Couldn't decide when / how / whether to announce this, but thought it best to get it out of the way asap.
I'm just back from the hospital, where we discovered we've lost the baby. Everything was fine until this morning, but it went downhill from there.
Please don't worry about me though, I am a bouncer-backer.
Cheers
Clare
xxx
Thursday 29 March 2007
Monday 26 March 2007
Off My Chest (hur hur)
I haven't let myself think or talk about illness, as I didn't want to tempt fate. But I'm feeling pretty confident now that it's not an issue.
Today I found something I've been trying to find for weeks. I remembered writing it, but couldn't remember what I'd done with it. Turns out it was on an old computer.
Well, anyway. I'm not sure why I feel the need to publish it, but I do. I suppose I feel like I'm drawing a line under it. Like I'm allowed to let it out now, because it's in the past.
This is the only thing I managed to write during my last pregnancy. Words made me feel ill, and I had to type it without looking at the screen, but on this particular day I felt the need to express some of what I was going through. I remember feeling dissatisfied with it afterwards. It didn't really do a good enough job of conveying how I felt. I managed to read it through once, and then I had to go lie down, throw up, all that stuff.
We'd been turned away from the hospital because they said I wasn't ill enough. But some time after this it was finally decided I WAS ill enough, and they put me on a drip. I remember this particular day, that awful yearning for someone to come and rescue me.
Oh, and another thing: My body responds very strongly to my mental state, always has done. And nausea is a symptom of anxiety, for me. And some medical professions have said that hyperemesis is a "hysterical" illness, although that view is largely discredited now. But that didn't stop me from wondering constantly whether I was somehow responsible for the predicament I was in.
Anyway, here it is:
"I,
am sick.
Of this.
Of being sick.
I take a short walk to the park.
Supposed to make me feel better.
Not a walk, though.
A shuffle.
I can’t walk any more.
I have lost the use of my legs. Practically.
When I get there, I puke on the grass.
Eyes sunken and downward-looking.
I look like a junkie.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
I am ANGRY.
WHY?
Why do I have to go through this?
Is there any way out?
No. No way out.
But anger doesn’t help.
It ought.
A positive emotion after all.
But no, it makes me feel more sick.
Tightens my bones even more.
Tightens my throat.
That lump, in my throat, that is always there, whispering to me:
“Vomit, vomit, vomit.”
72 hours.
S e v e n t y - t w o h o u r s
of retching every hour or two.
Day and night.
No respite.
Yes, where’s the respite?
Where’s the break?
Why don’t you just GIVE IT A REST!
You?
Who?
The baby then.
But I can’t blame the baby.
Even in the depth of darkness, not that.
I can blame my body though.
Oh yes, I can blame my body.
I can blame evolution.
I can blame society, for convincing me that I want to do such an insane thing in the first place.
The propagation of the species.
For why?
For what?
Oh, it makes me sick.
I want to be put on a drip.
I want to be rescued.
I want an angel to drop down from heaven, swoop me up, take me to hospital and put me on a drip.
I’m trying to eat a dry soft roll.
That’s all.
No big deal.
But hell, it hurts to swallow.
It hurts, and it makes me retch.
Even if I manage to eat the whole thing - which will probably take me half an hour -
I’ll only throw it back up again anyway.
Why?
What’s the point?
The baby isn’t getting any nourishment.
Neither am I.
Nobody wins here.
A horrible, even malicious, reminder that there is no God.
We were not designed.
If there was a God, it would be laughing at me right now.
But no.
Not even a deity to blame.
Nobody to blame, except random chance.
The wrong molecules, doing the wrong things.
Sheer bad luck.
I am FUCKING UNLUCKY.
I have been lucky in other areas of my life.
So what.
I was LUCKY to conceive so quickly.
Ha.
Some luck.
My head is spinning.
I lie down.
I feel ill.
I want to puke.
I sit back up again.
That lump, in my throat again.
The world spins.
Nausea.
Oh, nausea.
