Baby Weight

I was a member of Slimming World before I found out I was pregnant. My first reaction was that I was now eating for two and, of course, I wouldn’t want donuts followed by sticky toffee pudding but the baby would! So, there’d be no point going to my group every week. But then I thought, if I find losing weight hard enough that I have to go to Slimming World anyway, why add another three, four or five stone on to what I’ve got to lose?

I had a choice – do I speak to my local takeaway about what I, sorry, baby, wants with its donner kebab or do I speak to my Slimming World consultant about what my options were. My consultant was great; really helpful and supportive. She explained that I’d need to get the OK from my midwife to carry on at Slimming World and get a signature from her at every appointment. That was a pain because I saw a different midwife every week, I should have recorded the story on a dictaphone because I was sick of explaining by my third appointment.

My consultant gave me ideas on eating through the sickness so that the baby was still getting what it needed while I was just getting tooth erosion from the acid. Admittedly there were times when I would say “baby wants KFC” but they were much less frequent than if I’d been left to my own devices. If I’d not had the extra help, I’d have shares in Galaxy and a Burger King Black Card by now.

In total, I gained 9lbs throughout my pregnancy (I attended Slimming World from week 1 to week 41). I went back to class two weeks after giving birth and had lost 27lbs in the three weeks since I last attended. I even stuck to Slimming World as best as I could in hospital. Why Heat magazine didn’t come knocking at my door I will never know. Bollocks to Katie Price being back to her pre-pregnancy weight after a month, I was 18lbs lighter than mine after two weeks. I’d never have done that without going to the weekly classes, I’d still be here 17 weeks post partum and five stone heavier. And not once during pregnancy did I feel deprived. I had a bit of a craving for salt and vinegar Chipsticks at first and I probably ate a sharing (ha, who shares food?) bag of them a day but I made sure that at mealtimes I stuck to plan. When I felt sick I’d make vegetable soups that I could warm up after a ten minute vomit break. And when I started feeling better, but was tired, there were loads of speedy meal ideas I could make.

Eating healthily during pregnancy obviously isn’t for everyone for one reason or another – you might be too tired to cook, too ill, have too many cravings or even just think “sod it, it’s the only time I can eat whatever I want” and that’s fine. I just wanted to show anyone reading that if you do still want to be on ‘a diet’ while pregnant then you can be – my baby was a very healthy 10lbs 1oz when he was born so he didn’t suffer at all!

Pregnancy

I really didn’t enjoy being pregnant. I just never felt 100% well and I didn’t ever feel like myself. I certainly don’t miss my bump. Someone with my lack of spacial awareness is pretty dangerous with a baby bump – no door frame or wall was safe. I didn’t even have any interesting cravings. The only thing pregnancy was good for was getting other people to do everything for you. When you’re pregnant you can just huff and puff about how “everything’s just so hard” and someone will do it for you. Being pregnant also got me a seat at a sweltering, jam-packed Barcelona train station, for which I’ll forever be grateful.

As well as the ailments (see previous post), there’s the tiredness. No one can describe this tiredness to you and you can’t be prepared for it. It’s completely different to sleep deprivation once the baby’s here. It’s fatigue. Exhaustion. You feel like you hit a wall and just cannot go on any more. Mine was nothing to do with lack of sleep as I generally slept OK throughout; I just turned into a zombie at 4pm every day (no good for anyone working 10:45am – 7pm five days a week). I kept bringing my maternity leave date forward as this exhaustion got to me more and more.

Then there’s the bladder weakness. “Wear a pantyliner for that,” my Mum said. Nope, I needed full on Always Super sanitary towels. I couldn’t laugh, sneeze or go for more than hour without wetting myself. Thankfully it did just disappear post-partum without me ever finding out where my pelvic floor was – I just squeezed and hoped for the best.

Then there’s the appointments. My diary was full. I started maternity leave on the 28th November and lost fifteen hours of work in November because of appointments. I had consultant-led care and extra growth scans, as well as a glucose tolerance test. Then there were Parentcraft classes (so lovely to attend that first one – entitled Labour – and sob my heart out as soon as I walked through my front door because “I couldn’t do it”. Thanks Whiston Hospital, nothing like throwing you in at the deep end). I had the usual midwife appointments, monthly consultant appointments plus saw the consultant after each of my four scans.

