Everyone seems to have their own way of dealing with the potential suspicions that incessant sobriety can bring. And let me tell you, I had to get my story pretty straight pretty early - a wine, whiskey and blue-cheese lover such as myself was certainly going to be under the spotlight unless I had a good lie up my sleeve.
I stopped drinking at the start of April. That's right, April. A.P.R.I.L. "Really? Has it been that long?" asks the innocent bystander... "YES!" This is when my lying had to begin. It wasn't so hard at first -- I was on a health kick, which is what I told everyone, and I was detoxing my body. So no lying there. It was when those nosey people asked "Why?" that I had to either lie, or tell them to mind their own business. My story went something along the lines of me having bad allergies (true -- everyone knew it -- it was spring, after all) and needing to rid my body of all toxins to combat these effectively. A good lie, huh? Because, in part, it was true. And I had done something similar to this before.
The lie kind of lost its potency after six months though... I mean, surely I was detoxed already? This is where the real lying had to come in: "I just don't really want it any more." PFFFT. Who wouldn't want partake in a nice single-malt Auchentoshan, or have some of that wine that I picked out for the group (seeing as apparently a decent knowledge of wine and actually drinking the stuff are in no way connected)? I then resorted to lying about a variety of illnesses (which isn't hard to feign in the first few weeks!) -- flus, colds, jet lag, flare-ups of my almost-totally-under-control fibromylagia... I cant imagine, though, how my absence at Oktoberfest wasn't the equivalent of me waving an enormous 'I'm pregnant' sign at the world...
Though, maybe everyone knew, and they are all just very polite. It is Switzerland, after all :)
Let's just say that shouting out to the world that WE ARE HAVING A BABY was one of the greatest moments of relief in my life. Yes, Beanie had made it to the twelve week mark, and was therefore well on its way to being a fully formed little person, but also I didn't have to tell any more lies!
Duncan and I both had our moments of weakness... I mentioned to some of my netball girls over lunch one day that we were thinking about having kids sometimes soon (what a way to undo all my hard work!), and Dunc kept bringing up 'babies' and then having to tack on an unsubtle '...one day' onto the end of his sentences. Meanwhile, Beanie was in there, growing away in secret.
On a more serious note:
I know that everyone has their own personal ways of dealing with the seemingly endless lists of food and drink no-nos during pregnancy, and I have no problem at all with each woman doing what they are comfortable with. But I am one of those extremist personalities (apparently, according to a genetic reading I've had done through the company 23-and-me, I have a tendency towards an addictive personality, which is no surprise to me whatsoever, and I think very much goes hand in hand with this kind of behaviour), and I am not going to be drinking/caffeining/hamming/sushiing/bratwursting/soft-cheesing/runny-egging at all for a while. Hell, I've made it seven months so far, what's a while longer? And if Duncan and I are going to be making our own little Von Trapp family, it might definitely be a while... Though, I reserve the right to change my mind should a nice chilled wooded chardonnay be wafted in front of me on a summer's evening...
