Hills Like White Elepants

The short story "Hills Like White Elephants", by Ernest Hemingway had me beyond confused. I didn't understand the main conflict of the story until I read it through a second time. The characters never explicitly say what their troubles are. They speak of it in vague terms, that keep the reader guessing. I took the white elephants line "''They look like white elephants,' she said" (pg 115), to mean an actual baby bump. Hills are round, like a baby bump, and most women keep them covered, which would make them pale. The man says he's never seen one and the woman responds that he wouldn't have. This ultimately means that he would never have seen her baby bump because they're going to be getting rid of the baby.
The line about absinthe "Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe." (pg 115) was also confusing. I understand this was written at a time when it wasn't understood that drinking was bad for developing fetuses. But what did absinthe have to do with anything? So I did a little research. It is believed that her line is her trying to bring up her pregnancy subtlety. She's saying that she doesn't like the taste of the drink the man ordered for her, just as she doesn't really like being pregnant. The man understands what she's trying to do so he tells her to be quite. The licorice, a.k.a. the color black, and the white of the hills symbolize the difference between sorrow and joy. The bitterness of the absinthe is ironic.      http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/maddendw/Hem_form.pdf