Ah, scans. Wonderful, magical experiences where you get to see your baby for the first time. They are truly amazing. You can see the baby moving, hear its heartbeat, find out the sex (we didn’t) and get your little photo to take home. What isn’t so magical is that you have to attend these scans with a full bladder so the baby is pushed up and the sonographer can get a better view. I’ve already spoken about the bladder weakness. I haven’t mentioned that sonographers always run late. At my 20 week scan they were running so late I genuinely thought I was going to die of bladder explosion. In the end I had to go to the toilet or I would have come a cropper. I asked a sonographer’s permission first; “Can you just let a bit out?” she asked. A bit??? This lady had clearly never been pregnant because there is no such level of bladder control as ‘letting a bit out’. So I just weed and, funnily enough, they could still see the baby.

What was honestly the best scan experience of all was the HD scan we opted to have privately. We went to Take A Peek in St Helens and I could not recommend them enough. We wanted to keep the baby’s sex a surprise and our sonographer, Nikki, was great. She didn’t even look herself and called the baby ‘Shim’ throughout. If you’re unfamiliar with HD scans the premise is you can pay for a scan any time you like (I think I was 31 weeks) and you get a half hour appointment, family are welcome, and the baby is shown on a screen in HD quality so you can watch them messing about, find out the sex if you wish, cry a lot about how amazing it is then take home photos or a DVD afterwards. Nikki was amazing, talking us through what the baby was up to, showing us him from different angles, encouraging him to move and giving us estimated weights and measurements. And it was enjoyable because a full bladder was not required! We chose to get all our photos on a USB stick and here you can see just how true to life the HD scan turned out to be:

As my due date approached, I got more and more irritable. Mostly with other people. If I ever receive another text that just says “Any sign? X” I think I will throw my mobile phone in the canal. I genuinely considered Google imaging a show and sending it with the message “well, this just came out of my lady bits”, they wouldn’t be so interested in any signs then, would they? I got more tired, less able to move and more hormonal. He was 15 days overdue so the phrase “fed up” doesn’t even come close. I felt like I was pregnant for 42 years not 42 weeks and so, no, I do not miss pregnancy one bit.

Pregnancy Ailments

To be honest, I probably had a relatively problem-free pregnancy but, when your best friend is the inside of the toilet bowl, it doesn’t feel like it. I didn’t end up in hospital on a drip but I was pretty ill for about half my pregnancy.

Heartburn 

I had heartburn pretty bad from day one; in fact it was my first symptom. One thing I discovered about heartburn is it’s not fussy. Those Gaviscon adverts where someone eats an eight course meal or a vindaloo and gets a bit of burn? That’s what I expected. But no, I couldn’t drink a glass of water without needing a fire blanket. Milk gave me heartburn. Sodding Gaviscon gave me heartburn. I got that used to heartburn that it didn’t even burn by the end, I developed an asbestos ribcage.

Morning Sickness

  Ha, morning sickness, good one. More like morning-noon-and-night sickness. I was sick any time of day for about twenty weeks. Very often the toilet was too far and my fiancé could be found cleaning vomit out of the kitchen sink. I’d go to work armed with a carrier bag full of ginger biscuits and polo mints and would spend hours hanging out of the window in the ladies trying to get some fresh air. Someone once drove past and shouted “Don’t jump!” I was hanging out that much. And still no one at work knew I was pregnant. I must pull off the pasty green look on a regular basis. My most mortifying sickness experience came when I went to the Indian takeaway to get my fiancé his tea (I didn’t eat anything bar soup and sandwiches for weeks). My early to mid pregnancy weeks were in Summer, so it was warm. The takeaway had an open kitchen just in case I wasn’t warm enough. I began to feel a bit queasy. “Breathe. These onion bhajis won’t be long”, I thought. Turned out they’d gone to Calcutta for these sodding bhajis and my situation became desperate. I spotted a bin outside. But this bin only had a letterbox sized hole in the sides. I had a human sized head. Fuck. Only thing for it. “Excuse me. Do you have a carrier bag?” He looked at me like I had three heads but provided me with the goods. This was my first baby so I wasn’t really clued up on baby safety measures. Off I go throwing up into the bag. Which had anti suffocation holes in it. Ace.

