My main thoughts around pregnancy are that I have not enjoyed it, but I also know that I have had a very straight forward pregnancy with no complications or worries and that I should be very grateful for. The parts I have suffered are annoying but only really physically, not psychologically. I started feeling nauseous around 6 weeks and fairly soon it became a whole day feeling and I was being sick roughly every other day, at all different times and with varying severities. Once we had told people we were expecting a baby, recently pregnant friends encouraged me that their nausea stopped around 16 weeks and overnight they felt normal again and enjoyed that stage of their pregnancy. I was disappointed that that hadn't occurred for me spot on 12 weeks but was hopeful. I also found the tiredness really surprising. It was strange for me to come home from school and just sit on the sofa, not even reading or watching anything or checking blogs on the internet. I couldn't face cooking or washing up (made me sick) and it wasn't unusual to be in bed between 7 and 8pm. I also found that I had to change my morning routine, as it became essential that I ate something immediately on waking otherwise I would be sick. So I became the one to have breakfast first while John showered. I also started keeping crackers on my beside table and would carry them or ginger nuts or crisps with me everywhere I went as eating something was the only thing that seemed to keep the sick feeling at bay. I did find it very strange that I went off sweet food - I'm normally such a chocoholic! All the chocolate we had been given at the end of term just stayed in the cupboard!
I didn't find it as bad being at school as I had expected. I definitely taught sitting down more than I had the year before and was eternally grateful I was in Year 2 rather than Year 1 where they could do more for themselves and weren't crowding round me as often so I could help my self to a biscuit or such from my desk! I was only actually physically sick twice at school, both at lunch time and no one was around.
At the October half term, I started to go for minutes upto almost an hour in a morning without feeling sick which was pretty exciting. Then the first day back at school after half term, 30th October, I was gingerly telling people that I no longer felt sick and I even went to Rose Hill runners that night. But then afterwards while I was having dinner I started to feel not so great and then was throwing up through the night with a sickness bug I'd caught over the weekend. I even got a carpet burn on my ankle while dragging myself across the floor to the bathroom. I stayed home from school for two days. It felt most ironic that I had had one day of feeling ok before succumbing to a non-pregnancy related illness! After that, I never felt as well again, always feeling some sort of sickness/nausea. I wasn't being sick as often although whenever I said to someone that actually throwing up seemed to have stopped, I would then be sick that night!
At the end of November we bumped into some friends in Edinburgh Airport. He asked if I'd started the heartburn phase of pregnancy yet to which I replied no, but then I started researching heartburn and realised that that might well be what the sickness feeling I had now was. It wasn't something I'd ever had before and I realised it fitted my symptoms as no longer being nauseous throughout the whole day. I checked up at the GP appointment who gave me a Gaviscon prescription and from Christmas that became my new best friend. I have been taking it every night before bed and increasingly more often during the night when I wake up feeling very close to being sick. A few times I haven't taken it quick enough and have been sick in the night. The last time it happened it was about 37 weeks and it was far more uncomfortable hunched over the toilet with a big bump than it was back in the early months. I tried to modify my diet in some ways to help with the heartburn but there didn't always seem to be much correlation. I would try only to eat sweet things early in the day and would not eat anything after dinner at about 7pm. It's probably been very good for my overall health that for so much of my pregnancy I have been limited on my eating through sickness or heartburn. Still alarming though that I am 10kg heavier than pre-pregnancy and I lost at least 5kg early on in the sickness stage.
A few things that have been slightly pleasanter surprises during pregnancy.
- It took a lot longer for me to show a bump than I was expecting. You still wouldn't really have known I was pregnant at 20 weeks and I didn't start on maternity clothes till around Christmas. You would definitely know now and the bump has changed so much in position in the last month or so.
- I haven't increased my toilet going as much as I was expecting. I started going once in the night from the very beginning but not very frequently during the day.
- I don't feel that my emotions have been really any different. I thought I might be very up and down. On the day I finished school for maternity leave, I came home to a beautifully written card from John and I broke down crying and sobbing then. I think his kind words made me realise what I had achieved in getting to this point.
- Sleeping hasn't really been too bad, in that I can still sleep. I've often felt pretty annoyed with nausea/heatburn when lying down in bed each night, but it hasn't really taken me any longer to fall asleep. I have really missed lying on my back from 30 weeks and resented being on my side. And obviously being sick in the night or getting up to take gaviscon 3 or 4 times is a pain, but I've always been able to get back to sleep.
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