So, this is it. I’m doing this pregnancy thing. No turning back now. Like many women out there, I’m doing it alone. After seeing the pregnancy line grow darker over the days, it still took me a while to believe that I was actually pregnant and even longer to accept that in less than nine months I would (hopefully) be welcoming my new baby into the world. I’d expected to feel super emotional. This baby had been so wanted and so tried for, for such a long time now and it took a lot of emotional and financial resources just to get that positive test result. I was surprised I didn’t cry or whoop for joy when the result was clear. Instead I was a sort of slightly nervous, unbelieving, calm.
I’m one of the few “lucky ones”. One of those new age women who got to choose to do this alone from the start. Surely that must mean this pregnancy is a good thing, right? Well yes, and no. I’m pleased, so pleased I’m pregnant. Anything else would be a bit weird wouldn’t it?!? I mean that was my ultimate goal. I have the odd quiet moment – usually just after my son has fallen asleep beside me but just before I drift off – where I stroke my stomach and think about the little bean growing inside me and smile; a soft, quiet smile all to myself. Since day one this pregnancy has been emotionally a hell of a lot easier than my last (two). Looking back at my other pregnancies, the first which ended in a miscarriage and the second which ended with my wonderful son, both times I was super anxious. I had feared I would be the same this time, but it just hasn’t been there, not in the same way. The anxiety was heightened second time round due to the previous miscarriage, but it was more than that. Looking back, I realise just how much of an impact my broken relationship and my ex’s behaviour was having on me and how a lot of this came out as anxiety throughout the pregnancy. It’s not that I wasn’t anvious this time round. I was. If there was a scale I’d say I was around a six (with some worse days and some better), with the ‘average’ pregnant woman being around a two or a three. The last times I was probably more like an eight though.
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A couple of weeks into the first trimester, I woke in the early hours of the morning – the time of day that since the first positive test I had been waking with hard, sore boobs and a huge wave of nausea. That morning there was nothing. So, in one of those annoyingly ironic pregnancy paranoia moments, where despite desperately wanting to feel less horrendous, the second it happened, I feared it meant everything was over. Cue a starring role from the crazy pregnant woman, frantically googling and booking a private scan online at 4.38am just so I could check what was going on in there. Apparently it had all been in my imagination. The scan showed the heartbeat. In fact, the scan only showed the heartbeat. My baby was literally just one little heartbeat and almost nothing else. For a second I had a mini moment, squeezing my son’s hand as he sat next to me on the chair looking at that little blob, less than half a centimeter wide, beating strong, fast and regular. It didn’t last long, my son was oblivious to what was going on around him, only interested in the huge gobstopper I’d given him just before we walked through the door and his jumping around soon distracted me from the screen.
The scan moment coincided with a horrid virus I had which knocked me out for a good two weeks. Every waking moment I felt like death warmed up, and there were many waking moments as my nausea, crazy dreams, excessive need to pee, and horrendous cough meant I was lucky if I was getting more than an hours sleep a night. It was impossible to work out what was making me feel worse – the virus or the pregnancy. At times I completely doubted my ability to do this and kept thinking I literally cannot do this. My son stepped up though and was a total star; he rubbed my back, gave me water, cuddles and we snuggled on the sofa and watched films. I also came off my antidepressants in the middle of this illness. At times I wasn’t too sure what was what – when I had a bad day was it because my body was aching all over, I hadn’t had any sleep and all food was making me nauseous, or was it because I was an emotional ball of pregnancy hormones, or was it withdrawal of coming off the antidepressants and learning how to deal with all my emotions in full again, and not just any emotions – pregnancy hormone affected ones. It was impossible to know. I wonder if, strangely, it was actually an inspired decision to come off them when so much else was happening physically and emotionally to my body that the lack of happy pills was able to *almost* get lost in amongst everything else.