Diarrhoea 

For the first eight weeks I probably suffered with diarrhoea worse than sickness. I regularly had a toilet and bucket combo going on. During those first eight weeks I was a bridesmaid for my friend. In Greece. Now, I know you aren’t meant to take Immodium during pregnancy but I had a plane journey and a two hour transfer to deal with so I had to take something. I decided to take one before each plane journey and the rest of the time I’d just manage. Which didn’t help me on the day of the wedding, after a five course meal and then an evening reception in a bar where I couldn’t find any toilets. I got back to the hotel desperate. And my hotel room that I was sharing  (thankfully with a good friend who’d experienced holiday diarrhoea with me before) was miles away. We probably couldn’t have been further from the hotel entrance and I was about to poo myself in the corridor of this very nice, very white hotel. I did something I don’t do very often at all. I ran. And somehow I made it! Quite possibly an even bigger achievement for me than giving birth is the fact I didn’t poo myself that day!

A Bit Of Background

Hi and welcome to my blog!

First, a bit of background. I’m 31 and live in Merseyside with my partner and our 16 week old son.

We always knew we wanted kids, even though I’m not particularly maternal. To be honest, I probably wanted kids for quite selfish reasons – who else is going to know I’m dead?! We kept making excuses though so the time was never ‘right’ – “We aren’t married. We don’t own our own home. We’re going on holiday.” Etc.

I was on the pill when I started getting horrendous heartburn in bed at night. I’ve never had heartburn before. I Googled it. Google said I was pregnant. I knew I wasn’t. My period was late. Nothing new there. I’d changed from the combined pill to the mini pill about six months before and my periods were now up the wall.

The heartburn continued and I didn’t feel too clever. Not sick, but dizzy occasionally. I wasn’t pregnant though. In fact, I was so not pregnant that I decided to do a pregnancy test to show myself just how un-pregnant I was. I was that un-pregnant I didn’t bother telling my partner I was doing one. I peed on the stick and put it on the cistern and messed about on my phone while I waited for it to brew. I was that unconcerned that I forgot why I was just randomly sat on the loo refreshing Twitter.

Stood up and turned round to flush the toilet and noticed my little test sat there looking like this…

I hadn’t even read the instructions but knew that one of the lines meant the test had worked correctly. Then the other window was one line for negative, two for positive. So I wasn’t pregnant but I’ll just check the instructions. One of the lines meant the test had worked correctly. Got that. Then the other window was no lines for negative, one for positive. Oh. I have one line. But it’s a very strong line and when people are pregnant they only have faint lines, don’t they? Duff test.

And so to Google again – typing in ‘false positive pregnancy test.’ Which Google tells me doesn’t exist. You can have a false negative but never a false positive. I’m fucking pregnant. The shock literally hit me like a brick wall. I cannot have a baby. I am not ready for a baby. I don’t even believe in abortion under those circumstances but I was going to get rid of the baby and not tell my partner. Then I realised I couldn’t do that and live a lie. So I’d tell him. Tell him I was pregnant but couldn’t have a baby. I went downstairs and flung my positive test at him (the cap to protect the wee soaked bit was still on, don’t worry). His face lit up and he went to hug me and all I said was “I’m not having it.” Talk about pissing on someone’s chips!

He convinced me I was in shock and needed to sleep on it. Which I did. And I woke up the next day guilty as fuck. He’d gone to work so I went out and bought another test (partly in case I had the world’s first false positive), weed (still positive) and wrote him a little note “To Daddy” about how sorry Mummy was and how excited to meet Daddy this baby was. All that excitement in his face and I’d just flung a stick of wee at him and told him I was getting rid of his baby. What a bitch.

Thankfully I got over the shock and it was time to get excited about my little bundle of joy.