Pregnant? Congratulations! How do you feel? Scared? Excited? Shocked? pleased? or maybe something totally different. For me it I was amazed, scared and couldn’t think straight for a week! I was finally pregnant after all the times of trying it had happened, now for the easy bit - or so I thought.

It may come as a bit of a shock to you that people tend to bend the truth when you are pregnant. They only tell you the good things and not all the bad, like the worrying aches and pains and strange happenings. So here I am letting you in on some of my experiences from my pregnancy….

It took my husband and I months and months to get pregnant and my stress levels were through the roof. It was only after I had finally snapped after finding out that my sister in law was pregnant after only 2 attempts. That my frustrations came out and I ended up throwing a frying pan at my husband had a huge screaming row and cried for England at work. After I had that out of my system I broke down in my doctor’s office telling her it was impossible to get pregnant. She asked me if I had been under stress to which I replied I had been but felt much better after my big row!
She suggested that I should start to use an ovulation kit to determine when my most fertile days were. To be honest with you the thought of that made me feel like a total failure. I thought that getting pregnant was something that was so easy it would only take a few months. I was relatively young, nearly thirty and in good health, so why wasn’t it happening.

Well, there was a pretty simple reason: I was not ovulating when I thought I was! I had in fact got a long cycle that meant my dates were out by a week. We had a practice run sorting out the dates and then the next month I was pregnant!

So, the test is positive what now? Well, from my experience you could well expect bad stomach cramps; they are not unlike the pains you would associate with your period except that it never comes. After I found out my test was positive I went through six weeks of the most painful stomach cramps I have so far experienced. Be assured this was not every night but very frequently. People I spoke to told me they never had it but don’t worry it was perfectly normal. But that didn’t stop me from thinking I was on the brink of having a miscarriage every time I had these pains.

Eventually I found in a book I had recently bought, two sentences about the possibility of stomach cramps in the early stages of pregnancy, caused by the uterus stretching and if it became to painful try some paracetamol - IF it became to painful? That was an under statement to say the least. By this time I had discovered that drinking peppermint tea slowly in small sips also provided me with some relief. With that worrying hurdle out of the way what could happen next?

Breasts! Oh yes! Remember that feeling you get around the time of your period of how tender they felt? Well multiply that by 100 times and you may have some idea of how painful and sore they feel in the early stages of pregnancy!

I was five weeks pregnant when I just could not stand the pain of my usual bras any longer and in my lunch hour at work I ran down to Mothercare grabbing an assistant and saying. ” I’m five weeks pregnant, do you have any bras that I can wear with out wanting to rip them off in screaming agony!” to which the rather bemused sales assistant took my into a little room, measured me and bought in delightful selection of bras that looked like they could be used for hurling boulders out of.

After trying on about half a dozen fancy lacy ones I settled on a plain and boring cotton one but it was comfy - oh so comfy! And if anymore proof were needed I have worn the same 2 throughout my whole pregnancy and I have never worn anything so comfortable!

Paranoia seems to rear its head on a regular basis throughout the pregnancy. I felt everybody was talking about me behind my back, what a bad thing it was but they were too scared to say it to my face. Why did I feel like this? No idea! It was of course totally untrue and everybody was really happy - don’t you just love hormones.

Lets talk morning sickness, or as I discovered all day nausea for about two months. It suddenly just started at about eight weeks when I was walking around Marks and Spencer’s food hall when I smelt the rotisserie chicken and all of a sudden leaving quickly seemed a very good idea! Ginger biscuits and small sips of water got me through that little hurdle.

At three months I experienced the worst pain in my back down my legs I have ever felt. It was sciatica but the pain was so bad I couldn’t sit down for a few days!

Oh yes that pregnancy glow you are supposed to get along with the boundless energy - well I’m still waiting for mine and my baby is five years old now!

When I reached the six month stage I once again experienced the most awful pain in my stomach and ended taking my self up to the hospital convinced I was in premature labour. I wasn’t of course it was finally diagnosed as my ligaments stretching but no body ever tells you to expect so many aches and pains.
Yet another delight you could expect, nappy rash - ouch! No wonder babies scream so much! At seven months this awful rash appeared all around the top of my thighs. No matter how much cream I used it rubbed when I walked and boy it was so painful I nearly cried!

Lets not forget the joy of heartburn, when you are desperate for sleep you lie back and what happens? That awful feeling of burning gets worse and worse, so you struggle out of bed drink a glass of milk to calm it. Then find that once you are up again you need yet another trip to the loo before heading back to bed, where you know as soon as you lie down it starts all over again!!

Don’t get me wrong being pregnant was an amazing time: the kicks you feel, the hands and feet stretching your tummy so you can grab them, seeing the ultrasound and yes like a lot of people my baby really did wave at me when she was being scanned! Listening to the heart beat and knowing that very soon this little miracle would soon be with you.

Throughout my pregnancy, and even now I am a mum the one thing that I have relied on more than anything else has been my mother’s intuition or gut feeling. I have followed these feelings on a number of occasions and so far I have been guided correctly: deep down you can usually tell how you are feeling. If that nagging voice in the pit of your stomach doesn’t go away, then follow it Do this and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

Alix Mosley

Copyright 2004

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