Eithne Shortall: Welcome to ‘The Sickening’, the time of year where someone will always be ill

You’ve probably heard of ‘the quickening’. This is the quaint term used to describe the fluttering sensation a pregnant woman feels when the baby first starts to move in her uterus. It’s a magical, singular experience, like having a delicate butterfly trapped inside you.

Despite the rhyming names, it has precisely nothing in common with what will befall that same woman a couple of years later, when she enters a new, decidedly indelicate stage in ...