But please don't. Don't touch me. Don't come near me. It hurts to be touched, even a hug and, well, you smell. You fucking stink. Everyone smells. Everything stinks. I know you don't really (well, apart from you) but my sense of smell is so ridiculously overdeveloped that the natural, clean smell of a normal human body makes me want to Lecter my own fucking face off. To say I've had a rubbish first trimester would be an understatement.
My body seems to have read some textbook on pregnancy symptoms and decided to have them all. And then, as if to apologise for being so obvious and clichéd, it's added a few weird ones just for good measure.
I can handle being constantly knackered - knackered to the extent where typing this feels like I'm undertaking Iron Man training. I can handle having Norks of Agony which sometimes hurt so much that I have to sit topless because just wearing clothes is a nightmare. I can deal with scary discharge. I can even deal with everything stinking. What I can't handle is having a freak variant of Hyperemesis.
If you don't know what Hyperemesis is, it is most commonly non-stop vomiting, the inability to keep anything down, especially liquids and the possible need for hospitalisation, resulting in rapid weight loss, etc. Now, I've not got that and I'm so glad I don't. But what I do have is the lesser variety, which is 24-7 nausea. Nausea like mind-blowing seasickness every single bastard second of the day and night. And I have another, weirder and v rare side effect from this: because I have digestive problems anyway, the extra strain of the non-stop nausea has strained and bruised my stomach muscles and I am in crippling pain all the time. It is completely harmless to me and the baby, which is a relief, but there's nothing I can take to help it. I can't take the only anti-nausea drugs that would help cos of other medical probs, I can't be given hardcore painkillers of course, and I can't be given muscle relaxants for obvious reasons. So it's just me and my pain, strolling down the avenue, lalala. Well, not strolling, as I only manage to leave the flat once or possibly twice a week. It's that bad. Imagine someone kicking you in the top of the stomach with steel-capped boots. Imagine being stabbed there with a red-hot blade. Imagine the punch that killed Houdini. Then imagine that level of insane pain never letting up for nearly two months so far. I don't get an escape in my sleep - when I do manage to drop off despite the pain, I dream about zombies eating my guts, about being disembowelled by medieval torturers, about being a sailor on a ship in a terrible storm... you get the gist. On Sunday night, I woke M up with my writhing and moaning in agony. I was convulsing with the pain; the poor man thought I was miscarrying... or possible that an Alien was about to burst from my belly. I cry a lot with the pain. Sometimes I don't even realise until I notice that my face is wet. Sometimes I don't realise until I see M staring at me in impotent anguish. Sometimes he tears up himself looking at me shaking and hissing with the pain. I used to have period pains that were so bad that I ended up hospitalised and on a drip at least once a year, as they caused me to vomit black bile non-stop and convulse like I was fitting despite being fully conscious. At times, the pain in my gut is worse than that. At others, about the same. The nausea feels the same though; as though someone is doing a permanent Heimlich Manoeuvre on me and just licking my lips will trigger a spew. So all, in all, it's quite bad.
The real fucker about this freak bad luck is, however, that the only thing the Docs can suggest to help is eating rich, fairly fatty food, as it gives my digestion something to get stuck into. So, I am basically the only preggo in the world with Hyperemesis who puts weight on! How is that even fucking fair? I'm overweight already - if you're going to feel agonisingly sick every second of the day and be actually sick fairly often, you think that you might drop a few pounds. I'm not being a bit eating disordersy about it, but, as a chubber, it wouldn't have hurt to have lost a bit. Most people lose weight in the first trimester - yet here I am, suffering and slowly turning into Shamu.
Eating rich food helps a bit, but I'm still ravenously hungry all the time yet everything makes me sick. I can't touch a drop of water and can't drink anything until about 3pm. I have to follow a very strict and restrictive diet due to allergies, intolerances and digestive probs, which was limiting enough before I got pregnant, but now that virtually everything makes me feel suicidal at the thought of eating, it's a real nightmare. I currently on a nutritious regime of porridge, Sainsbury's Free From chicken nuggets and Appletiser (not all together, I hasten to add). All I crave is food I can't have. I want crusty french bread and Le Roule cheese. I want a thick, ice-cold chocolate shake. I want a Big Mac (I haven't had one since 1994!). I want minced beef Crispy Pancakes. I want Lucozade. I want the rainbow pudding they used to serve in my primary school. I want After Eight Mints. Above all, I want my Grandma D to cook for me; I want her amazing coconut buns, I want her cottage pie (specifically, I want the one she cooked after I came out of hospital when I was 3, following my tongue-tie operation), I want her to give me massively watered-down sherry in a tiny, fancy glass, I want her to cook a M&S chicken breast in dripping and an individual portion of moist, glistening stuffing just for me, and above all, I want her sherry trifle. God, her sherry trifle! Quite literally the most delicious thing in the history of the world. I can taste it now and I am salivating.
Sadly, my Grandma D died in 1990. She won't be cooking for me any time soon. The memory of her skill and her love will have to do (luckily, her cheekiness, eye for a bargain, outrageous fashion sense, refusal to take any shit and the ability to flirt with anyone and everyone live on in me too). Forgive me for this foray into sentimentality, but I'm very hormonal too!
So, I am suffering. and brilliantly, I don't care! I love this baby so much and every time I'm in really bad pain, I tell myself s/he is doing something really important for her/his development. I don't begrudge the baby one single second of pain. Although my dreams of having three kids are being hastily revised and not just because I am now 38. I don't know if I can cope with going through this again. Both me and M want 2 or 3, but I couldn't deal with this if I had a tot (or two) to look after whilst tolerating it. But there might be a solution - everyone keeps suggesting I'm having twins. Sorry, OMG_TWINZZZ!!!1!1!!!!11111!!!!111 From 10 weeks onwards, I have had a proper bump. You're not supposed to get any kid of noticeable tum until at least 14 weeks. Mine is not just a 'is she a bit fat or pregnant?' bump, it is a full-on, old-lady-grabbing-my-belly, strangers asking me when it's due bump. If it was this size and it was pure fat, it'd be hanging down like a flab apron, not sticking straight out. Even my belly button is getting shallow and I have a vivid bloody stretchmark already, FFS! Add to this the extra-bad nausea and fatigue and you have everyone making jokes about multiples. My Dad breezily told me yesterday that twins run in my Gran's family. Every book points out that twins are more likely the older you get. M's cousin has twins. My Mum got a bump earlier than most, but not this impressive. I am 12 weeks gone this Saturday (6th) and have my scan on Monday 15th November. I dunno if I want it to be twins or not - half of me thinks that after feeling this shit, I deserve a BOGOF instant family, but the rest of me thinks 'waaaaargh!' at the thought of how it'll ruin my body and lady parts (or I'd have to have a C-section, which scares the life out of me and my laparoscopy scar on my stomach has gone keloid, which doesn't bode well in terms of getting a cat flap fitted, does it?!) and how expensive, stressful and exhausting it'd be. We shall have to see.
Anyway, thanks for sticking with this rather rambling and very mememe post. I feel so rough that I'm in a bit of a haze and a bit disconnected from everything else. Am having a rare day of feeling only moderately shit, which is why I've managed to update here. I hope normal service resumes soon. Am also hoping that as my body has been textbook so far, then it'll be textbook about the morning sickness switching off at 12 weeks. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