There are no words to describe.
No words except one.
No need for any other words, for that one word says it all.
Nausea.
And maybe it’s my own stupid fault.
Not even real.
If I didn’t look so blackly upon each passing hour.
If I didn’t tense my stomach into knots with each passing pang.
If I woke up in the morning and said “Hey, it’s all going to be good today.”
If I went to bed at night and said “Tonight I’m going to sleep.”
Maybe it is only happening because I am revelling in it.
But I am not enjoying it. Oh no, I can promise that much.
Food.
I must eat food.
But each mouthful brings waves welling up and burning down my throat.
My lips have blisters from the acid of bile.
Swallowing is painful - the pH of puke that has passed there before.
I mustn’t do this to myself.
Spring rain.
Blue skies.
Flowers swaying in the breeze.
Babies…. cute…. gurgling happily…
Nah, that doesn’t work.
All right, water then.
A babbling brook chuckling to itself in the background.
Birdsong.
Love and hugs.
No, physical touch makes me feel sick.
My body and I are retreating.
Music then.
Oh, sometimes I suppose.
But so hard to get it right.
Oh, fuck it.
Nothing is good.
Everything is bad.
I CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS.
I AM NOT A MARTYR.
How does anyone ever cope?
How will I cope?
Because I have no choice.
If these were the symptoms of some fatal illness, I would want to die right now.
I wouldn’t want to live my life out like this.
God, I hope I never get cancer.
Radiotherapy does this to you too.
No brave stoic heroism in the face of insurmountable odds from this girl.
Oh no.
I am no hero.
I give in.
I don’t want to play any more.
I want to go home now.
Please?"
Today I found something I've been trying to find for weeks. I remembered writing it, but couldn't remember what I'd done with it. Turns out it was on an old computer.
Well, anyway. I'm not sure why I feel the need to publish it, but I do. I suppose I feel like I'm drawing a line under it. Like I'm allowed to let it out now, because it's in the past.
This is the only thing I managed to write during my last pregnancy. Words made me feel ill, and I had to type it without looking at the screen, but on this particular day I felt the need to express some of what I was going through. I remember feeling dissatisfied with it afterwards. It didn't really do a good enough job of conveying how I felt. I managed to read it through once, and then I had to go lie down, throw up, all that stuff.
We'd been turned away from the hospital because they said I wasn't ill enough. But some time after this it was finally decided I WAS ill enough, and they put me on a drip. I remember this particular day, that awful yearning for someone to come and rescue me.
Oh, and another thing: My body responds very strongly to my mental state, always has done. And nausea is a symptom of anxiety, for me. And some medical professions have said that hyperemesis is a "hysterical" illness, although that view is largely discredited now. But that didn't stop me from wondering constantly whether I was somehow responsible for the predicament I was in.
Anyway, here it is:
"I,
am sick.
Of this.
Of being sick.
I take a short walk to the park.
Supposed to make me feel better.
Not a walk, though.
A shuffle.
I can’t walk any more.
I have lost the use of my legs. Practically.
When I get there, I puke on the grass.
Eyes sunken and downward-looking.
I look like a junkie.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
I am ANGRY.
WHY?
Why do I have to go through this?
Is there any way out?
No. No way out.
But anger doesn’t help.
It ought.
A positive emotion after all.
But no, it makes me feel more sick.
Tightens my bones even more.
Tightens my throat.
That lump, in my throat, that is always there, whispering to me:
“Vomit, vomit, vomit.”
72 hours.
S e v e n t y - t w o h o u r s
of retching every hour or two.
Day and night.
No respite.
Yes, where’s the respite?
Where’s the break?
Why don’t you just GIVE IT A REST!
You?
Who?
The baby then.
But I can’t blame the baby.
Even in the depth of darkness, not that.
I can blame my body though.
Oh yes, I can blame my body.
I can blame evolution.
I can blame society, for convincing me that I want to do such an insane thing in the first place.
The propagation of the species.
For why?
