My pregnancy overhshare part three: the second trimester

The middle bit. The easy bit. The no symptoms bit. The bit where you feel so fine you can forget you are pregnant!

Fucking liars.

Oh my word, every bit of pregnancy sucks. The nausea wears off but for me the headaches and back ache hit in full force around week 15.

I did have a bit of a bump (the picture at the top is week 20). But obviously not as ridiculous as I would get. My so helpful, so friendly, male (and yet somehow expert in pregnancy) colleague enjoyed telling me how I shouldn’t have backache yet as I’m just going to get bigger and how will I cope then??? Yeah but piss off mate.

Turns out that your body goes crazy firing off the hormone Relaxin which can screw up all your ligaments and things in order to let your body stretch out and grow a human. This meant my back temporarily forgot how to do it’s job right. Luckily my body got it’s act together and the back ache was just for a few weeks. Heat pads were my friends.

Oh the headaches. Oh lord. Normally I dose up on paracetamol and ibuprofen and sleep till it goes. I couldn’t take ibuprofen, I couldn’t properly sleep, we are paperless at work so I was staring at a computer screen all day. Hideous. Relentless headaches. I took paracetamol to ease it off and not go insane and have some ability to do my job.

One day I used some of the precious annual leave to have a break from computer headachedom and have at home headachedom. Grazia insta stories told me that when pregnant women take paracetamol they basically fuck up their baby daughters. I went on a bit of a breakdown at this news. The NHS website told me I could have it! I had a cry and a rant on my online friends Mum Facebook group and they talked me around. Basically the research was done on mice taking many times more the dosage (proportionately) a pregnant woman would. And ya know, they are mice and we are humans so not directly representative anyway. So then I calmed down, but took no more paracetamol after that which was HARD as the headaches were a killer for another few weeks.

A good bit was the 20 week scan. I really, really wanted a girl. The scan was two days before my birthday, it was an excellent present and we had a day out to celebrate and bought her her first teddy from Stonegate Teddy Bears and had breakfast at The Ivy. I love breakfast at The Ivy.

I can’t remember much else other than achey, achey tiredness. Working full time was still a real struggle. As was the caffeine restriction. As was the people I work with telling me I wasn’t allowed any caffeine when the NHS says I can have 200mg and other more widespread research says 400mg and that shitty little Nescafe Azera only had 100mg so shut up and let me drink my coffee you twat bags.

Not that it irritated me. I take unsolicited advice about my pregnancy REALLY WELL. Especially from people with a background in finance and not healthcare. Those guys know all the stuff.

So next time you see a pregnant woman with a coffee just ask her if she wants a biscuit. Don’t say anything else, just get her a biscuit.

My pregnancy overshare part one: the sex (et cetera)

I’m going to tell you aaalll about my pregnancy. The bits I remember anyway as baby brain is no joke!

Pre-conception

Anyone who went to school with me knows I am a swot. I read about ten books on conception / pregnancy / labour before I even started trying. I had nine months worth of data on my natural cycles app. I researched the best month to be born academically, school policies on deferring entry, I asked many people whether they liked their birth month.

I actually ate well, I hugely upped my calcium and iron intake and started consuming lots of fruit and veg. My colleagues saw me suddenly start eating mussels and thought I was already pregnant (I wasn’t, but alongside beef and liver they are one of the best sources of iron BUT DON’T EAT LIVER). I asked a dietician whether I should stop eating McDonald’s and other naughty treats (she said carry on as I was borderline underweight and it was more important to keep my weight up…yeeessss).

I took three months worth of pre-conception vitamins. Apparently having folic acid for a long time before conceiving can reduce the chance of hyperemesis gravidarum but you need it anyway to reduce the risk of spina bifida in the baby – don’t worry if you didn’t, just start today.

I joined a secret Facebook group for babies and parenting about a year in advance so I could soak up all the mum wisdom.

I had even been on the Which birth choices tool to decide where to give birth. If you haven’t used it do so now…it’s brilliant. Check the statistics on intervention / caesarian etc as well as they vary a lot.

We had a few baby bits purchased, when we were at the till in White Company we pretended my sister was pregnant when she enthusiasticly asked as I thought explaining a purchase for a baby due a full 12 months away was a bit mental.

I was PREPARED.