So yes, it’s a good thing I’m pregnant and emotionally it’s much easier than the last two. Physically though that’s a different matter. I’m about five years older than the last pregnancy, although with the stress and trauma I’ve experienced in that time it feels more like ten. I think the symptoms are stronger this time, but perhaps that’s just due to having less time to rest and my body and soul being somewhat wearier. From very early on though I’ve had incredible back pain which, paired with the peeing and dreams, has meant I wake 3-5 times a night and struggle to roll over or get out of bed. Luckily the back pain isn’t anywhere near as bad in the day.
While this pregnancy has emotionally been easier to deal with, the idea of becoming a mother (albeit not for the first time), is almost harder. I hadn’t expected that becoming pregnant was the answer to all my problems, but it had been the answer to a big problem I had (wanting to expand my family despite lacking a partner). The battle it took to become pregnant meant the process almost took on a life of it’s own and became the one thing I needed to make things right again. It was the one thing I was attempting week in, week out, with a determination and desire that took some level of motivation. The reality though is that before I started trying to get pregnant I had many problems that needed sorting; getting pregnant hasn’t removed them all. How could it.
While I’m happy, very happy (did I say I’m happy), that I’m pregnant, there have been times when I’ve felt overwhelmed with grief for what this means I’m saying goodbye to: the man, the partnership and the dream blended family (I gave up on a typical nuclear family long ago). I’m fast approaching forty. This pregnancy was hard to get and is already taking its toll on me physically, I don’t think I could do this again no matter how much I might want to. Until that second line appeared, I kept holding out for the possibility that my knight in shining armour would come and rescue me (or, more likely, I’d rescue him), now this bean is growing day by day, I’m pretty sure that dream is shattered. For starters I’d probably vomit on him and pass out if I did meet him anytime soon, and – let’s be honest – once the baby is here unless my mister perfect happens to be a health visitor I’m highly unlikely to be hanging out in the same places as him. So when my mum says things like, “you’ve finally got the family you’ve already dreamed of” I really can’t help but feel like saying, WTF? This pregnancy is good news – absolutely. But let’s get this straight this is still very much option B in my list of life choices. Or maybe more like C or D. That doesn’t mean this child isn’t wanted just as much, if not more, than a child in even the most perfect or perfect relationships I could imagine. It just means that I didn’t suddenly stop wanting the other things too. Only now I really have to get on and grieve for them and accept that they’ve gone and this is my life now. Maybe that sounds stupid to you, the reader, having followed my journey for almost a year you’re probably thinking surely this is the optimal outcome. Only it’s not. And, to be fair, that’s not as ridiculous as it might sound. I’ve heard lots of pregnant women in couples have moments of ‘oh shit what have I done’ when they become pregnant for a second time. Solo mums are just as entitled to feel this way too. Chances are it will be even harder for us, but sometimes it feels like we can’t raise our fears of this for fear that we will be seen as stupid for having decided to have a second in the first place. We aren’t stupid. Just human and we want things – like children – which although they will bring us plenty of joy, will also bring us challenges.
As I write this I’m eight weeks pregnant. It’s not quite been the perfect pregnancy I was hoping for. The one where I monitor the baby’s growth and development on a daily basis, or even weekly, I still daren’t do that so early on, but it’s already been so much less emotionally stressful than the last two pregnancies and for that I’m so pleased, and – dare I say it – proud of myself. Just the other day my mum pointed out that whilst I might be finding it taking its toll on me physically considering I’ve come off my meds and remained pretty much stable (not strong and stable though, most definitely not strong and stable) that I’m actually kind of kicking ass and I think she may have a point (well those weren’t her words exactly but I feel that gets the point across better). So for now, I’m just trying to get through the first trimester and this hideous nausea. I’m working really hard on ignoring the gnawing fear that eats away at me and makes me do stupid things like take another test ‘just to check’, only to be greeted with a fainter line.* If I make it to 12 weeks, and actually my scan isn’t booked till more like 13 weeks, so if I make it to 13 weeks and everything is fine, then I think I might really start to believe this thing is happening. I’ve already bought a book to explain everything to my son. After the 12 week scan I’ll be telling him he’s going to be a big brother and we can both start to get super excited about this whole thing. With my son, I didn’t find the second or third trimesters anywhere near as hard physically, so I’m really hoping that will be the same this time round and soon I’ll be able to start really enjoying this pregnancy.
