WTF?
I had no words. Literally not even one bloody syllable.
However, I did have huge, ugly, face-distorting, snot-dripping sobs, and proceeded to soak him, the kitchen floor and anything within three feet of me with them.
The look on my hubby’s face was priceless. Like some weird bugeyed, snot-a-whalling creature had just slithered her way in, pretending to be his wife. (He had no idea what was yet to come!)
Bewildered and fearing for his life, he dared to approach and try to convince me that it would be a good and enjoyable thing to go out for dinner with our friends.
He might as well have been inviting me to dine with Satan himself whilst sat on a pile of upturned drawing pins.
Now obviously, he was not growing body parts, so he couldn’t quite get his head around either my hysterics or the levels of unadulterated exhaustion and irrationality. As far as he was concerned, I had just finished work for the week and we could now look forward to a lovely night with our friends. However, for knackered and pregnant me, it was the end of my sofa-obsessed world. I’d driven to and from a different country to get to work, whilst trying not to puke my guts up on the mountainside or at the border control. Then I’d faced a long day of meetings talking about internal ad campaigns, meeting agendas and newsletters; endured a team meeting where everyone stank of coffee and fags; listened until my brain hurt trying to fathom out what everyone was saying in their lightning speed French – all whilst wanting to crawl under my desk, puke in the plant pot and take a nap on my colleague Jean-Luc’s discarded and very expensive laptop bag. I’d kept up the farcical charade that all was well, I was ‘fine’, on top of the world and my job.
Now the thought of having to continue the pretence and lie to my good friends, to desperately think of a believable excuse as to why I was not drinking my usual Friday night gallon of vin blanc whilst watching everyone else get pissed – when all I wanted to do was put on my elasticated PJ bottoms, curl up under a blanket and stuff my face with anything that would stop this nausea – was all just too much for this pregnant lady to take.
After more sobbing and some demonic grunts from my good self, the pregnancy penny finally dropped and my hubby realised that holy hell, he was actually talking to his wife who was now pregnant, overtired, overemotional and wanting to puke and then sleep for a billion years. With his life hanging in the balance, he got the message, tucked me up on the sofa and went to dinner armed with apologies and excuses for me not being able to make it. The moral of this story? Listen to yourself and do what’s best for you. You ARE allowed.
PREGNANCY CAN BE BLOODY SCARY
All was going well with my pregnancy. I felt like dog turd most of the time, but I’d read on one of the baby websites now bombarding me with emails, that it was a good sign to feel so ill. Then, at around seven weeks, we had the shock of our lives: I noticed I was bleeding. I felt sick and devastated, immediately thinking the worst. We phoned our doctor, who reassured us that this can be normal at this stage, but we wanted to go into hospital just to be on the safe side. The hospital was an hour away down the mountain (I was now beginning to curse the fact we were so far away!) and it became one of the longest drives of our lives. We drove most of the way in silence, not daring to voice our fears that the little person we had been secretly planning and celebrating was being taken away from us. We tried to fill that hour with reassuring words, but the fear in the air of our car was palpable.
Once we got to the hospital and were ushered into our room, the nurse explained she was going to do a scan and see if she could find a heartbeat. I felt sick, panicked and couldn’t dare let my mind wonder: What if she can’t?
They were long and terrifying minutes as she smothered my unpregnant-looking tummy with cold jelly and then proceeded to look for the baby and any sign of a tiny heart beat. She assured us that she was having trouble finding it only because the pregnancy was so early. Then she pressed down harder and bingo, she found it! We were relieved for a millisecond – until she informed us that she was worried that it was very faint and told us that we’d have to come back in a week’s time.
Faint? What the hell did that mean? Did she know something we didn’t and was holding out on us? Was there something wrong and we were going to find out the full extent of how wrong at the next scan? I wanted to scream at her for not giving us the reassurance that everything was OK! I knew that it wasn’t her fault and that she had to be as matter-of-fact as possible with us, but I could have swung at her for being so black and white and unemotional with us.
So, relieved and worried sick all at the same time, we left the hospital and somehow got through the next week, worrying that any little twinge meant something sinister – and worrying even more if I didn’t feel as sick as I thought I should be or had been a few days prior. Thankfully one week and another scan later we got the news we had been longing for: so far, all was OK with our baby and the heartbeat was now normal for the time in its pregnancy. We left the hospital clutching the scan picture of our alien-like but perfectly normal tiny human and cried with relief and happiness all the way back up the mountain. Now, we thought, we could get on with the rest of the pregnancy, knowing the baby was healthy.
However, the night before our twelve-week scan, I started to bleed heavily. This made our previous scare seem like nothing. It was dinnertime when it happened, and in despair and blind panic we called the hospital to see what we should do. ‘Nothing’ was their pragmatic, black and white response. I was advised to stay where I was, to take it easy, and monitor the bleeding – and, if I started to get severe pains, to go straight in. The harsh and heartbreaking reality was that if I was having a miscarriage, then medically there was nothing they could do to stop it. We would have no choice but to let nature run its course. So, we did. I sat there numb, with my feet up on a cushion (thinking this would help keep the baby where it should be), not daring to move, just waiting to see what happened. Since we had our twelve-week scan booked for the following day, I knew I just had to sit tight, keep calm and hope beyond hope that everything was going to be OK.
We arrived the next morning, grim-faced, racked with anxiety and fearing the worst – and got to see why our gynaecologist was held in such God-like esteem. As soon as we told him what had happened the night before, he cut our conversations short and whisked me into the scan room. Before I knew what was happening or had any time to worry further, he had the probe on my tummy and a heartbeat booming out on high volume around the room.
‘C’est bon!’ – ‘It’s fine’
I could have French kissed that French man right there and then in front of my hubby and my unborn child. Happy, relieved, over the moon – none of that comes even close to the delight that I felt. And this wasn’t only to do with the obvious and overwhelming relief that our baby was OK and had survived another scare, but also the way in which he dealt with the whole situation. No messing about, no long lingering wait to find the heartbeat, no doubt-filled seconds of dread. Just bang, boom, everything fine!
Our tiny human was only twelve weeks in creation and was already causing heart-stopping drama and keeping us well and truly on our toes. We were soon to find out this would follow us into later pregnancy and out into the real world. (More of this little beauty later!)
IT’S NOT ‘C’EST BON’ FOR EVERYONE
I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to take a little pause here to pay respect to those mums and dads who don’t get the news they are longing to hear about their tiny humans. Who don’t get to feel the relief the words ‘everything’s normal’ brings. Whose scares are not just scares but are instead warning signs that something is terribly wrong or that their little person is having to leave them. I want to honour all the precious tiny humans who are no longer with us, and show my love and respect to all the mums, dads and families who have suffered.
** Anyone needing support after going through child bereavement please see the list of support services detailed in the back of the book on page 236
TRYING AND FAILING TO KEEP UP THE ‘I’M NOT PREGNANT!’ CHARADE!
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