“giving presentations with morning sickness”

©iStockphoto.com/katsgraphicslv

As a male, morning sickness is one potential presentation problem I never had to deal with on a personal level (unless you count being vicariously acquainted with it in the way only the father of three can be). As far as I know, none of the speakers I worked with were contending with it while presenting.

It must be a concern for someone out there. My referral logs showed a recent visitor made it to Breaking Murphy’s Law by searching for “giving presentations with morning sickness.” In fact, a BML post from last August is the top result for this search even though pregnancy-related nausea isn’t actually the topic of the post. I checked out the other results for this search and tried a few searches of my own.

There were several pleas to a higher power that went something like this:

Dear Lord – I have to do a presentation for our board tomorrow.  Please don’t let me puke during this presentation.  Please let T  forget to wear her noxious perfume that will instantly make me puke if  I smell it.

I also found these cute designer vomit bags. I know I would feel a whole lot better about losing my brunch in front of the board if I could pull one of these out of my briefcase.

©iStockphoto.com/gioadventures

There was lots of general advice on how to lessen morning sickness symptoms, but nothing on what to do when you need to be behind the lectern at the same time you really need to be on your way to eloquently addressing a porcelain bowl.

Does anyone have a story they are willing to share about a time when the need to be a presenter came into direct, hormonal, bacon-odor-fueled conflict with early pregnancy? Any advice? Please use the comment section and help the mothers-to-be out there googling for experience-based information.