Pregnancy
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Seven months pregnant: the black dog
Thursday, January 10th, 2008I catch sight of two dark streaks on the car window only to realise with horror that they are big black stripes under my eyes. As I peer more closely at myself, I realise how bloated I look by this pregnancy, how tired, fed-up. Shocked by what I see, I wonder if I scare animals and small children with how awful I look.
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As most pregnant mothers will testify, you reach a point in the pregnancy where the baby becomes less hard work to look after outside the womb than inside.
I have reached that point.
I still have ten weeks to go. (Maybe twelve if I go as overdue as I am expecting to.)
I am huge.
I am exhausted, more in a physical sense than in a sleep-deprived sense but a two year old toddler waking for an hour or more every night wanting to practice his chatting skills and a baby that wants to practice gymnastics in my stomach at regular intervals through the night may be making me more sleep-deprived than I realise (the big black war paint markings under my eyes being the tell-tale sign).
Worst of all I am, I think, depressed.
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Everything in life is ticking along nicely. But I am not doing well.
It has crept up on me - an insidious, uninivited visitor over the holidays - coinciding with the Seasonal Affective Disorder that comes yearly during these dark, wintery days. My SAD lightbox shoots its sunshine rays at me every morning but it ain’t fooling my mind and it’s fighting a losing battle with the dark clouds inside my head.
For the first time I am beginning to wonder how I am going to cope with daily life when the new baby comes. I’m not sure if this is contributing to the depression or a symptom of it.
Every day is a struggle, mostly because the me-time I have is spent resting because I am so exhausted. I reach the end of the day and I feel not only have I achieved nothing of any consequence but I am just as tired as ever. Again, I’m not sure if this is contributing to the depression or a symptom of it.
On the one hand, like a prickly hedgehog I want to go into hibernation, or failing that, curl up in a ball with my sharp spines protecting me from unwanted visitors. On the other, I desperately engage the grocery delivery man in conversation because it may be the only adult conversation I will see today.
I need treatment but I am frightened to take anti-depressants while pregnant, even though I know that research has shown that by not getting treatment I risk the psychological well-being of my other children. How’s that for mother-guilt? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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I am resigned to the fact that I will probably take anti-depressants for much of the rest of my life. Certainly while I have small children. Why have more children if they make you unhappy? a worried friend asked. Well, it’s not the children that make me unhappy but the life it entails. More affordable, flexible childcare would help, as would opportunities for mothers to get back on a flexible career ladder. Still, the friend asked, why have more children if the life makes you unhappy? She has a point.
At our last book club meeting a friend said to me wistfully, you’re so lucky. I know how much she wants a second child. It isn’t going to happen. I am lucky. I am grateful. I know that, but it doesn’t stop me feeling like I do.
I was talking about this with a friend before Christmas. She has four small children, admittedly two of whom are in school and one in nursery, but still, she has a workload. How do you manage? I asked, seeking reassurance that I, too, can manage. Mother’s little helper, she confided. Sometimes those who look like they have it all are the ones who, underneath, are struggling the most.
Where that leaves me - unwilling to take anti-depressants - I’m not sure.
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Posted in Pregnancy, Post-Partum Depression
Fetal tachycardia
Friday, December 21st, 2007Matthew and I went out to the pub for a rare meal out. All I wanted to do was lie down - the pain I had been feeling for a couple of days on the right side of my stomach was bad enough to make me push my plate of chocolate cake and ice cream away and attempt to recline on the very uncomfortable bench I was on.
I went to see the midwife the next day. As soon as she put the Doppler on my stomach I could hear that the baby’s heartrate was much too fast. She started to count. I waited apprehensively, trying to quieten the two rowdy children I had taken with me, thinking mistakenly that they would behave, and wanting to ask why the heartrate would be so fast but not wanting to interrupt her. We waited ten minutes, forcing small talk as if nothing was wrong while she checked my blood pressure, pulse and temperature. She felt the baby’s position and placed the Doppler on again.
‘I think it would be a good idea to go up to the hospital for monitoring,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘Now.’
I silently thanked God that Matthew was at home and I could dump Harry and William back with him and go straight there.
The monitoring was reassuring, but not entirely. I am now on high monitoring and every kick and movement that I have so enjoyed, but taken for granted, has taken on new significance. Or rather the lack of any movement has, meaning I now stop what I am doing if the baby hasn’t kicked for as little as two minutes, lie down and poke the baby until it moves. I can almost hear it sighing, like a recalcitrant teenager, with frustration at me. Not only that but when it’s born I will once again have to become the neurotic first-time mother I once was and poke the baby when it is asleep/quiet/otherwise absorbed just to be sure it is still breathing. Otherwise it will start feeling deprived.
