Part One of Growing a Tiny Human: Nausea, Exhaustion and a Mental Breakdown. The First Trimester, ak

Growing a baby. Where to begin. Well, let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). 25 years old. Married for 5 minutes. And BOOM. Pregnant.

We decided to start ‘trying’ after we got married thinking it would take time. But apparently, my incredibly fertile husband and my incredibly fertile self only needed one go and we had lift off. This is not the norm. Well, no norm that I’ve ever been aware of from people trying for a baby. So naturally we thought, best get a jump on things. It was the right time for me; I had a job but not a career. Husband was (and is) working like an absolute Trojan and doing really well in his career. We were now married, we had just bought a house (thank you Bank of Mum and Dad) and thought, let’s do this thing! We’ll have loads of time! What fools we were….

Wham, bam, oh hello Pee Stick with 2 lines! Off I go taking Folic Acid and Vitamins and that was that. We found out after we both had the most horrific bout of Flu. I should have got my period during said Flu episode so took the test, and positive it was. I told my Mum and Dad, Hubs told his Mum and Step-Dad, and off we went on the journey of the First Trimester. Or as it can only be describe the WORST trimester. It was 3 months of, I don’t want to say hell, but it was pretty damn close. And not just for me, but for my poor Husband as well. Men don’t get off Scott Free by any stretch. Their once lively, beautiful, vivacious life partner turns into, well, a completely different person. There will be no sugar coating here. I’m not going to pretend I enjoyed any part of the first 3 months of pregnancy. Because I did't. I hated it. And please know, this is just my experience and will in no way reflect what any other woman on this Planet experienced.

Which is another weird thing about pregnancy. There really is so much advice floating around not only on bookshelves, but on the big, bad, internet too. And it will all tell you what to expect, what you should do and here’s the kicker – none of it will feel like it is relevant, or appropriate, or helpful to you. At all. Hooray! I don’t want to be full of doom, gloom and woe because I am SO lucky to have had no trouble at all in conceiving. And looking over at the beautiful life I created that I get to teach and love and nurture and watch grow, retrospectively makes those first 3 months mean diddly squat. But at the time, they felt nothing short of horrific. So here we go, my horrific first trimester (I’ll try and Pepper in some helpful tips here, but I’m not going to shove them down your throat. No one wants to read a post by ‘that’ woman).

The first 3 weeks you most likely wouldn't even know or test to see if you’re pregnant. You’ll just be waiting for Lady Flow to come to town so there isn’t really anything to report here. You will, without knowing though, be growing a tiny embryo made up of an insanely complex mash of cells. But during this time there won’t be enough baby hormones in your body yet to have any effect on a test. Although you may notice that things start to taste a bit different, but you can’t quite put your finger on why. Maybe they smell a little different too. How weird?! Your girls will probably start to ache like a mother too, but you’ll just assume this is your normal pre-menstrual boob ache. You’ll probably be like me and still be heavily caffeinating yourself to get through the day and then drinking wine in the evenings to congratulate yourself for getting through the day. But don’t worry, you won’t end up with a Ninja Turtle growing inside you or anything (as recently as 2008 it was only just being recommended that you really should stop drinking full stop during pregnancy. And some woman still continue to smoke. That I find abhorrent. There is no excuse nowadays to be ignorant towards the dangers of smoking in general, let alone whilst pregnant. The same goes for alcohol as far as I'm concerned, and I in no way condone either of these things. I hate smoking regardless of your state of impregnation. I do however like wine. Well, I did...).

Week four, if you’re regular as rain as I was, you might notice none of that icky brown stuff has arrived and there is no blood to be found in your underwear. And you’ll even wear your nicest undies to trick yourself in to bleeding but still, nada. So you’ll do a test and lo and behold, there are pregnancy hormones in your pee and that little stick is showing you you're pregnant! But you definitely won’t stop at one test. That would be silly. I did 3. You know, just to check. And there you have it, no going back now. Shit. Just. Got. Real. And at this point you’ll feel absolutely fine! Like ‘pfft, what is all the fuss about’ smug.com style. You’ll stop drinking coffee, you’ll stop drinking wine and off we go blindly in to week five…