For what?
Oh, it makes me sick.
I want to be put on a drip.
I want to be rescued.
I want an angel to drop down from heaven, swoop me up, take me to hospital and put me on a drip.
I’m trying to eat a dry soft roll.
That’s all.
No big deal.
But hell, it hurts to swallow.
It hurts, and it makes me retch.
Even if I manage to eat the whole thing - which will probably take me half an hour -
I’ll only throw it back up again anyway.
Why?
What’s the point?
The baby isn’t getting any nourishment.
Neither am I.
Nobody wins here.
A horrible, even malicious, reminder that there is no God.
We were not designed.
If there was a God, it would be laughing at me right now.
But no.
Not even a deity to blame.
Nobody to blame, except random chance.
The wrong molecules, doing the wrong things.
Sheer bad luck.
I am FUCKING UNLUCKY.
I have been lucky in other areas of my life.
So what.
I was LUCKY to conceive so quickly.
Ha.
Some luck.
My head is spinning.
I lie down.
I feel ill.
I want to puke.
I sit back up again.
That lump, in my throat again.
The world spins.
Nausea.
Oh, nausea.
There are no words to describe.
No words except one.
No need for any other words, for that one word says it all.
Nausea.
And maybe it’s my own stupid fault.
Not even real.
If I didn’t look so blackly upon each passing hour.
If I didn’t tense my stomach into knots with each passing pang.
If I woke up in the morning and said “Hey, it’s all going to be good today.”
If I went to bed at night and said “Tonight I’m going to sleep.”
Maybe it is only happening because I am revelling in it.
But I am not enjoying it. Oh no, I can promise that much.
Food.
I must eat food.
But each mouthful brings waves welling up and burning down my throat.
My lips have blisters from the acid of bile.
Swallowing is painful - the pH of puke that has passed there before.
I mustn’t do this to myself.
Spring rain.
Blue skies.
Flowers swaying in the breeze.
Babies…. cute…. gurgling happily…
Nah, that doesn’t work.
All right, water then.
A babbling brook chuckling to itself in the background.
Birdsong.
Love and hugs.
No, physical touch makes me feel sick.
My body and I are retreating.
Music then.
Oh, sometimes I suppose.
But so hard to get it right.
Oh, fuck it.
Nothing is good.
Everything is bad.
I CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS.
I AM NOT A MARTYR.
How does anyone ever cope?
How will I cope?
Because I have no choice.
If these were the symptoms of some fatal illness, I would want to die right now.
I wouldn’t want to live my life out like this.
God, I hope I never get cancer.
Radiotherapy does this to you too.
No brave stoic heroism in the face of insurmountable odds from this girl.
Oh no.
I am no hero.
I give in.
I don’t want to play any more.
I want to go home now.
Please?"
Sunday 25 March 2007
Big Tummy Calling
Hello!
I know some of you worry about me, bless your little hearts, so I've come to let you know how I am. And I'm fine.
I was off sick for a while, but I'm going back to work tomorrow and am miraculously well. So well I feel slightly guilty about it. And my tummy is ENORMOUS, which means I get to astound people by turning sideways and going, "Look! I'm only ten weeks pregnant and I'm showing already!" and then everybody congratulates me on having such a massive belly, and there is much talk of twins.
I don't think it is twins, by the way. Twins generally make people ill, and given my propensity for sickness... well, I can't believe I'd be feeling this well at ten weeks if there were two of them in there.
I am terribly proud of My Big Tum though. When I got broody, it's always the bump I coveted. I imagined myself stroking it - which I do, all the time. It's a very comforting thing, a bump. So if I tell you a secret, you must keep it to yourself. The thing is... I suspect it's not exactly a pregnancy-related thing. I mean I definitely am pregnant, but...
