Pregnant
I took the pregnancy test because I had a dental appointment for a filling and suddenly thought, ‘What if I’m pregnant and they give me a drug to numb my gums and it harms the baby?’
I peed on the test stick and a horizontal line appeared. I felt the familiar sinking disappointment. I’d taken a pregnancy test before and had a negative result. But this time I kept watching and hoping and started to see a second vertical line appear, forming a cross. A positive result. The second line was fainter so I thought I might be imagining it. I carried the test straight into BFG’s study and showed it to him. ‘What does it say?’ ‘It’s a cross, you’re pregnant’. I lit up.
A few hours later and the next person I told was the dentist. This felt momentous to me, to say ‘I’m pregnant’ aloud. The dentist was unmoved, having met me only once before, and he simply reassured me that this would have no bearing on the procedure. I felt a bit silly for mentioning it, especially as I had on one level expected some huge congratulations and fanfare because my inner world had completely transformed in one morning and it was bizarre that the outer world didn’t reflect this in any way. The dentist left momentarily, whilst I was losing feeling in my face, and his female assistant asked, ‘Is it your first?’ I cheered at her interest and nodded enthusiastically. ’People are starting much later now, aren’t they?’ I wondered how old she thought I was, so I quickly clarified, ‘I’m 32’. She nodded sagely.
It was another week before we shared the news with our families over Christmas and they were markedly more enthusiastic. Delighted, in fact. In those first weeks, as the news started to percolate through my system, I hummed happily to myself and felt full of magic.
Then the sickness started. As every sufferer learns for themselves, ‘morning sickness’ is grossly misnamed. It can be an all-day sickness. I experienced unending nausea from morning until night, but it was particularly severe after mid-afternoon and lasted all evening. It was most similar to motion sickness and felt like I was severely sea sick and trapped below deck, unable to find the horizon. It was debilitating. I couldn’t read or write or do anything at all. I clung to my bed as if it was a life-raft, miserable and self-pitying. This lasted for months. BFG did all the cooking and I regularly threw up the evening meal, sometimes just minutes after slowly swallowing it. When I left the house, I carried sick bags and chewing gum.
My body had been invaded. What was this creature that was making me feel so dreadful? In my darkest moment, I thought about how BFG was more prone to illness than me and wondered whether he had impregnated me with sickly genes that I was now incubating. The reality was more prosaic: pregnancy is commonly this awful. I fled to my midwife for sympathy and help but it was not forthcoming and no cure was offered. ‘I feel sick all day and throw up most days’. ‘Yep, you’re pregnant’. She was completely matter-of-fact. I just had to hope the sickness would end after the first trimester.
In the meantime, I felt imprisoned by my body, victim of a hostile takeover. Sometimes I panicked. I envisaged myself tied to train tracks, helplessly waiting for the train to run me over. This was how I imagined birth - the coming ordeal at the end of the excruciating line. Sylvia Plath also conjured up a train image in her poem Metaphors. She wrote that she had ‘boarded the train there’s no getting off’. She chose a better analogy than me, which is unsurprising because she is a great poet, but it’s also worrying that I conceived a bleaker scenario than Plath. She killed herself only years later.
Whilst in the depths of my morning-and-all-day sickness, I sat in the waiting room of my doctor’s surgery clutching a sick bag. Another lady, heavily pregnant, came out of her appointment and joined her partner in the waiting room. She looked an advert for pregnancy; radiant and blooming, with immaculate make-up and stylish maternity wear. Then I heard her say to her partner, ‘They said I’ve got blood on my lungs so they’ll need to suck it out. It’s a pregnancy thing apparently’. I was horrified. Why did she look so happy? It sounded utterly terrifying. This was the first of many ‘pregnancy things’ that I was to learn about.
Every time I blow my nose some blood comes out. That’s a pregnancy thing. Apparently the pregnant body carries over a third more blood, so those capillaries are full to bursting. I wake up in the night with cramp in my legs. Yep, that’s a pregnancy thing too. After a few months I could feel my stomach muscles stretching. It was quite painful and scary. I knew to prepare for stretch marks as the skin stretched but hadn’t considered how my muscles would be stretched too. I read about how the stomach muscles can move apart during pregnancy, so much so that some women need abdominal surgery afterwards. It’s called diastasis recti. Normally the muscles recover and move back together after birth. I googled ‘How can I keep my bump small?’ to try to minimise the damage, but again, no help was available. I’ve boarded the train there is no getting off. Then I met a pregnant woman who was wearing a giant bandage around her waist. She told me, ‘I went to see a physio and they said that my hip muscles are moving apart as the baby grows so I need to wear this bandage and regularly clench my bum cheeks to try and hold myself together’. Blimey. There is no shortage of ailments to worry about. Pregnancy is hazardous.
Mercifully, after eight weeks of perpetual nausea, my sickness subsided around week 14. I’ve joined the ranks of pregnant women measuring life in weeks, not months. I gradually got my energy back and pregnancy has been far more manageable, and even enjoyable, since then. Now I’m much bigger, which makes bending to tie my shoe laces uncomfortable, but otherwise I feel like myself again. I can also feel the baby moving inside me regularly, wriggling around, and this is completely enchanting. Rather than feeling invaded, I’m now marvelling at sharing my body with another person. I’m never alone. Their little flicks and kicks make me smile to myself. Whatever I’m doing, I’m simultaneously aware of a rich new life growing inside me. I’m now 38 weeks pregnant, in awe of my body and I’m glad that I boarded the train.