Whatever next...

I was lucky enough to be pregnant at the same time as some of my friends.. one of those friends was actually due the day before me.

Having someone to talk to who is going through the same thing at the same time as me was amazing. Some of the messages we sent may have been TMI to some but it helped to know I wasn't alone. I remember one afternoon randomly asking this same friend whether her hair was particularly knotty as it was getting harder and harder to brush my hair without losing a handful at the same time. Thankfully, she agreed and we had a laugh at some of the lesser known ways that pregnancy can change your body.

In terms of the baby I was carrying, I was apparently doing a great job as throughout my pregnancy I was classified as low risk and at all stages our baby seemed to be doing well. Me on the other hand, my body didn’t particularly take well to being pregnant and I felt that there was always something wrong with me. The god awful morning sickness lasted through to about 16 weeks and meant that I barely kept any food down for months, I managed to pick up two separate UTIs and subsequently ended up on two lots of antibiotics, when I was 20 weeks pregnant having not long ago waved goodbye to the morning sickness and over the Easter bank holiday I contracted Gastroenteritis which was hell. At 20 weeks I had a pretty substantial bump and getting onto the floor to be sick was one hell of a task. I am also one of the special ones to have Rhesus Negative blood which meant that I needed an Anti D injection at 28 weeks; that’s a seriously scary needle.

We went on a Babymoon to Bath for a long weekend two months before my due date which was lovely but I still managed to end up in the hospital. We spent the first full day of our trip walking around Bath; we did all the tourist hotspots whilst temperatures soared to well over 30 degrees. We thought we were being sensible and stopped regularly for water breaks and a sit down but I had no idea how much the heat would affect the baby. By the time we got back to the hotel in the afternoon, I realised I hadn’t felt any movements since I woke up. I tried everything that would normally wake the baby up; eating sweets, drinking something cold and even laying on my left hand side but baby wasn’t budging. We both panicked and I found myself googling the nearest Maternity department. Thankfully, there was one nearby in Bath and after calling we were told to come in. The Midwife hooked me up to a monitor and I drank a load of water and within no time at all the baby was jumping around. She said that I was most definitely dehydrated and had to remember that my body wasn’t able to regulate its temperature as well now I was pregnant.. probably not our best idea wandering around Bath on the hottest day of the year so far.

It was just one thing after another. It constantly felt that as soon as I shifted one ailment, there was another one waiting to take over its place.

This was made even harder by the fact that the pregnant friends I mentioned earlier seemed to be having very different pregnancies; they had the pregnancy glow, their hair looked wonderful and they were relishing being pregnant. I always seemed to be sweaty and out of breath… not the look I ever imagined for myself.

There seems to be a real stigma attached to pregnancy. Someone once told me that the judgement starts as soon as you get pregnant and that judgement continues into motherhood on many different topics. As hard as it is for me to admit, I didn’t always enjoy being pregnant. From the constant ailments, watching my body change and get bigger which was made even harder by the fact that I had spent the year before on Weight Watchers and lost 4 stone before our Wedding. I'd worked so hard to lose all that weight and now I was putting it all back on. I felt as though my body was no longer my own; complete strangers feel it’s ok to question you on your pregnancy and even touch your bump and I always felt like I was on show. In the later stages of my pregnancy I developed sciatica in both hips which made sleeping difficult and eventually walking was even a challenge. Add in the fact that I was due at the end of August, the heat became a real issue and meant that for the last month or two I was basically housebound.

This was compounded even more by the fact that I was worried people were going to think I was selfish and ungrateful; some people are desperate for a baby and would have done anything to be in my position. I started to hide how I was feeling from everyone only confiding in a few people for fear of judgement. Everyone knew that I was having a hard time and probably felt for me but I didn’t dare tell people how much I was disliking growing a baby.

For someone who has never suffered with any kind of mental health illness, I suddenly developed severe anxiety and I think a lot of that comes down to control. I am a massive control freak… anybody who knows me well will agree. I like to be prepared and research everything. I became obsessed with what we needed to buy for the baby and what essentials I needed in our hospital bags. The list I spent months researching and compiling… by the time I left the hospital I had barely touched any of it. This too goes for the Birth Plan that I typed up and felt was perfect. My Midwife even said it was the best she’d ever seen. I had read a zillion pregnancy books and we did NCT classes yet I had no idea what kind of birth I was going to have and the thought of that terrified me.

Another thing about being pregnant is people feel compelled to tell you their labour stories. As I said before, I’m a control freak so I wasn’t scared by this… I actually felt better hearing all these stories both good and bad so I had an idea of what could happen. Some people would rather not think about the labour and that’s fine too so maybe always check that the person wants to hear your story before you jump in. When I ended up at the hospital on the Easter bank holiday with Gastroenteritis, I got chatting to the receptionist whilst I was waiting to be seen by the doctor and she proceeded to tell me that she’d nearly died whilst having her last baby. Not want you should be telling any pregnant woman.

I have managed to digress away from the main point of this particular post… I do that a lot when I’m talking so please bear with me.

What I really wanted to get across was that I didn’t have the perfect pregnancy… far from it, whilst some of my friends breezed through it but that’s okay. It’s also okay to not enjoy being pregnant… just because you are doing this wonderful thing of growing a baby it doesn’t mean you have to love every second of it.