Pregnancy ...

So I slogged along, throwing up everywhere: in trash cans on subway platforms and in the bathrooms of the white-glove hotels, law firms and Wall Street banks that I visited as a New York-based financial reporter for The Post. Once, I nearly vomited on Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, as he sat across a wooden table in a beautifully tailored suit. I excused myself just in time.

I tried everything that the pregnancy books suggested: Salted pretzels. Ginger slices. Jell-O. Acupressure. My mother, who lives in Tokyo, sent pickled plums and other Japanese remedies. My mother-in-law brought herbs from Taiwan.

But nothing seemed to help. Soon, I was vomiting 10 to 12 times a day. I lost 12 pounds, my 5-foot-3 frame falling to 96 pounds. When there was nothing left to regurgitate, I threw up gastric fluid, tinged with blood from my inflamed stomach.

I frequently became severely dehydrated. One day in January, Archie came home and found me so lightheaded and wobbly that he rushed me to the emergency room, where my fluids were restored intravenously.

Doctors prescribed anti-nausea medications: first Reglan, then Compazine suppositories, both of which prevent dopamine, a neurotransmitter, from stimulating receptors in the brain that cause nausea. They didn't do much.

Next came Zofran, a relatively new drug used to combat nausea in chemotherapy. It was expensive (nearly $600 for a week's supply), and Archie spent hours on the phone with the insurance company. I often threw up the pills, so a home nurse came to show me how to use a pump that injected the drug into my thighs. But it only made my legs ache. After a week, I gave up using the device, but I still took the pills, mainly out of fear that I would be throwing up even more if I didn't.

The round-the-clock nausea was paralyzing. The cruel thing was that vomiting, unlike the times I've thrown up because of the flu or a jerky cab ride, provided no relief. As my condition worsened, I spent all my time at home, lying as still as possible in bed, heaving on the bathroom floor or writing articles at the kitchen table with a bucket at my feet. Increasingly, I relied on my newspaper colleagues, already working nights and weekends with the economy in turmoil, to pick up my slack. I stopped seeing friends, since I could no longer do the things we enjoyed together: dining out, rollerblading, going to church.

I had lost control of my body and, worse, I had lost control of my life.

* * *

For Archie and me, the lowest point came at an appointment with the obstetrician during a difficult stretch at the beginning of my second trimester.

Overbooked, he was a very busy man, and we often had trouble asking questions during the rushed appointments. That day, there was a particularly long wait of two hours, which I spent throwing up. We contemplated heading to the emergency department next door but stayed because the nurse, seeing I was too dehydrated to give a urine sample, thought the doctor would admit me for treatment.

But he declined, saying he was the doctor and the nurse was the nurse. He repeated his refrain that I should feel better in a few weeks -- and then he was gone.