Ah week 5. You draining little sod. This is when tiredness like a train will hit you so hard that you will suddenly feel as though you have never, ever had a night’s sleep in your ENTIRE life. I unfortunately had 5 years’ experience of this suffering from ME/CFS, but I’d stupidly let myself forget what that bone crushing, soul destroying tiredness felt like because it was from a time in my life I never, after I got healthy again, let myself think about. But back it came with full force; the crushing, life blood sucking tiredness that I’d spent the majority of my adult life fighting. And back I was at the age of 25 being virtually bed bound. There was an afternoon at work I yawned 18, count it, 18 times in a row. There were times in the day I thought I was going to pass out I was so tired. And you can’t tell anyone why because ‘you don’t tell people you’re pregnant until at least 12 weeks’ when you’re out of the danger zone, have had your first scan and can say with absolute certainty you’re Ninja Turtle Free and definitely carrying a human Foetus. So basically you look like shit because you’re too tired to do your makeup and are still young enough for people to assume that you were out last night at the Discotheque and/or dragging on the Crack Pipe until 3am and not, in fact, in bed at 6pm and sleeping all the way until 8am. You forget what your husband looks like because you see him for about 10 minutes a day, so he merrily gets to play FIFA every night from home-time until the crack of dawn as he has no wife nagging him to ‘spend time together’. No one to answer to. Bliss! And on we roll to week 6. Sick bucket at the ready. You know what’s coming…

Up until this point I could kind of deal with the tiredness. I wasn’t happy about it, but I’d done it before I could do it again. I had made a pact in my head about morning sickness; either it will be as bad as I thought it would be in which case, I would be prepared. It would be worse than I could possibly imagine, in which case again, I could be prepared for that. Or, I might be one of those lucky 25% of the female population that it skates right over… I was not one of the lucky 25. And also, me trying to mentally prepare myself and be as rational over this ‘natural symptom of pregnancy’ was promptly shot to hell when reality kicked in. I moaned. I bitched. I threw tantrums. I cried. Ginger, didn’t help. Crisps, didn’t help. Crackers, didn’t help. Lemon, didn’t help. It was ALL bullshit! Nothing helped! Nothing! Nothing stopped the nausea. It even got so bad, that after storing up all this fear and sickness and frustration and despair of my situation, I didn't want to do it anymore. I had spent the majority of my adult life trying to avoid tiredness and also as a recovered bulimic, resisting the urge to throw up. So suddenly having to deal with both these things on a daily basis along with the impending reality that my entire life would be completely changing in a matter of months forever? As you must have gathered, I did not cope with it well. I obviously did not go through with my drastic thought to end the pregnancy. I just got so overwhelmed by everything and mostly by my assuredness that if I couldn’t cope with how I was feeling now, how could I cope with a baby? I hadn’t seen my husband properly in nearly 2 months. I had looked ugly for nearly 2 months. I couldn’t eat properly for nearly 2 months, I had the most vivid and horrifying dreams for nearly 2 months and the fears and hormones and symptoms meant my mental health was taking one of the most thorough poundings it had ever taken. Even looking back now, what those early pregnancy hormones did to me is almost impossible to describe. I was low. As low as I had ever been even though one of the most miraculous things was happening to me, creating life. I imploded. And then exploded. I was so full of shame and guilt and my poor husband had to cope with his shell of a wife breaking before his eyes. I had to tell my Boss as said melt down was on a work day and after that day, I accepted that it was just a momentary, albeit epic, melt down that I had to go through to know what I really wanted. And after that, everything suddenly started to feel a bit easier. So, huge, EXTREME mental breakdown aside, I will tie in another joyous pregnancy symptom to go with the joy of retching, gagging, throwing up and feeling nauseated ALL. DAMN. DAY. was my heightened sense of smell….

More than anything this was truly the thing that I struggled with the most symptom wise. I had never been a ‘fussy smeller’ (if such a thing exists), but suddenly I had the sense of smell of a Blood Hound ON STEROIDS. That is the only comparison I can make because it truly has been incomparable to anything I have experienced before. I could smell ev-er-ree-thing. And everything that I could smell made me want to be sick. I could no longer stand the smell of my house and the only room I could cope with being in was the bedroom. The kitchen smelt like a rotten stench ridden stink den. The washing powder smelt so strong I heaved when I walked past the drying rack. The smell of the bubble bath turned my stomach. The smell of work at lunch time was unbearable. Everyone was a stinky bitch that I wished didn’t exist. This was something I was completely unprepared for and really was the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to the whole I--can't-do-this meltdown. And one of the biggest boots in the gnads, I couldn’t even stand the smell of my husband anymore! I used to love the smell of him! The smell of his breath, the smell of his body, the smell of his aftershave. Everything! Now he absolutely stank. That I cried about a lot. That I think hurt him a lot even though he didn’t say. Because he knew how irrational it was to be upset by me being ruled by insane pregnancy hormones. He just continued being the sweetest, most supportive and amazing man. He did everything through the smell weeks of weeks 5/6 to 10. I had no energy, I was only eating bread and plain pasta and got these horrible sores around the corners of my mouth from malnutrition. He cooked, cleaned, washed and continued to take care of his son. By this point I think our Little Pumpkin Head (my Step-Son) genuinely thought the bed was just where I lived now... My husband did all the things I used to do and did it uncomplainingly whilst working his stressful days. And never moaned once. A turning point in the whole taste/smell/sick saga was when I finally got so fed up of eating plain food I cracked and had a Nandos AND an Indian Takeaway in one day. And *whispers* they didn’t make me sick...! This was about week 10/11 and it felt like finally the nausea was starting to ebb away. My diet started to get a bit more varied again. I still needed to feel full all the time to stop feeling sicky, but once I could finally face flavour again, another tiny hurdle towards life being a little easier was crossed.