My mum fell pregnant straight away and I had super regular ovulation so I assumed we’d be pretty lucky. I originally wanted a September baby (for the school year) but then read its a bumper month for births and the midwives are rushed off their feet. I REALLY did not want to be sent away from the labour ward because they were full…or not be the centre of attention from my midwife because she was juggling multiple mums. I read you can defer entry for August borns so that they are the eldest in the year so we went for that. Then I got impatient and we decided to try the month before. Fate said no thanks mate August is the month for you and made me so ill I could barely have sex and also so pumped up on cold and flu and cough medicine I didn’t ovulate for the first time.

Doing ‘the sex’ 😉😉

Did you know mums on online chat forums call sex the Baby Dance, BD for short. Honestly, people are very weird. I’m glad my Facebook group were able to type the word sex like true grown ups.

I know the date we made the baby, we had our photo taken in Whitby. Ironically the wind was blowing out my scarf making me look pregnant and I had my hand over it like I was clutching the baby and a friend asked my husband if I was pregnant, they were just a few hours early. Anyway I won’t go into the details of the sex, it’s not that kind of blog, it would be weird and quite frankly I can’t remember anyway. I’ll let you assume it was THE BEST SEX EVER because I am amazing at sex every single time etc.

The advice is to have sex every other day when trying to conceive. Any less and you are missing opportunities and you need to keep that sperm production up, no one wants lazy old swimmers who can’t be arsed finding the egg. Your sperm producing male shouldn’t be masturbating in addition to this within a week of your ovulation otherwise he is wasting good resources.

For those that don’t know sperm last five days inside your body and eggs last two days. Although there is technically only a week a month to fall pregnant you need to make sure those semen deposits are getting made every other day all month long. Keep it fresh guys. That’s obviously for optimum sperm. You can of course fall pregnant following zero sperm advice.

Oh how jealous I am of Sophie of November 2017…it’s been a long time since I had every other night sex.

I’ll leave it there and resume with my first few weeks of pregnancy at some point when the baby next naps in the car.

Feeling like a failure

Some days I own the title single mother with pride. Single mothers do everything and that makes them extremely capable and strong, who can’t be proud of that! When I read other women’s stories of how they became single mothers I think well done, you had a tough situation and you got through it and thrived. Not that I can say I’m thriving yet. Ultimately I just feel like I’m surviving and the real test will come when I go back to work almost full time and have to manage my time very carefully with a house and clingy co-sleeping baby to deal with.

But other days, to be honest I am embarrassed. I feel like I need to justify myself. I feel like I need to tell people I was happily married, as if to justify that this was a carefully planned and wanted baby. Given that my husband left me quite soon after she was born I worry that people think I am some very irresponsible woman who had a baby with a man she didn’t get on with. Maybe they would judge me more if they knew the truth, that I thought the marriage was strong but ultimately my husband didn’t. How stupid am I not to realise that?

The joke is that when I think of the single mothers that I admire, some of them didn’t plan to have the baby at all. It’s the fact they didn’t plan it and life threw a surprise at them and they not only coped but did a great job and didn’t let it stop them pursuing careers and relationships and happiness.

I wouldn’t judge other single mothers so why do I judge myself? Maybe because I am generally a conventional person in what I want out of life. This is so far removed from what I ever wanted or considered possible that I think I judge myself for letting it happen (not that I really had a say in the matter). One of the things I liked about my husband was that he was dependable and loyal and a family man. Obviously I didn’t really know him, people must be thinking that either I was stupid to not realise that having a family wasn’t for him…or that family life is for him but that I’m such a nightmare that he felt he had to get away from me.

At the end of the day I’m wasting time worrying about what people think as the famous saying goes:

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do”

– Olin Miller

And ultimately since sharing with people that I am a single mother I basically have had an outpouring of support. So many women from all corners have offered a shoulder to cry on / ear to moan at. People I barely know have been so kind including generosity from friends online sending an amazing care package to people from my past I haven’t seen in years sending their love and sympathy.

I’ve always had the opinion that people are on the whole good so I don’t know why I waste energy thinking they would perceive me badly for being a single mother. And those that do probably aren’t worth having the good opinion of anyway.

I know a brilliant supporter of women who would be telling me to dust off my crown now so I guess I will.