Clue number one:
When I saw the doctor a few weeks ago, I was already showing. But she had a good old prod about and said she couldn't feel my womb yet. Meaning that it was still in its normal pre-pregnancy position, tucked away out of sight and nice and small (after all, even now the foetus is only two centimetres long). And although I'm hardly a healthcare professional, I've had a good old poke and I definitely can't feel anything except a load of wobbly fat. And when I lie on my back, it redistributes itself and disappears.
Clue number two:
Ever since I had my first child, my stomach has been like an already-inflated balloon, or a T-shirt borrowed by a two-bra-sizes-bigger friend. It remembers what shape it was when I was pregnant, and will return to that shape at the slightest provocation. So that for the past four and a half years, whenever I've put weight on it's made me look pregnant. And despite having been a bit ill, I've been eating like a pig ever since I found out I was pregnant.
OK, so I'm eating for two, and just as with the last time, I'm permanently hungry (except last time I couldn't eat for weeks on end) (TORTURE). But I don't think developing foetuses actually need their mothers to eat two cakes and several pieces of chocolate every single day... if I ate that much before I was pregnant, I would definitely look very pregnant indeed.
But I don't care! I'm pregnant, I'm allowed to be fat. And I love having a bump, and want to have the Bump Benefit for as many months as possible, as I doubt I'll ever be pregnant again. Although come to think of it... all I have to do is eat lots of cake for the rest of my life and I'll have a permanent bump! Hurrah!
So anyway, yes. Last time I got to experience true starvation. I don't know whether I was technically actually really starving (there is an official medical definition for it), but I certainly wasn't far off. I discovered what it feels like to be Very Hungry Indeed, to have eaten nothing at all for two weeks, but be unable to eat.
Before I had a child, I was a fussy eater. A slow eater. A pick-at-your-food eater. An unable-to-eat-if-even-slightly-anxious eater. Not any more. Since I had Felix I've become a voracious and enthusiastic eater. Since I discovered true hunger, I've made the most of all food opportunities. And funnily enough, I'm currently reading The Life of Hunger by Amelie Nothomb, which has made me think even more about the subject.
Haha, this was a wonderfully female-colleagues-gossiping-around-the-kettley sort of a post. This blog is going to be a bit girly, isn't it? Maybe I shouldn't have let it be pink after all.
So anyway, pregnancy makes me hungry. It makes me have-to-eat-now-or-I'll-faint-or-throw-up hungry. Constantly. Hmmm, I'll just make myself a ham and spinach sandwich...
I know some of you worry about me, bless your little hearts, so I've come to let you know how I am. And I'm fine.
I was off sick for a while, but I'm going back to work tomorrow and am miraculously well. So well I feel slightly guilty about it. And my tummy is ENORMOUS, which means I get to astound people by turning sideways and going, "Look! I'm only ten weeks pregnant and I'm showing already!" and then everybody congratulates me on having such a massive belly, and there is much talk of twins.
I don't think it is twins, by the way. Twins generally make people ill, and given my propensity for sickness... well, I can't believe I'd be feeling this well at ten weeks if there were two of them in there.
I am terribly proud of My Big Tum though. When I got broody, it's always the bump I coveted. I imagined myself stroking it - which I do, all the time. It's a very comforting thing, a bump. So if I tell you a secret, you must keep it to yourself. The thing is... I suspect it's not exactly a pregnancy-related thing. I mean I definitely am pregnant, but...
Clue number one:
When I saw the doctor a few weeks ago, I was already showing. But she had a good old prod about and said she couldn't feel my womb yet. Meaning that it was still in its normal pre-pregnancy position, tucked away out of sight and nice and small (after all, even now the foetus is only two centimetres long). And although I'm hardly a healthcare professional, I've had a good old poke and I definitely can't feel anything except a load of wobbly fat. And when I lie on my back, it redistributes itself and disappears.
Clue number two:
Ever since I had my first child, my stomach has been like an already-inflated balloon, or a T-shirt borrowed by a two-bra-sizes-bigger friend. It remembers what shape it was when I was pregnant, and will return to that shape at the slightest provocation. So that for the past four and a half years, whenever I've put weight on it's made me look pregnant. And despite having been a bit ill, I've been eating like a pig ever since I found out I was pregnant.
