He Stopped Asking Where She Wanted to Eat. It Took Laura Fourteen Months to Notice.

If you're a woman past 40 whose bloating has you flat at breakfast, tight by two o'clock and saying no to dinners, this may sound familiar.

It was a little after two on a Wednesday, and Laura was standing in her kitchen in her socks with one hand under her sweater, undoing the button of her jeans. She had woken up flat that morning, the way she always did, and by two o'clock her belly had pushed out so hard that the button had to go. By dinnertime it would be worse, the kind of tight that had once made a woman at the pharmacy smile and ask when she was due.

In the next room, her husband, David, was on the phone with their friend Gary.

"Ah, we'll pass on that one," David said. "Laura's stomach doesn't really do restaurants anymore."

Laura was close enough to hear every word. Gary had just invited them to his and Teresa's thirtieth anniversary dinner in six weeks, a long table for twelve at the Italian place downtown. It was the first invitation in months, and Laura had known Teresa for twenty years. Part of her had been waiting for David to walk in and ask what she thought.

He never came in. He said it so easily that it sounded like a line he had said before, to other people on other days, when she wasn't standing close enough to hear.

Laura could have walked in herself. She stood very still, because the first thing she felt was relief. She wouldn't have to sit at a long table for three hours, doing math. A second later she knew that if David had asked, she would have said no. Then his words came back to her, especially "Laura's stomach." Her stomach had been answering for her for so long that her husband no longer thought to ask.

If you have ever said "anywhere's fine" and meant "anywhere I can survive," you know that relief. You also know it never feels as good as it should.

The Last Time He Asked

That night, after David fell asleep, Laura lay awake with a question she couldn't put down. When was the last time he asked me where I wanted to eat?

She picked up her phone and scrolled back through their texts, and it took her ten minutes to find it. Fourteen months earlier, the week of their twenty-fifth anniversary, David had written, "Where do you want to eat Saturday? Your pick."

She had answered, "Honestly I'd rather stay in. My stomach is a mess today."

He wrote back a heart. On Saturday, their anniversary, they ate scrambled eggs on the couch, and he told her they were the best eggs he'd had in years. She knew he was being kind, and she let him.

She scrolled for another ten minutes and never found another "Your pick." By then she had said no to so many invitations that David believed her every time.

Everything She Did Without Noticing

She used to be the one who picked the restaurants, and she kept a note on her phone called "Places to Try," thirty-one names long. Before any dinner out she used to do the math. She picked the plainest thing on the menu, decided how little she could eat and still sit in the car afterward, and rode home with the seat belt held away from her stomach. After a while she stopped going at all. She skipped her nephew's graduation lunch and the beach weekend with their friends.

She wrote the decline in her head before people finished the invitation. She said "let's see how I feel" about plans three weeks away. She said it so often that David stopped making plans for the two of them, and the calendar on the fridge was empty past the next two weeks.

These days she said "I already ate" before anyone offered her anything, and she wore a long cardigan in July. She had told Teresa she had a migraine on Teresa's birthday, and she had used that word so many times that her friends sent her articles about migraines. She was always the one holding the phone in group photos, which meant she wasn't in any of them. When David rested his hand on her stomach in bed, she moved it to her hip without thinking, and he let her, every time, without a word.

The Box of Lemon Chicken

David never complained. For the last few months he had gone out to dinner with his brother, Ray, every Thursday, and Laura had told him to go and meant it. He came home with a to-go box of the lemon chicken she used to order and put it in the fridge for her, and they both acted like that was normal.

Three in the Morning

At three that morning, still awake with the phone dark on the nightstand, Laura let herself finish the thought.

If nothing changed, the next table for twelve would have an empty chair at it, and so would the one after that. Teresa would ask where Laura was, and David would give his easy answer, and the worst part was that it would be a true answer. Then the invitations would get fewer, because people quietly stop asking the woman who always says no. It had already started, because Gary's call was the first in seven months, and she hadn't even noticed the others stop.

She pictured the years after that. David would stay kind, because David was kind. One night she would hear him tell someone, in the same easy voice he had used on Gary, that Laura just didn't go out anymore. What scared her most was that she had taught everyone to stop asking, and she had been very good at it.

She cried quietly, so the bed wouldn't move.

What She Did the Next Morning

Laura texted Teresa herself. She was sorry she would miss the table, she wrote, but she would love to come for dessert and the toast. An hour with a plan was something she could manage, and it was her own answer to give.

