Monday 30 September 2013

23 weeks - pre-natal depression, hiccups and kicks!


I am officially 23 weeks today. It seems to be a significant milestone because literally, just over the weekend, I’m feeling many things for the first time. It also means I only have 3 weeks until I reach 3rd trimester!

On my last post, I mentioned I was struggling with trying to figure out a few other things going on at the moment. When I walked to the train station on Friday afternoon and started crying for no reason, it became pretty clear what was going on. For the past 5 or 6 weeks now, I’ve been feeling grumpy, anxious, frustrated and disconnected. There’s been times when I’ve been in social situations where part of me has just wanted to run away. Then, there’s other times I get down in the dumps thinking I’m doing all of this alone and people don’t care about me.
Part of me put all of this down to pregnancy hormones, tiredness and stress. But, when I started crying on Friday, I knew it was much more. My psychology training kicked in and I realised I was very close to a line that crossed over into pre-natal depression. I could recognise some of the signs that weren’t pregnancy-related and knew those were the signs most women put down to pregnancy and do nothing about. I don’t want to be one of those women.  

I got home on Friday night and told my husband I needed to talk to him. I burst into tears as soon as I started talking. I told him everything I had been carrying around that I hadn’t spoken to him about because I couldn’t verbalise it. It’s such a complex mix of issues ranging from not feeling comfortable in our house to not wanting to do anymore on Sticky’s room because I’m not ready to progress it for fear she’ll never see it. I felt much better as soon as I spoke to him and he agreed it was time to seek some help. At times, I’ve felt so miserable so I made an appointment to see my counsellor.

I felt a bit better on Saturday having finally ditched my emotional load. On the way to the chiropractor, I suddenly felt this strange movement on the left hand side of my belly. It was like 6 quick jabs and I realised it must be hiccups. It was such a strange sensation and it took me a while to figure it out. But Sticky’s timing couldn’t have been better. I definitely needed a pick me up and this was it.

We left the chiro and did our hospital tour of the maternity ward. It was good to see where everything was as it helped us decide which room to go for. I can go for the deluxe room where you pay $165 a night for a double bed, stocked mini bar and meals for the partner, or the standard room. When I saw the deluxe rooms were right next to the birthing suites, I decided the standard room would be fine. I didn’t need to be woken up in the middle of the night by the blood curdling screams of a woman in labour!

We then left the hospital and picked up my breast feeding chair. I was so excited to finally have a chair I can get in and out of. And after all of that running around, I couldn’t wait to sit down and put my feet up. Sticky seemed to like it too because everytime I sat down and reclined a bit, she would have a wriggle about. Given she’s been active for a week now, I’ve started to get to know her routine better and everyday the movement has been getting progressively stronger. I still haven’t had any full on kicks, but they’re definitely getting stronger so I know it’s on the way.

The other big event of the weekend was out of nowhere, we have a name we both like. My husband finally explained to me that he wanted an elegant name and thought my names were too short to be elegant. Understanding this, I suddenly remembered the one name on my list that would match his criteria. He didn’t mind it so we decided to start calling Sticky that to test it out. It felt funny calling her something other than Sticky and we had to be careful because my Mother stayed with us for the weekend so we couldn’t use the name in front of her. But, after using it for the weekend I think we both quite like it so it seems we may have agreed. Nothing has been set in stone as yet but things are looking promising. With each passing milestone it’s becoming clearer and a hell of a lot scarier that we’ll have a baby in 15 weeks time!  




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