Clue # 2: The Nausea

Clue # 2 (About what it might feel like to have a kid, if you don't have one yet): 
The nausea.

(For Clue # 1, read the first post) 

One particularly clear memory from my first pregnancy: I hadn’t been able to eat much for days. Everything I tried was either repulsive or delivered instant heartburn. 

Chicken soup, I suddenly decided. I need chicken soup. Chicken soup is exactly what I need. It’s full of vitamins and nutrients and almost all the food groups. It’s going to make both me and my baby healthier and smarter.

So I left our downtown condo and headed along Queen Street until I found the right Polish deli, the one that made the fresh, homemade soups. I bought a large container and returned home.

I grabbed a spoon. I opened the lid.

The smell. It was probably just regular chicken soup, maybe a little garlicky, maybe that was the problem, but whatever it was, I gagged.

I put the lid back on and ran down the hall to dump it down the garbage chute, then gagged again as I imagined the container exploding its hot, smelly contents as it traveled toward the dumpster below. 

Maybe the entire condo complex was going to smell like the soup now. Forever. Gag, gag, gag.

I went back inside and took a nap. When I woke up, I realized that what I needed was calamari. (Who knew?)

Really? you might be thinking. Being a parent is like having nausea and hating chicken soup? That’s my clue? 

Totally no. The key to the second clue is:  you will feel a sense of powerlessness that you will immediately try to solve. (Chicken soup!) Then, once you stop trying so hard (Nap time!), the answer will become apparent (Calamari!).

Example: This experience is actually almost exactly what it’s like to try to feed a toddler or preschooler or young child (and maybe teenager? I haven’t found out yet). You try and fail a number of times at getting him or her to eat something, anything, that is not an ice cube, or a Skittle, or a cracker in the shape of a goldfish, or piece of Lego.

Then you come up with the most innocuous thing you can think of. Chicken soup! Who doesn’t like chicken soup? Plus, it has all the nutrients! Almost all the food groups! Plus there are those books! It's good for the soul! 

Well, guess who doesn't like chicken soup? Your kid doesn’t like chicken soup. She gags, screams, cries, holds her breath (they really do that) and eventually, the soup is dumped down the drain and both of you are left wishing to never have see soup of any kind, or each other,  ever again.

Then, everyone takes a nap. 

And later, you discover that all she really wanted was a pack of Hot & Spicy seaweed sheets. 

(This has actually happened to me. Seaweed sheets. For real.) 

Stay tuned for the Third and Final Clue ...