OK, so I'm eating for two, and just as with the last time, I'm permanently hungry (except last time I couldn't eat for weeks on end) (TORTURE). But I don't think developing foetuses actually need their mothers to eat two cakes and several pieces of chocolate every single day... if I ate that much before I was pregnant, I would definitely look very pregnant indeed.
But I don't care! I'm pregnant, I'm allowed to be fat. And I love having a bump, and want to have the Bump Benefit for as many months as possible, as I doubt I'll ever be pregnant again. Although come to think of it... all I have to do is eat lots of cake for the rest of my life and I'll have a permanent bump! Hurrah!
So anyway, yes. Last time I got to experience true starvation. I don't know whether I was technically actually really starving (there is an official medical definition for it), but I certainly wasn't far off. I discovered what it feels like to be Very Hungry Indeed, to have eaten nothing at all for two weeks, but be unable to eat.
Before I had a child, I was a fussy eater. A slow eater. A pick-at-your-food eater. An unable-to-eat-if-even-slightly-anxious eater. Not any more. Since I had Felix I've become a voracious and enthusiastic eater. Since I discovered true hunger, I've made the most of all food opportunities. And funnily enough, I'm currently reading The Life of Hunger by Amelie Nothomb, which has made me think even more about the subject.
Haha, this was a wonderfully female-colleagues-gossiping-around-the-kettley sort of a post. This blog is going to be a bit girly, isn't it? Maybe I shouldn't have let it be pink after all.
So anyway, pregnancy makes me hungry. It makes me have-to-eat-now-or-I'll-faint-or-throw-up hungry. Constantly. Hmmm, I'll just make myself a ham and spinach sandwich...
Wednesday 14 March 2007
Quick Update
I'm off sick at the moment, because I'm ill enough to find writing computer software pretty impossible.
BUT I'm not as ill as I was last time, not by a long chalk. So please don't worry about me. I'm very optimistic that this phase will be over soon, and I'll be fit as a fiddle again. Certainly not planning on needing any drips.
So there.
BUT I'm not as ill as I was last time, not by a long chalk. So please don't worry about me. I'm very optimistic that this phase will be over soon, and I'll be fit as a fiddle again. Certainly not planning on needing any drips.
So there.
Monday 5 March 2007
A Quickie
So far, so very good indeed.
Today marks the beginning of Week Seven, and that means I came through Week Six without incident.
Tired a lot, occasionally nauseous, but really nothing to complain about - pretty much a model pregnancy. And God, but I am Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes, like you wouldn't believe. I'm even getting up at 6am every day to do yoga and meditation.
I had to leave this place because I was revelling in the drama of it all in a very unhealthy fashion, and that's why I'm still not hanging around.
But I'm fine. I really am. So much so that I'm alternating between guilt that I'm having a better time of it than all the other pregnant ladies I know, and panic that I must be about to have a miscarriage through lack of sick-making HCG. But those, too, are STUPID THOUGHTS and not to be encouraged.
Right. Time to get back to doing Very Little Indeed. Ah, the life of leisure. I'm making the most of it while it lasts.
Today marks the beginning of Week Seven, and that means I came through Week Six without incident.
Tired a lot, occasionally nauseous, but really nothing to complain about - pretty much a model pregnancy. And God, but I am Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes, like you wouldn't believe. I'm even getting up at 6am every day to do yoga and meditation.
I had to leave this place because I was revelling in the drama of it all in a very unhealthy fashion, and that's why I'm still not hanging around.
But I'm fine. I really am. So much so that I'm alternating between guilt that I'm having a better time of it than all the other pregnant ladies I know, and panic that I must be about to have a miscarriage through lack of sick-making HCG. But those, too, are STUPID THOUGHTS and not to be encouraged.
Right. Time to get back to doing Very Little Indeed. Ah, the life of leisure. I'm making the most of it while it lasts.
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