You learn the strangest things

When doing research.

For instance, one of the characters in Benfro book three discovers she has fallen pregnant* at the beginning of the book, and suffers from bad morning sickness.

Now, being a bloke, I've never suffered from this particular malady myself. And since I have no children of my own, I've never even observed the symptoms closely in another person. So my only recourse for information is to look to that wonderful encyclopaedia of half-truths, the interweb.

And there's so much information out there you could drown in it. In particular, endless suggestions for remedies. I was vaguely aware of raspberry leaf tea (which my sister in law tells me is quite foul), and ginger seems to be a universal anti-emetic (though even the smell of it makes my sister as ill as she ever was carrying her three children), but there are other more creative remedies. This one was particularly good:

To avoid actually vomiting, try grasping your tongue with a piece of cloth and pulling gently but firmly.

Sounds good, but also a recipe for getting vomit all over your clothes. Then there was this:

Place a cool lavender scented compress on your forehead and a warm lavender compress over your rib cage.

Which is really just another way of saying have a bit of a lie down, only with calming smells. Some people find lavender makes them sick anyway, and The Horse Doctor insists on growing it in vast quantities, so perhaps there's something she's not telling me. On the other hand, she's been growing it for years now, and we've still only got three dogs and a cat.

But I think my favourite remedy for morning sickness has to be this one:

Give in to your cravings

Simple, really. Even a bloke could master that.

Now back to the dragons (oh, the shame of it.)

* I love the expression 'fall pregnant'. It makes it sound so much like an accident.