All Knocked Up

Part of the system

lemonmoon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:57:40 +0000

I notice it’s been a while since I posted. That would be due to the crushing tiredness I’ve been succumbing to every afternoon. It climaxed on Monday. I was sitting on the sofa enjoying my lunch, when I suddenly thought ‘oh here it comes’, and indeed it did, like a big horrible train that had nothing better to do than mow me down. I went to bed, and dozed for two hours, but when I got up I felt no better. No one tells you these things in advance. I don’t remember my mother saying ‘oh your legs will feel like lead, and you’ll think you have flu, only you know you don’t, so you’ll worry that you’re just being lazy and that will make you cry.’ No sir. Not her, not anyone, not any pregnant woman I’ve ever known has ever said that, probably because it’s impossible to convey to anyone who hasn’t had it. To be honest if someone had told me Iwould have shrugged it off as some kind of namby pamby thing they ought to get over, so I’ll no doubt go on keeping the secret.

I finally got a call from my midwife yesterday. I say my midwife, but they are a team of six, so I could have any one of them. They specialise in home births, and births at Kings, and since I won’t have my booking appointment for a few weeks yet I still have time to decide which one of those I want to be. How can I make such a decision now when I’m so inexperienced at being pregnant? She also referred me for my dating scan at Kings, which includes the nuchal fold test, and spoke a bit about testing and what not to eat, and whether it was my first baby. After I put the phone down I realised that I was officially in the system as a pregnant woman, and this is a shift in self-perception that I haven’t quite come to terms with.

I’m not sure I’ve finished being me yet, but I’m going through something that will fundamentally change the way I am. I could try to ignore the doubts and misgivings I have of me being able to cope, or of me being sure I want to do it, but there are there, and I think it’s probably more normal than people expect. I know that it feels more real than it did two weeks ago when I started buying books, but I still haven’t hit the euphoria bit yet. Is that me holding back just in case things aren’t well at the scan? That might be a part of it. Maybe it’s just too many new emotions to deal with all at once.

Symptom watch: tired, tired, tired. Intermittent heartburn. Less farting than before, but fairly smelly with it. Dear God. Occasional mild cramping.

Learning to let go

lemonmoon — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:35:40 +0000

On Thursday I felt rough. Weary and lacklustre, and teary and pathetic. I told myself it was part of the process, but the trouble is that being in control is something I like very much and this is a thing over which I have almost no control at all. Eventually I stopped fighting it and lay on the sofa under a blanket, but it was a hard thing to accept.

So when I woke up on Friday feeling better I was surprised to find myself in a panic about whether it had all gone wrong, or that perhaps I had imagined the first test, and I just wanted it enough to make it appear on the screen. I know – completely mad, but knowing that I was having mad thoughts was not enough to drive them away, so I took the other test out of the packet and did it.Before I reached the other end of the hall it flashed up ‘pregnant’ and then a couple of minutes later added ’2-3′.

Of course it did.

Because I am actually pregnant. With a baby. And I really want it to be ok.

Outed

lemonmoon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:50:01 +0000

I met a friend last night for an evening out, who just knew, don’t ask me how. Since she knew I’d come off the pill it didn’t seem strange that she was asking me questions about my cycle, and if I’d been horrifically moody again, but then she kept prodding about when precisely my last period had been, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t lie to her either, so after ten seconds of silence I just said it. ‘I’m pregnant’.

She was immensely happy, and then said that she just knew but didn’t know how many questions she could ask before she began to look weird. I think that it’s possibly more real to her than it is to me, even though I have my little digital picture of the test result to refer to. I had to look at it again today, and I’m only wondering at what point I’ll crack and do the other test from the twin pack just to make sure.

The postman brought me a lot of packages from Amazon today. Nothing like a surprised pregnant lady at home with full access to the internet…

Symptom watch: bloated today, small appetite to go with it and boobs definitely more tender. Found myself wondering if Angelina Jolie farted a lot when she was pregnant.

We are new at this

lemonmoon — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:25:24 +0000

I don’t really know what I’m feeling. I know that I’m happy about it, but I don’t feel particularly happy. I know it was planned, because I was taking my temperature and wotnot, but I still feel surprised (and also not surprised – am I going to live in a contradictory state for the next 36 weeks?). And it’s me who has to do this – me! No one else is going to do it for me. One moment it’s a thrilling adventure, the next it’s a scary runaway train I can’t get off.

Perhaps it’s because I have always been ambivalent about motherhood, and even when I started to think I might one day want to have a child, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that it was a good idea. Then when I stopped taking the pill I’d been on for years I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with that, even though I obviously was not putting the pills in my mouth every morning. It’s as if I’m just following what my body is telling me to do, and there is a rebellious teenager somewhere at the back of my mind who is shouting ‘hey! hang on a minute!’And perhaps part of that is because most things in your adult life can be undone – you can sell the house, get divorced, change jobs – but you cannot hand the baby back if you change your mind in a year or two. I have chosen; my body has complied. No going back.

Still feels unreal.

Symptom watch: sore nips, weeing a lot, cramps, huge wind. There’s no dignity in this at all.

4+1

lemonmoon — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:35:24 +0000

Oh. My. God.