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Hi [Client for new project I promised I’d do in April and May]
As you know I am pregnant, and my due date is 4th July. As such I thought I would be free to complete this project during April and May. However, I have had some complications with my blood pressure and I currently need to attend monitoring appointments at the hospital taking up two full days each week – plus other routine appointments.
This is my first bump shot, mainly because even though I’m nearly 21 weeks in I’ve not had much of a bump to show.
I’m now at that inbetweeny stage where some might just wonder if I’m a bit fat. The husband says you can tell because it is all in the one place, but I don’t think I’d be confident to ask me about it yet! I think maybe my natural posture and the reasonable size of my boobs masks it a bit too.
Today the husband took me out for lunch, as a little practice so I can hopefully eat out with friends at some point soon. It went OK. I had a steak sandwich and fries and it was huge, but the husband kindly offered to take half of the sandwich onto his plate until I was ready to eat it so it didn’t scare me. He suggested if in doubt I could ask for a small portion in the future. Anyway that all went fine, and I had a meringue and cream which was yumsk.
Later we went to Mothercare, our first time. They have all sorts of reasonably priced baby items, and we saw a lot that we liked. We’ll go back and stock up some time.
I’ve had a significant improvement over the last few days, and am now eating a fairly normal amount of food. I think I’m less tired, which means I can cope with the nausea better and the nausea is generally less severe. This meant Christmas went OK, better than I expected. I tried not taking the pills one morning, but it turns out I do still need those.
Despite the improvement I still don’t feel brilliant, still not normal, which is hugely frustrating. Yesterday I did three activities (lunch out, short walk, grocery shopping – great!) but then was wiped out and went to bed at 9.30pm. This remains genuinely depressing, I’m finding it hard to cope mentally with remaining so far from normal life for so long.
During my years trying to conceive and doing IVF, it became increasingly difficult to find out that friends were pregnant. Facebook was a particular issue, with unexpected 12 week scan photos and birth announcements popping up and slapping me in the face. I eventually identified that the problem was not the new baby in itself – I wanted a baby so I could understand why others were excited about getting a baby. No, it was the element of surprise. The fact that I thought these women were the same as me (i.e. not pregnant) and it turns out they weren’t. Instead, for two to eight months they’d been pregnant and not said. I get that, I get why people don’t say until they are sure or feel ready to share. But finding out someone had crossed over to the dark side was always a painful reminder that I hadn’t and couldn’t. And the thought of them having held the beautiful and glorious secret for a number of months just made the news ten times harder to hear. Read the rest of this entry »