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Posted in Pregnancy
Sixteen weeks pregnant
Thursday, October 4th, 2007It’s been a crappy week but that’s nothing to do with being pregnant (for a change).
Although I still feel slightly nauseous I am feeling so much better. I have energy to do things. I have a bit more of an appetite. I can go out and about, feeling good and looking better than I have in weeks. I finally got my hair cut, having been unable to brave the smell of a hair salon for months.
As I am so clearly pregnant now I am getting lots of questions about the baby, especially from the new mothers I am meeting at Harry’s new school. As the new face in the playground and being tall and pregnant with three, noisy, small children running circles around me I am quite ‘visible’ and therefore have been the centre of much interested questioning. All fine because I have been pretty invisible for what feels like months. Additionally, when I found out I was pregnant I just could not be excited, knowing how awful the next few months would be. Now the worst is over I am so looking forward to meeting this baby. I am so looking forward to people cooing over him/her. I am so looking forward to people helping me out because I have been so ridiculously stupid to have so many children so close together.
Telling people I am pregnant has been interesting. Those I don’t know well have been as one would expect: lots of ‘you’ll have your hands full’ and ‘congratulations, you’re very brave’. Family and close friends have also been as one would expect: thrilled. Also wondering privately how I will cope. It is those in between whose reaction has been strange. Some have been muted in their response, which I can only take to mean they disapprove in some way while others have been oddly rude in their assumption that this baby must be unplanned or that I am only having it because I must be desperate for a girl. ‘What will you do if it’s a boy?’ one mother asked, as if I would return it or something.
As she had her two girls with her, I swallowed my surprise and replied, without missing a beat, ‘I think…. yes…. I’ll give it to you of course. You must give me your number.’
Mean - and silly - I know. But answering her question with gobsmacked silence seemed just so much less satisfying.
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Posted in Pregnancy
Fifteen weeks pregnant: the second trimester rocks!
Thursday, September 27th, 2007Less sickness, less nausea. More getting on with things, more enjoyment.
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I saw the midwife yesterday which is always fun when I’ve got three small children on the loose in an office full of sharp needles and drugs. (Actually, littlest was confined in the stroller with a bag of snacks as a bribe but that lasted all of two minutes before the tantrum began and somehow a toddler on the loose seemed the lesser of two evils.)
The circumstances made me somewhat stressed and I could feel my blood pressure rising. All the way to 80/50 as it turns out so it’s probably just as well or else I might have fainted on the consulting room floor.
Fortunately I don’t have to see her again until somewhere between twenty four and twenty eight weeks pregnant so it is weeks before I have to drag an unhappy, unwilling toddler out of a shortened nap again in order to have the next baby checked over. Regrettably, baby number four seems to come a long way down a very busy list of Things I Have To Do For My Children but at least it won’t come to expect anything more when it arrives. At this rate it’ll be lucky if I can remember it’s name.
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Posted in Pregnancy
Fourteen weeks pregnant: VBAC vs caesarean section
Thursday, September 20th, 2007Today I have my first appointment at the hospital with the consultant (or, less reassuringly, A Member of her Team). I think I recognise her name as being the same consultant that delivered Ben so I will endeavour not to think about how I pooped when she told me to push (I mean how inconsiderate is that, she’s just trying to do her job and save my son’s life and I reward her with THAT) and I will instead try to focus on the inevitable discussion about whether they will allow me to have a VBAC or instead will be pushing for me to have a c-section after the trouble all three of my children gave me when they eventually decided to come out.
I was desperate to have a VBAC last time because it is less risky than major surgery and because I knew I wanted more children and a c-section can make conceiving again more tricky. But when I consider the fact that the best birth experience (least painful, least frightening) I have had was the emergency c-section, the fact that I deliver large babies and there is always a danger of them getting stuck (despite my huge childbearing hips), the fact that my previous scar could rupture (even if unlikely) and the fact that there is NO WAY I’M HAVING ANY MORE CHILDREN, NOT EVER, I am more than likely to willingly submit to the idea of a c-section if the consultant suggests that it would be a better option for me and this baby.
In fact when I think about the enforced five days of recovery in hospital in a private room (wards are the norm after a normal delivery in this country) with someone bringing me food and cups of tea and someone else at home looking after the three that are such hard work every day, I’m almost hoping she insists on it.
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Posted in Pregnancy
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