2025-09-05
30 分钟This is The Guardian.
At times in my pregnancy,
I wondered if this was death coming for me by Appie Stevenson, read by Nicolette Chin.
The year my body revolted, I read all 1,296 pages of war and peace.
I did very little else.
My body had become stuck in a perpetual rinse cycle, ringing itself out day and night.
Becalmed on the sofa, too nauseated to mindlessly scroll,
I found an unlikely emergency exit in the bloody battle of Borodino.
In between puking jags, I would prop the book open on my chest,
squint at the tiny text, and drift into a Tolstoyan juice torpor.
It occurred to me that clouds of saltpeter and the booming of cannon weren't ideal conditions for a growing baby.
but I had to go somewhere.
At 6am my husband left for work and I began another gruelling day on the front,
purging viscous pond slime from my empty stomach and keeping up with the Cossacks on their flanking march.
In the throes of extreme pregnancy sickness,
I found strange comfort in the privations of 19th century military life.
in soaked bandages and musket fire and impromptu field hospital amputations,
and even, or especially, in the seeming endlessness of the book itself.
For the months that I starved, I lugged my starving Russian comrades with me,
from the upholstery chemical stink of the sofa,