Then there are people like me.
The people who feel sick all day, but it’s not just a light nausea, it’s a whole body, debilitating sickness. It’s from the minute you wake up, till the minute you sleep – if you can sleep. The one reprieve is that the tiredness is almost as consuming as the sickness and takes you away. I wait for sleep from the minute I wake up, I wait to feel normal – except I can’t enjoy it because I’m not conscious.
I’m not being dramatic, if you’ve never had this then it’s hard to believe or accept.
During the early part of the pregnancy I become useless. I can’t cook, the smells are too much. The fridge is a no go area as it smells of food. Tea, Coffee, Hot coco, fruit juice, fizzy drinks are all out. Cleaning fluids all smell too strong apart from bleach. Food is out – unless it’s a cracker. But I can tell you that crackers come back thick and painful.
Water and ice. The only things that I really want and the one thing that stands between home and hospital. Equally, one turn of the stomach and water comes out the same as anything else
The back of my throat hurts from all the retching and vomiting, the back of my nose burns from the violence of all the water and occasional cracker leaving my body once more and even my stomach hurts. I always rub my stomach, hoping that the tiny heart beat is still there and that all the rejection by body shows life isn’t shown to the life I’m doing this for. I know that there is very little risk to the baby, I’ve been told it often enough but still in a moment of emotional and physical stress I can’t help but wonder. As long as I stay hydrated as I possibly can I will not be shipped off to the hospital and plonked on a drip – which I do not have time for anyway.
I leave the sink shaking, sweating and weak. Sometimes, after being there for so long I cry. I can’t help it.
Each morning I wake up and for a moment I wish it’s gone, I close my eyes and breath and each morning it’s still there.
You might be thinking something like: Try the travel bands! Did, they didn’t work. What about ginger food? Well, I did try – oh, so very hard. Didn’t work. Lemon, try lemon! No thank you. It. Doesn’t. Work. I’d love to BRAT diet my way out of this, but it’s not as easy as all that.
I have tried everything from anti sickness lolli pops to meditation. I like to believe that I’m a strong person, but this, takes me hostage and only lets go when it’s good and ready.
So I take my folic acid, wash it down with a Vit D and sit and breath. I shove some fruit and veg down my throat and hope that it’s in there for long enough that some goodness is extracted, sometimes it is. Most of the time it doesn’t stay for long.
That is what the first and a few weeks into the second trimester mean to me.
If you have suffered this you really have my sympathies, if you don’t you have my jealousies.
