Wasn’t I just saying that this new vitamin supplement spared me waking in the wee hours of the morning? Yes, but tonight it is not the queasiness that has roused me, it is the coughing, the coughing, the goddamned coughing. Every fall/winter I get these colds that lead to relentless coughing: it wakes me up, my ribs hurt from it, the tickle in my throat is unendurable if I try to talk or, you know, breathe.

As far as I can tell, none of the over-the-counter cough medicines work even a little tiny bit. A doctor once gave me a prescription for a cough syrup with codeine in it, and that did work a little—but only because it knocked me into a narcotic coma, not because it did anything about the cough. If you’ve found some sort of miracle product, please let me know.

When I’m pregnant, these coughs are so much worse: not only am I unable to induce coma via Nyquil, the coughing can trigger barfing. And when I’m pregnant, I’m already uncomfortable and sorry for myself, and adding illness seems so, so unfair. Paul said he’d read that a pregnant woman has lower immunity to illness because otherwise her body would think the baby was an intruder and get rid of it. This did make me feel a little less sorry for myself: illness = helping baby.

Tonight I finally gave up trying to sleep through it. It was 4:00 a.m., I’d been awake with the coughing every hour or so all night, and I was noticing that every time I coughed (every eight seconds), Paul moved around a little, so I must be messing with his sleep, too. I’m up having some graham crackers and water and some Tylenol for the rib pain.

Hey, have you been watching My Name Is Earl? I realize everyone else has been raving about this show and giving it awards and writing articles about the actors, but we only just noticed it. (I think a child puts its parents about 5 months behind, culturally-speaking. Add a second child? Now you’re 10 months behind.) We’re getting the first season on DVD from Netflix, and so far it’s bear-awesome.