Survival

I have now made it to week 15 and haven’t been sick for nearly a fortnight. I have had a dark few weeks (months if I’m being honest) and felt horrible about everything around me. I have had some real Jekyll and Hyde moments and been vile to my poor husband, friends and family. Even Brambles got a bit neglected, but god bless her she tried. She even licked my face when I cried.

 

I would like to say that these dark few months are all down to the hormones that come with being pregnant, but then I might be lying. It is possible that hormones have played a part but largely I think my biggest problem stems from processing the enormity of being pregnant.

I’ve always battled my demons, suffering frequent bouts of low mood, anxiety and depression and it was only a matter of weeks before getting pregnant that I weaned off my anti-depressants so to feel low didn’t come as a massive shock. Sometimes I had some lovely days and I’m by no means saying that for months I have been a creature under a rock, but I have more often than not felt shitty. (Probably not helped by lots of sicking)

For me, processing and accepting pregnancy have not come easy.

Firstly was giving up drinking. Now, I love a drink in the pub on a Thursday with my lovely friends at our self named “Thursday Night Club” and sitting at Thursday Night Club with a lemonade made me feel simply quite furious. I was so angry with myself for feeling like this and angry that all I wanted to do was drink a whole bottle of Pinot Grigio Blush and stumble home with the dog leading the way, and I ‘wasn’t allowed.’ I wanted to drink with my friends and be ‘normal’

I wanted to eat a Dominoes Pizza on a Tuesday when my husband gleefully announced “Its Two For Tuesday!!” and couldn’t because one sniff of that pizza would send me running for the toilet.

I wanted to soothe one of my students who was having a crisis but a strongly worded risk assessment forbid me from even standing next to him. Hearing him call out to me for help and having to turn the lock on my door to keep myself physically safe broke my heart.

I just couldn’t understand why all these things had to change and you know what, for many they don’t but that is how I felt it was for me. Everything was changing and I had lost control.

The worst part is the crippling guilt I have felt. I feel so guilty that I haven’t felt happy and joyous and glowing and lovely. Women everywhere cry for babies, they try month after month to get pregnant and here I am, leading a fairly uncomplicated pregnant life and resenting it. It has been a case of trying to survive each day and just hoping that the next day will be better. And eventually the better days have started to come and I am feeling a little lighter (quite literally, I lost a stone in weight during the first trimester!)

The point of this blog is to share things, things that I don’t feel like anyone shared with me before I got into this and I wish somebody had. I wish someone had told me that actually, it is okay to just survive the first trimester because it is SO difficult. Your body is doing all this weird stuff and then your head is desperately trying to understand and process it all. My mum has been great, she has empathised and listened to me cry and tell me its all normal but sometimes you need someone else that is’t you mum or your friend or your husband to tell you that yes pregnancy is really fucking awful and it’s okay to hate it.

I’m being that person. If I can survive, you can survive.