The above 2 paragraphs pretty much cover weeks 5 to 11. Sick, smell, tiredness and nausea. Melt downs, tears, despair and then a little bit of normality returning. My tits still ached like no one’s business so it was a firm ‘look but don’t touch policy’ for my ever growing Babalons, but things felt better and got a bit easier. I did however throw up spectacularly in a Sainsbury’s car park after an ill-fated Prawn Sandwich and Melon combination. I was unable in those first 3 months EVER able to decide what I wanted for dinner, which was so frustratingly annoying for my poor Saint of a husband who had to traipse around the Super Market after me going, nope, gag, nope, gag, nope, gag. I got up to pee about 3 to 4 times a night and also started to develop some round ligament pain. But hey, pregnancy! No one said growing a human life would be easy. And I was woefully ignorant to how hard it would actually be. Mentally and physically. I had no idea the toll it would take on my relationship and the pressure it would put on my husband. I had no idea. But I sure as hell do now! BUT in positive news, I was able to begin eating fruit and vegetables again (my favourite things) and because of this, my mouth sores eventually cleared up. My sense of smell returned to normal (chorus sings Hallelujah) and the only time I would feel nauseous was if I got too hungry. I still had to sleep a lot, but was able to make it until 9, almost 10pm some nights! I know, I can’t be tamed.

During the first trimester, when everything finally settled down and every week meant being one week closer to that first scan, my thoughts were primarily about my Husband. He had to watch me go through all of this for 3 months, and short of buying the food I could eat and/or finally decided to eat and trying to tell me everything would get better soon and that everything was going to be fine, was unable to do anything to make me feel better. And I know he hated it. I know he felt helpless, like he was watching from the side lines whilst the love of his life broke before him. And he never complained about how he felt because he wasn't the one ‘going through it.’ But he was. He had to bear the brunt of my moods and whims and unreasonable behaviour. He was working all day at work and working all evening taking care of me at home. He didn't get a break whilst I slept and cried and needed him to be strong and unbreakable in my lowest moments. And that is what I hated about the experience the most. I’ve suffered with health problems and depression before, I knew I could get through it and come out the other side. He just hadn’t had to watch that. It was a time before him. It’s a time I’ve told him about, but that you can’t really understand until you’re watching it unfold in front of you. And I can’t imagine how scary it was for him. To watch his once happy, bubbly, go-getting wife melt before his eyes into a pool of sadness and illness and become a husk of her former self. Things didn't just change for me, they changed for him too. And then some. And that is what I became very mindful of.

If you made it this far congratulations. Those first 3 months were one hell of a journey! I hope that if you’re reading this I haven’t completely put you off growing a baby. I must say, as soon as I hit the Second Trimester the rest of my pregnancy was a dream (Stay Tuned for parts 2 and 3 of growing a human). This is just what I went through and trust me, no two pregnancies are the same. Anyone will tell you that. I just wish that there was something like this before I decided to embark on this journey that I could have read to be like, oh damn this is going to be tough. Nothing could have prepared me for it. But in all honesty, if ‘d known then what I know now, it wouldn’t have changed my mind. Reading about episiotomies didn’t change my mind. Thinking about sleepless nights, lactating boobs, baby sick and poop didn’t change my mind. So why would knowing what pregnancy could be like change my mind either? The truth is, no amount of reading, or watching One Born Every Minute or talking to people that have been through it before can every prepare you for the journey you’re about to, or will one day embark on. Nothing would have stopped me, and neither will it stop you. But hopefully this little bit of honesty will make you feel like you’re not alone. In your darkest, most frightening moments, you will be able to know you can get through this. If I can, so can you. You’re not being irrational, you don’t have to think ‘well people have it worse than me’, this is your reality and you’re being an absolute bad ass doing this. You’re making a human! How crazy is that?! We’ve been doing this since of the dawn of time and you, you little warrior, can do it too.