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I scraped my way through the first nine and a half weeks, reguaraly feeling like I wouldn’t manage this whole pregnancy alone, whether it was the exhaustion or the nausea and dizziness which were taking their toll on me. Then, to my surprise around nine and a half weeks, things seemed to ease up a little. I still wasn’t feeling great, but I was feeling remarkably better. For a day or so I was actually vaguely grateful. I decided that I would book in that extra scan after all, not even so much to reassure my paranoid self, but actually so that I could enjoy the moment, see the little bean growing and enjoy her/ his heartbeat. That was Saturday morning. By the evening when, at 11pm I wasn’t exhausted and the dizziness and sickness had been significantly better all day, I started to panic how I would even make it through to Monday (when I’d booked the scan for), so great was my fear that actually everything had stopped. Frozen in time like something from the ice age. Since becoming pregnant, I’d been ready to collapse by 6pm, and had literally collapsed every night by 9pm. How was it I wasn’t straining under the weight of my eyelids. Had the pregnancy hormones evaporated into thin air? I had about 42 hours to wait and find out. A strange, but true coincidence of this pregnancy has been that the baby has the same due date as my first. Not only did that kind of throw me when I realised, it also meant that as I was approaching the anniversary of losing my first I was also at exactly the same stage of pregnancy as I had been when I lost my first. Of course, logically, there’s no connection between the two, but it did play on my mind and I wanted more than anything just to get past that date.
The wait for the scan was utter agony. I stupidly arrived early, they however were running late – extending the agony even further. The woman before me had a suspected ectopic pregnancy. As I walked into the room for my scan it was all I could do to not cry, so fearful was I that the baby was no more. As they started scanning I immediately said, just tell me as soon as you see a heartbeat. “There’s a heartbeat they said immediately, a very healthy, strong heartbeat.” I burst into tears. I figured this was probably quite a normal reaction but their reactions to my tears told me otherwise. The baby was even measuring ahead of schedule at 10 weeks but I was too relieved to actually pay much attention to what was going on. After a few minutes I realised that if I actually looked I could see my baby there, s/he was no longer just a mammoth heartbeat, but a littler person with arms and legs and a nose. I only had a few seconds of being able to watch before it was all over, but at least I had those few seconds. I didn’t look at the picture until I was on the train home I was in such a rush to get back for nursery pick up. It was beautiful.
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Thankfully by eleven weeks I could honestly say the nausea and dizziness had gotten significantly less. I was feeling more human, although crying at EVERYTHING. My parenting skills seemed to take a nosedive though, I can only assume the exhaustion had a role to play in that. My patience went out of the window and I took everything my son did personally, everytime he didn’t do as he was told all I could see was “single mum failure, child runs riot” in headlines and it bought out some pretty shitty parenting tactics.
Finally I made it to my 12 week scan. As I glanced around the room at the happy couples, I can’t deny that tears didn’t prick my eyes. The thoughts of what could have been and should have been, are never far away when you’re a divorced single mum-cum solo mum by choice. But I comforted myself with the thought that at least one of those merry couples would be divorced within the year (sorry folks).** It was the nicest scan I’ve ever had (and I think we can establish that I’ve had a few). The sonographer kept saying how beautiful the baby was. She planned to use the photos for some presentation. Fingers like a pianist she told me. He really was a beauty. Bouncing up and down on my bladder. I was happy, not tearful watching the baby bounce. And I was happy afterwards at the thought that I could finally start to believe this was really happening.
**I’m not actually just a mean spirited person, it’s just a fact that many relationships break up within the first year of a baby. Those little people may be cute but they don’t half show the cracks in a relationship.
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