I think it’s fair to say that pregnancy doesn’t agree with me. Every weekly update so far has been full of doom & gloom and this one will be no exception. So as I’m giving away a BabyWatch doppler on the blog at the moment, I sneakily asked for the entrants to leave me their number one pregnancy tip by way of a comment. The general consensus seems to be that I should rest as much as possible and try to enjoy it. Unfortunately I seem capable of neither.
The biggest problem this week has been sleeping. I’m not uncomfortable, I just struggle to relax and let my mind shut down. I’m only averaging 2-3 hours per night, and the little sleep I do manage is plagued by nightmares about people breaking into the house, Dexter being abducted, or Craig dying. These nightmares sometimes spill into the day resulting in mini day terrors. This means I can be sat on the bus and panicking that someone is wearing a IED, or something equally ridiculous. Clearly my inability to switch off is causing my mind to race. Couple this with my anxiety about completely mundane things and it seems all this is manifesting itself in my dreams - whether I’m awake or not.
Think I’m overreacting? Well if you weren’t before, you will do now.
On Saturday, Craig went to a 50th birthday party and I stayed home. At some ungodly hour in the morning, as I lay tossing and turning in bed in a state of exhaustion, Alistair McGowan entered my house. He crept up the stairs and I saw him plain-as-day stood on the top step decked in a white turtleneck. He didn’t do anything. He just stood there staring at me and Dexter before running back down the stairs, and out the front door. I was utterly terrified and had to call Craig and beg him to leave the party early. This is how ridiculous my life has become.
None of this is aided by my thankfully soon-to-be ex neighbour indulging in a bit of over-dramatics in the bedroom with her new boyfriend. I can’t work out if she’s blissfully ignorant that our terraced house means her bed is actually less than 3 foot away from ours, or she likes the thought of being heard. I’ve never met her other half but I already know so much about him thanks to their x-rated bedside ‘chats’. I’ve never been brave enough to mention this before but it seems insomnia breeds recklessness. I do hope by some freak coincidence she stumbles across this blog and saves me the embarrassment of having to confront her myself, if not for our sake, for the sake of whomever next moves in.
All of this has left me feeling decidedly flat (which is laughable really as you couldn’t get anymore convex than me right now). I barely have the energy to parent Dexter, and I’m very jittery. Tiredness sees me doing very strange things like crying when I have a cuddle with Dexter, or heading for my bed mid conversation with Craig. I actually burst into tears when watching Joey Essex on I’m a Celebrity last night as I felt sorry for his parents! Nothing I do seems to make any sense.
The only person who can give me the reassurance I need right now is my Craig, but for him it’s like living with someone who should be committed to an asylum. I’m not depressed as such, just constantly alternating between pawing over him, or throwing my toys out of the pram.
This pregnancy just doesn’t seem to have registered with him as much as the last one. I had to practically drag him into the bedroom to listen to the baby’s heartbeat on our new doppler, and we won’t spontaneously talk about him / her like we did when I was this far gone with Dexter. The only time he’ll ask me about the baby is when he catches sight of me grimacing when I sit up awkwardly and accidentally treat baby to an abdominal crunch.
It’s not his fault - I think I’m just feeling very guilty about this pregnancy and projecting this onto him. I feel like I’m just getting on with daily life and parenting Dexter rather than talking about / making plan for this baby. With Dexter, at 19 weeks pregnant, I had the nursery set-up and was simply waiting on the gender scan before adding all the finishing touches. With this pregnancy I’ve spent all day being sick, crying and having the occasional bout of IBS - it only serves to increase my anxiety that the gender won’t be the only thing I discover at next week’s anomaly scan.
So that’s it. I’m off to Google some relaxation tips. I clearly need to!
I was the same with my daughter - I saw things, smelled things, became utterly paranoid and wanted to savagely beat anyone who dared to smoke within 500 feet of me or who dared to cook fish.
I am still paranoid something awful will happen - is this the price we pay for being with someone so kind and wonderful? I worry something will happen every time he leaves the house. I worry someone will get in and hurt us all - even though he is a martial arts expert, and my eldest daughter is a 2nd dan black belt and I have inherited my mum’s killer “don’t you dare!” stare.
I think the worry gets worse as life goes on.
Oh no! You mean this might not be pregnancy-related? Oh dear…
Nope. I fear it’s the “growing-up” part of being an adult.
That feeling you get when you’ve been an adult for quite a while, then you start separating yourself from people in their 20′s and for me even people in their 30′s, thinking of them as kids…I still think of the 90′s as being 10 years ago, the early 90′s at that. Then other worries start to creep in, such as will she be able to care for me when I’m old and mad if she has her own young family? I had My youngest late in life you see, the eldest two I had when I was very young, so they will be quite old when I am.
So…Being an adult changes as you get older. You grow up twice, maybe even 3 times.
I am having a very similar experience to you dream wise, I’m 15 weeks into my fourth pregnancy and have been feeling pretty rotten, I have always had sleep problems and shall we say erratic dreams but the ones I’ve been having lately have made me question my sanity ! I wake up re-running them in my head, trying to make sense of them and also each dream has the same little back dog in them who follows me everywhere.
I’m sure it must be a combination or pregnancy hormones and the general worries that come with expanding my family.
I hope it passes for us both soon x