101 Uses for a Crisp Packet!

The last few days has seen me gain a baby girl second cousin, a very cute in-law Nephew & see a lovely friend have a little boy too! Exciting times hey!

All this baby bearing, as well as spending the weekend with a pregnant sister-in law as well as a close family friend got me thinking back to my pregnancy & the 'fun times' we had!

I admit: I really miss my baby bump-although many a time when I look at photos of myself, it looks suspiciously as if I still have it :o( 

But, I thought I would share a little memory of my pregnancy this week for 'old times sake!' (There is a very long winded reason this is written more like a story instead of one of my more average journal entries, but that is a story for another time!)

101 uses for a crisp packet.

Within this economic climate there seems to be a lot of articles & programmes geared towards tips on how to save money. One thing that seems to pop up time & time again is re-using things that we would normally throw away. From the simple act of re-using your jam jars all the way through to the extreme desperation of using your old tights as a tea-strainer! Well, today I found another use for crisp packets.

I am currently six months pregnant & still suffering from 'morning sickness'. Why the inverted commas you ask? Well because there was nothing about the morning related to the sickness at all! My morning sickness seems to have evolved into 24hour sickness. This is not helped when my commute to & from work takes place mainly on the bus.

One particularly hot & sticky day while travelling home on a bus rammed with teenagers all returning from school, I felt the over-whelming doom lurch nearer & nearer as my stomach sent those ‘oh too familiar’ warning signals that she was not keeping down whatever I'd had for lunch that day. I looked to my side where a small school girl sat quietly desperately trying to avoid eye contact with me (I’m 24 now which in teenage years makes me about 90 & VERY un-cool to talk to in front of friends) but it was not conversation I was looking for from her- I was looking for a safe spot to empty my stomach contents on! I had nothing on me, I could be sick in, for I had played the game of chance with myself by only packing one carrier bag to be sick in this morning! She had nothing on her that would do the trick & I was starting to think that peering over the seat in front of me to ask the small boy with his mother if he'd mind me vomiting into his lunchbox was not going to work out either- so I started to search through my own beloved handbag. My stomachs warning signals became stronger & I knew I had but a few seconds  to decide where this vomit would be landing, when like a lake in the desert I saw my packet of crisps I had forgotten about at lunch! Oh Walkers how I love you for making water-tight bags! I proceeded to empty the contents of the bag at full speed onto the floor of the bus, just in time for the smell of the open crisps to take full effect on my already learching stomach. I was sick, once, twice, three times the crazy vomiting lady on the bus- but oh the sweet release of that horrible twist previously held in my abdomen! It felt good to have it all over- crisis averted!

But, wait- there was more! Just as I thought I was safe my stomach gave one last push- but the crisp packet was full- I tried anyway, hoping that by some small miracle it would all stay in the bag. It didn’t. I looked up. Turns out that you can’t be sick into an over flowing empty packet of crisps on the top of a double decker bus surrounded by school children in London & go un-noticed. I braced myself for the jeers & comments, but none came. They just stared. My stop was coming up- I had no idea what to do! What could I do, but get up & carry on like nothing had happened? So I ring the bell, traipse my way over the shameful crunching of the crisps I had splayed all over the floor & with the sound of every crunch & the crisp packet in both hands sloshing in front of me made my way downstairs & off the bus.

Who knows what those kids thought of me- I hope by the size of my belly now & the waddle with which I walk they realised this was a pregnancy induced horror. But all I can say is hurrah for the crisp packet & maybe next time you see a pregnant lady on the bus you'll think more seriously about giving her your seat- & your empty crisp packet.

Haha! There it is! A story on my non-stop 'morning sickness' that needs to re-named all day sickness! And a photo of me while pregnant! Joy! 

Me freaking out about the size 'Baby Girl' & my uterus would get to!