Earlier that year she had finally told her doctor, and the tests came back clear, which left her feeling like she had run out of places to look. The doctor said that bloating can keep coming back even when the tests look normal.

A Gut Doctors' Group Says Probiotics Are Not Recommended for Bloating

On Friday night, past midnight, Laura searched for help. Almost every answer was a probiotic, which is live bacteria sold in capsules and gummies. So she looked up what the American Gastroenterological Association, a group of gut doctors, thought of them. Its expert review said probiotics are not recommended for treating bloating. She read that line three times, because she had never seen it on a supplement page.

One Small Tablet Trial, Written by the Ingredient Maker's Staff

She did find one small trial of one strain. Seventy adults in India, with an average age of about 38, took a placebo tablet or a tablet of a probiotic called Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 for four weeks. In that trial, each group's own bloating, gas and burping score fell from where it started, by 65.5% with the probiotic tablet and by 11.5% with the placebo. It was small, and every author worked for the company that makes the ingredient. Nobody can promise Laura a result like that, or any result.

brand's gummy has that same strain, at 1.6 billion CFU, a count of live bacteria, while the study's tablet had 2 billion spores. It also has dandelion root, slippery elm, kombucha powder and fiber. No one has tested the brand gummy itself in a trial like that. It did come with a 30-day guarantee, and for Laura that was enough to try it for a month.

What She Told David on Saturday Night

On Saturday night Laura sat up in bed with the brand order page open on her phone. David came down the hall with his toothbrush still in his hand, and she told him what she had felt in the kitchen.

"When you told Gary no, I was relieved," she said. "Then I realized I would have said no too. I'm scared I've taught everyone to stop asking."

"I stopped asking because you looked so miserable every time," David said. "I thought I was being kind."

"You were," she said. "It also left me alone with it. I'd like you to keep asking, even if the answer is no."

He nodded and asked it carefully. "Where do you want to eat?"

Laura's eyes filled, and she laughed anyway. "I don't know yet whether I can sit through a whole dinner," she said. "I'm going to try something for a month, and it might do nothing. Ask me again then."

"A month," David said. He typed it into his phone and turned the screen so she could see. It said, Ask Laura where she wants to eat.

Before she turned off the light, Laura placed the order and set a reminder to tell her doctor what she was trying.

The Month After

The first gummy came on Tuesday. She had told her doctor that morning, and she took it standing at the counter with her tea while David watched as if it might do something. It didn't. Nothing happened for the first ten days, and she told herself that was what "it might do nothing" looked like. She kept taking one every morning anyway, because she had said she would try it for a month.

Around the eleventh day she realized, at four in the afternoon, that she hadn't thought about her stomach once since lunch. She didn't tell anyone, because she didn't trust it, and the next two days were bad ones.

Then the good days started to outnumber the bad ones, a little at a time. By the third week she was having whole afternoons without thinking about her stomach, and the bad days, when they came, were milder and passed faster. She still kept the loose pants in the car. She had stopped planning her day around two o'clock, and she couldn't say for certain it was the gummy.

A month later, on a Friday, David's phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. He read the screen, looked up, and asked it without being careful. "Where do you want to eat?"

She answered in two seconds. She named the Italian place downtown, because she wanted to order the lemon chicken herself instead of having it brought home in a box.

She read the menu with no plan, for the first time in over a year. By dessert she felt as full as anyone does after a good dinner, and she noticed that she had stopped doing the math. On the drive home she forgot all about the seat belt, and at a red light David rested his hand on her stomach, the way he used to, and she left it there.

At Gary and Teresa's anniversary dinner, at the long table for twelve, the chair next to David was not empty. Laura had said she would come for dessert, and she stayed for every course. She had a bad ten minutes around the main course and got through them, and when Teresa stood up for the toast, Laura raised her glass with everyone else. Gary handed his phone to the waiter for a photo of the whole table, and for once Laura was in it.

She still took one gummy every morning. Her note, "Places to Try," had thirty-six names in it by then, and she was the one who picked.

If the next invitation already has you doing the math, here is the brandgummy:

Portfolio sample. Copy shown as it shipped for a client in health ecom; brand and product names are withheld and buy links are disabled. Product claims belong to the advertiser. This is not medical advice. Photos are stock images chosen for this sample, not from the original ad.