Riding the see-saw

The euphoria of yesterday’s scan has been replaced with back pain, tiredness and indigestion. It’s sad really that pregnancy can bring you such highs and lows but I guess that’s the see-saw adventure of it all!

I am really struggling today. I’ve had a dull ache in my belly all day and a lot of cramps and pulls. It’s been really uncomfortable and at times, I feel like my belly weighs a million tonnes. I’ve found myself walking around holding it – like I’m trying to stop it from falling out! But, I find the extra pressure helps.

I’ve been having back spasms all day too which hasn’t helped. Any hope I had of my back getting better as I got bigger is quickly fading. In fact, I have pretty much exhausted all avenues of hope.

I have reached the stage where the obstetrician’s suggestion of finishing work early is now seeming like an attractive option. Bugger sitting at home doing nothing. I’ll survive that, but I’m not sure how much more I’ll survive being at work.

I spoke to a friend about it last night who told me another friend of hers had to finish work early and was able to claim the sick leave through income protection. I can do the same thing so I’ve started to look into it. It seems simple enough, but there’s s few hoops you have to go through to do it. I expected this – it’s not easy to be paid to sit at home being sick. The insurance company wants to make sure you’re really sick!

I need to sit down and do the maths because I’ve been concerned about what finishing up work early would mean for us financially. Especially when I think of all the money we have to spend with a new car, couch, pram etc etc. The income protection would pay me at 75% of my wage so it wouldn’t be too big a deal loosing that little bit of extra money.

I’ll need to speak to the obstetrician about it at my next appointment because he’ll need to sign off on all the paper work. That’s not for another 3 weeks so I certainly won’t be finishing anytime soon. The earliest I could finish is around the end of October when I would be around 25 weeks. I was originally planning on finishing at 33 weeks so it’s only 8 weeks short. But, I’m starting to think those 8 weeks could make all the difference to me surviving this pregnancy. 

See-saw down today. Here’s hoping it springs back up tomorrow!  

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