Over the past week I think I’ve managed to breathe deeply for the first time since getting those two little lines on the pee stick and I’m slowly beginning to take time to bond with the tiny little human that’s growing in my tum.
Aside from not really wanting to talk about the pregnancy for the first four months in case I jinxed it, I also felt absolutely horrendous!! If I’d wanted to write a blog documenting my experience I don’t think I would have been able to keep my eyes open long enough to write the title. To provide some form of comparison, when I was pregnant with Ettie, I was one of those annoying, glowing pregnancy people. Posting bump updates on social media every few weeks and actually finding the time (and energy) to keep a detailed weekly journal of how things were progressing! I swam, ate my greens and attended pregnancy yoga like a class ‘A’ pregnancy student! If there were a school for pregnancy people, I’d have been the Hermione Granger of the class! This pregnancy… I am Ron! (no offence Ron) This pregnancy, I’ve pretty much lived on cake, cockles and bread and managed to snap just one picture of my bump at 16 weeks where I looked so awful, that if the poor baby ever does manage to catch a glimpse of it, then it will probably think it was the spawn of Darth Vader some other dark eyed, deathly looking creature.
Annoying pregnancy person when pregnant with Ettie!
So what have you missed?
Well I think I can sum up the first four months of this pregnancy in three words… cockles, cornichons and sleep!!
Food wise, I pretty much lived on cake, cockles or those tiny little cornichon pickles you sometimes find on a fancy cocktail. It sounds so gross now, but at one point I was ordering 6 jars of cockles on the weekly shop and wolfing them down two jars at a time! (Lucky Stu!) Around the same time I also developed a penchant for the olive infused baguettes you get from Sainsburys, not batting an eye lid if I finished a whole loaf in one sitting!! It got so bad that I was finishing my 5 star dining experience by dipping the Lurpack laden bread into the jar of cockle juice once I’d crammed all the fishy morsels down my neck!! Its no wonder I felt like death, but I had SUCH an awful taste in my mouth, the cockles were the only thing that could cut through it!
A hearty snack!!
Fatigue
To say I was beyond tired for the first four months of this pregnancy would be an understatement. I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open and would regularly have to slope off to the toilets at work to have a little snooze! In the evenings, i’d regularly end up falling asleep in Ettie’s Tipi as I was putting her to bed. She was so lovely about it, gently patting me on the head saying ‘wake up Mummy’ to bring me back into the realms of consciousness (great parenting!). But she also decided that Mummy was absolutely no fun during this time and would seek out Daddy for enjoyment and giggles, while I wasted away on the sofa trying to keep at least one eye open to watch them.
Boomerang Flu
I also had a stinking cold that just wouldn’t go away. I affectionately named it ‘the Boomerang flu’, because whenever I thought I was starting to feel marginally better it would come back the next day with a vengeance… and then to top it all off between weeks 12 and 14 I had chronic migraines!! So bad I was actually in tears most mornings until I’d managed to stumble to the cupboard containing the drugs and sink a couple of paracetamols!! Poor Stu held everything together during this time and didn’t complain once, even though I knew I was being beyond rubbish! I know I have a sarcastic sense of humour and don’t really write grand sentiments of loving, but I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him. He is my Lobster!
I’m not really sure if what I had has a name, it might just be ‘pregnancy’ but I’d be really interested to hear from anyone else who can relate. Since feeling this way I’ve read a lot about hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), and I am so thankful it wasn’t that. I have the deepest respect, compassion, sorrow (?) for anyone who has suffered HG because it literally seems like hell on earth. I just cant imagine having what I had and then having the sickness on top, whenever I read anything written by someone who has suffered from the condition, I just want to seek them out and give them a great big cuddle! What I will say though is that I think the extreme fatigue or general worry about the pregnancy did bring on a spot of pre-natal depression as I found myself not wanting to communicate with the outside world and also over thinking events that happened years ago, that I thought I’d put behind me! It was a strange time and I didn’t even realise pre-natal depression was a thing until the black cloud started to lift at around 16 weeks. It was only then that I started talking to friends about it and realised other people had suffered too. I spoke to one lovely friend who said a colleague at her work had had the same symptoms and that really helped. I think the recognition that it was a ‘thing’ and not me just being miserable, helped me to handle things a bit better. I might talk about all of this in a little more detail in a different blog post but I’m still reveling in the excitement of having a good result from the scan I want to stay concentrated on that for now.
Whilst the past few months have undeniably been a rollercoaster of emotions, with a mix of extreme tiredness and worry, I feel so much better now and am so so ready to love our new baby.
19 weeks (ish) and counting litte one!! We so cant wait to meet you xx
Pink jumper: ASOS Maternity
