Compartment 14B

Just a hiccup. 2007-09-12 - 10:12 a.m. Random bits about hiccups: Hiccups are just the spasming of the diaphragm, and nobody knows exactly why we get them. Grommet got a ton of hiccups in utero, especially towards the end, when it felt like my belly was constant jumping from them. BUT it took about 10 days for her to get hiccups for the first time after she was born. I was holding her in my arms, supporting her head, and, out of the blue, she suddenly started hiccupping. I�ll never forget the look on her face: her eyes shifted back and forth and she was clearly thinking, �Whoa! Wha�� What�s HAPPENING TO ME??? This is VERY FREAKY!!!� I remember thinking (between my giggles), �Don�t you remember this? I know a lot has happened to you in the last little while � what with being born and all � but you used to do this ALL THE TIME. How could you have forgotten this sensation already? It�s been less than two weeks.� I secretly like getting the hiccups because it's such a strange, interesting sensation and it's oddly fun to sound like a frog without even trying... but only for a couple of minutes 'cause after that it gets annoying. One of my co-workers informed me yesterday that he used to get rid of hiccups by holding his breath while doing fifty pushups. Let me repeat that: fifty pushups! Before taking a breath! This was after he went blind in his 20s: before that he would hold his breath and run around, but this, understandably, became dangerous once he lost his sight. These days he�s feeling a bit less athletic (though he�s still in good shape in his late 50s) so he sucks on a slice of lemon. He swears it�s a total and instant cure for the hiccups. My no-fail cure for the hiccups is to drink a few sips of water through a paper towel. I have no idea why this works but it�s never failed me, nor doubting-Thomases that I�ve talked into trying it. Do you have a cure for hiccups? Before - After All content � Shawna 2003-2010 That means no swiping my stuff - text, images, etc. - without asking. P.S. If you're emailing me, replace the [at] with @ in the "to" line. Oh, and if you put the word "journal" in the subject line it'll have a better chance of making it past my junk mail filters. recommend me HTML and design help by Jo hosted by Diaryland