With five weeks to go until the birth of their first child, Matt and Bec decided to head to the coast for a long weekend of time out together before the little one arrived. Matt was vocal about it being a ‘babymoon’ – with the idea that it contain a similar amount of romance as their ‘honeymoon’, but without the colourful arguments about which historical Roman ruins they would be avoiding before and after lunch. Given the heavily-pregnant Bec wasn’t feeling in ship-shape, despite being the shape of a ship, she was vocal about the weekend being as romantic as a seasick sojourn through Sydney’s septic system. Which it turned out to be.
Bec: Stop shaking.
Matt: I can’t. I have a fever.
Bec: You can’t possibly be that feverish. You’re shaking like a rollerblader on a corrugated iron roof.
Matt: I’ll stop shaking soon. I had some aspirin. And I took some expired malaria medication I found in my old travel bag, just in case. I got bitten by so many midgies this afternoon, one of them had to be carrying something.
Bec: Oh my god! How much expired malaria medication did you take?
Matt: I don’t know. I think there were six or seven tablets left.
Bec: Why did you take so much?
Matt: It was from 2005 when I went to Vietnam, so I figured I’d better take all of it to get the full effect.
Bec: Are you joking?
Matt: Yes.
Bec: You need to work on your jokes. They’re not very funny. Like when you were burying your wedding ring in the sand earlier today, and pretending you’d lost it, and then finding it again by making a metal detector sound. That wasn’t very funny.
Matt: I’m going to be a dad in five weeks. My jokes can’t be too funny or they won’t let me hold the baby in the hospital. They’ll be like ‘wait, this guy is hilarious, he can’t be the dad’.
Bec: There is no danger of that happening.
Matt: What’s that sound? It sounds like a dog vomiting.
Bec: It’s Molly.
Matt: What’s she doing?
Bec: Vomiting.
Matt: Where?
Bec: On your new jacket.
Matt: Why?
Bec: I think she ate too much sand today.
Matt: Why is she vomiting on my new jacket?
Bec: I put it down so she wouldn’t vomit on the floor.
Matt: How did you know she was going to vomit?
Bec: She’s already vomited five times tonight while you’ve been snoring. I’m sick of taking her outside to throw up, so when I heard her about to throw up, I put her on your jacket.
We’re unsure how Molly became so ill…
Matt: Can’t you just lock her in the shower so we can hose it down later?
Bec: No, because she will die and we won’t hear her and she’ll die.
Matt: You always skip to the worst-case scenario. Have you ever, just once, stopped and considered the best-case scenario? For example, in this case, it would be Molly appreciating the cool tiles, being in another room, not having to listen to you nagging, and comfortably vomiting down the drain where her pale, sandy dog-sick can easily be hosed out by you in the morning?
Bec: I’ve already taken her outside five times tonight. I’m not cleaning up after her any more.
Matt: Well, I’m sick, so I’m not doing it. You’re on your own.
Bec: I’m 35 weeks pregnant.
Matt: You should take the opportunity to squat and practise opening your pelvis, like we learned in birthing class.
Bec: There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, mate.
Matt: Yes, but there is an ‘i’ in dog vomit. Case closed. I’m sick. You have to do it.
