Pregnancy - No Rainbows or Butterflies!

If you’re looking for the fairytale pregnancy story - you won’t find it here!

I remember talking to mums before I became pregnant and hearing how wonderful it is to bring a child into the world. Rewind! How wonderful it is to bring a child into the world? Now THAT is a blessing! But you didn’t tell me about the actual pregnancy!

Over the past almost 9 months I have come to acknowledge two things:

A) mums likely don’t want to scare potential new mums from the upcoming journey and

B) perhaps, they have actually gotten so swept up in the newborn love life that they have forgotten the agony it took to get there?

Either way... I was not told the 100% gods honest truth!

I bought two books to guide us through the pregnancy journey, both by Kaz Cooke. Both honest, and down to earth. I downloaded one app, What To Expect When You’re Expecting. These platforms were my saviours from the misconceptions provided by the motherhood community. I learned about morning sickness, swelling and a whole suitcase of other fun pregnancy facts but even then, to be honest, I was not prepared.

So let’s talk about my pregnancy...

You hear whispers of women having crippling morning sickness but NOTHING can prepare you for what that actually feels like. No one tells you the intimate bond you will share with anything that can be thrown up into. More crucial to this is that NO ONE mentioned it’s INCORRECTLY called ‘morning’ sickness. I was actually sickest through the night when come 7pm utterly exhausted from the at least 2 naps I needed to survive the day, my bed would turn into a boat, at sea, in the middle of an oceanic storm. I’d lay there awake watching as my wife, dogs and cats all slept peacefully whilst the boat we were sharing was actually trying to drown me.

I was not prepared for my stomach to wager a war against my favourite foods and to find that what I enjoyed eating was actually something I had previously no taste for.

But mostly, I wasn’t prepared for how long this sickness lasted. From 6 weeks until well into my second trimester I was quite literally bed-bound. Now don’t forget you’re technically classed as pregnant from the first day of your last period and I had our embryos implanted 3 weeks after that, spent another 2 weeks waiting to find out if the embryos had implanted then 1 week later - BAM! Welcome to your new life that no one told you about.

I wasn’t happy. In fact I was miserable. And I felt guilt for feeling miserable. Here I am, incredibly lucky to have had a successful round of IVF our first go, only to be curled up in bed crying hopelessly to my wife about how terrible I felt and then crying some more because I know how many women out there would have loved to be in my shoes. I just was not prepared.

During that first trimester, we also suffered a significant loss. Miraculously both of our embryos had implanted resulting in our early 6 week scan showing us two beautiful little beating hearts. I’d never felt so much love and protectiveness in my life. For the next two weeks I would whisper to our littles ones to keep safe and hold onto each other, that everything was going to be fine. But it wasn’t. Just two weeks later we were devastated when our sonographer could only locate one little heart beat. Again, the misery crept in and the guilt along with it. After all we still had one little beating heart and so many out there have none. You could say I felt pregnancy was cruel joke from early on and instead of being able to grieve our loss I was right in the thrall of those first trimester hurdles where every day was a challenge of its own.

I was desperate for this first trimester to be over. I was counting the days to getting to the first finish line and praying our baby would hold on tight. People kept reassuring me that the second trimester would be better. ‘You’ll have so much more energy, you’ll feel more like yourself again.’ For a few weeks I pushed myself to make them right even just a few days a week. I gradually slowed my anti nausea medication and my appetite picked up. On some days I genuinely did have more energy. And then I got sick. My poor immune system must have been so shaken by the battle of the first 14 weeks that it decided to take a vacation. Whilst it was off enjoying cocktails on the beach my iron level must have gotten jealous so it, too, packed up and left. Leaving me with a base iron level of 7. Not the lowest, but certainly not enough for a pregnant woman to survive on. The tiredness came back like a wrecking ball (thanks Miley!) and smashed me into the walls. My whole body was aching. The cold I couldn’t shift was getting worse and keeping up with simple day to day tasks was excruciating.

Cue the early iron infusion. At 26 weeks I was given a full dose iron infusion - at last everything would be ok. Right? Wrong! I’ve had iron infusions in the past and loved them. This was the iron infusion from hell. Somehow not even 24 hours later, I was getting sicker. WTF! I was so sick that the woman who did my GDT made me wear a mask because she thought I had this years nasty strain of the influenza virus. I did not! In fact what I was going though is called Iron Overload. Yes, that is a thing and no, it is not fun! Overnight my iron level had shot up to 546! No wonder the pain in my body was intense to say the least. It took about 2-3 weeks for this to settle to a point of comfort. And it was a very long 2-3 weeks.

Somewhere in here, around 28-29 weeks the last thing you want to have happen whilst pregnant... I had a car accident. Rear ended on the freeway and shunted into the car in front. My heart literally stop beating when I realised our little one wasn’t moving. It was an agonising 1-2 hours between the accident and getting her onto a foetal monitor at the hospital. My poor wife, who was on the speaker phone to me in my car when it happened heard the whole thing. She was on a plane home ASAP. Thankfully our little one doesn’t like foetal monitoring so I got to spend the night in hospital with her furiously attacking the monitor around my belly. I tell you what, I’ve never been so happy to feel her beat the shit out of me!

Now I realise this isn’t pregnancy related but it all contributed to my experience so it needed to be included.

By the time I hit roughly 30 weeks, I actually felt pretty good! Energy levels were up, I was mobile and smashing through day to day life. Even Temira commented on how well I was doing... That was until about week 32 when my Braxton Hicks were so bad I thought the baby was coming (she didn’t thankfully!) and after that it has been a steep decent into sleepless nights with hip and spine pain. And I guess the lack of being able to breathe properly doesn’t help. The sleepless nights are making for days spent at home near a couch or bed. Mild nausea has returned and indigestion is tearing its ugly head.

And I guess this is the point when mums kinda begin to ‘forget’ how much they have suffered to get to this point. I can feel it myself. I’m focused on our little one arriving now more than ever and I have to consciously remind myself not to say how wonderful pregnancy is when people ask how it’s been going. I want to be honest. I never want someone to say, but why didn’t you tell me this would happen? Every journey is different and kudos to the mothers who have flown through with glowing skin and a radiance only rivalled by the sun. For the rest of us, let’s share some honesty for a change! Stop being afraid to scare each other and actually help to prepare ourselves for what we are about to go through.

Now there’s still a few weeks to go and I will be having a c-section for medical reasons so believe me when I say I have done my homework. I have no misconception about a beautiful birthing story. In fact we haven’t even written a birth plan. We will go in on our scheduled date with our bags packed, prepared to be utterly unprepared. We have little in the way of expectations. We are simply praying for the smoothest procedure and the absolute joy of meeting our baby girl for the first time.

Thats all for now, with more to come

With love,

By two mums xx