted to refresh my memory and he wanted to learn more. We kept coming back to one of the best ones, “Your Pregnancy Week-by-Week.” When I was a few weeks along, we realized, to our delight, that Strudel was the size of a scrumptious hors d’oeuvre.

“Look, Sweetie,” I said pointing to a picture of her presumed size in utero, “it’s snack-sized!”

“Hmm,” said my companion. “A poisonous snack is more like it.”

My companion and I went camping in July, to get away and make arrangements together, as we weren’t even living together yet. How would we make this work? We were excited, yet had trepidations. We stopped at a cafe and ordered lunch on the way. For some unsane reason, I decided it would be off the chain to order tuna fish on white bread. And what was the soup of the day? New England clam chowder. Yum, yum. A mass of white, soggy, fishy food was set down before me and the Poisonous Snack balked; I almost covered the entire blighted Kitsap peninsula with nauseated-pregnant-lady vomit. The rest of the weekend was okay, although my companion almost burned down the peninsula with some ill-advised monkey doughnut dealings involving a half-gallon of leftover oil and an open fire. If he were standing over my shoulder backseat-driving me right now, as he often does when I’m driving on the Internets, he would want me to tell you that mornings were spent in a minuscule backpacking tent singing Ludacris duets.

And a couple of weeks later is when the strangeness started.