The Maternal Guilt Starts Here

Well actually it started three months ago, when the wee one was born.  And there is never a moment when you are truly safe.  There's always something waiting round the corner that could be going wrong.  A case in point being the one illustrated below.

On Friday I was happily bleating down the phone to a friend about how being a single mother is "fine, just fine" (except for the fact that I am about to slip into a financial abyss from which I will quite possibly never return).  But finances aside, i.e. if I had all the money in the world, or even just a bit more money, like I'd won the Euromillions or something, then it's all just fine and dandy.  Then, inevitably, something happens almost immediately that shatters that illusion.

On Friday that something was me suddenly acquiring some sort of food poisoning or norovirus type ailment.  I won't go into detail about what it entailed but suffice to say I was in no fit state to be looking after a wee one.  Luckily, by the time it struck (at 9pm) Piglet was asleep (something of a miracle.  He normally goes to sleep around midnight).  Consequently, the last few days have been spent doing the following:
1.) Feeling rough
2.) Not eating
3.) Tentatively sipping water
4.) Watching Loose Women whilst lying on the sofa in a sleeping bag
5.) Lying in bed with Piglet, apologising that I have no energy to do anything else.

There were several points where I actually had to take Piglet off the breast to go and vomit/other end, leading to screaming fits which definitely lasted longer than most child psychologists would recommend.

Speaking of which, I am still confused about the best way to get Piglet to go to sleep as half the Internets I have read say that babies should be in a routine by now and that rocking or feeding a baby to sleep is going to mean he will turn into David Walliams in Little Britain demanding "bitty" from his ageing mother at inappropriate times, and the other half say that imposing a routine is going to mean the child turns into a Romanian orphan circa 1990, silently banging his head against the cot he still sleeps in at the age of twelve, unable to speak, so basically whatever I do, Piglet is doomed.

He's actually lying next to me now, shouting at me that why oh why when the parents were being given out did he have the misfortune to end up with me and not Brad and Angelina.  At least I think that's what he saying.  It actually sounds more like "O-OOOH EH OOH, GOOO," but I'm pretty sure that's baby language for the above.

Motherhood.  The guilt just never ends.

Horrible Itchy Disease

Woman in the last days of pregnancy is not a pretty sight.

I, for example, have just thrown up the sole thing I have eaten today-a fried egg sandwich-and after three hours sleep it's all I can do to move off the sofa in order to search the cupboards for stray crisps.  That is, if I can allow myself to eat anything at all, as I have also convinced myself that I have a terrible liver condition which is slowly poisoning the baby.

It all started last night.  I had been itchy, on and off, for quite a while, but last night's itching was on a whole new level.  My mother had kindly given up her bed and allowed me to sleep in her double while she suffered in the single bed which for reasons of storage has two mattresses and lives in "my" teenage bedroom, but it was all to no avail.  I tossed and turned, scratching away and peering at the internet on my phone in the darkness.  Unfortunately, Dr Internet's diagnosis was that I had something called obstetric cholestasis, and that my baby was going to die.  There was even an accompanying article from the Daily Mail about someone this had Really Happened To, to prove the point.  It took until 3.30am for me to finally get to sleep, only to awake at 6.30, just in time for me to confess my fears to Mother before she went to work.  Mother has now taken to addressing frequent stern grandmotherly rebukes to the baby within, urging him that it is "time to come out now and meet your grandmother."  I'm starting to think that's why he's staying in.  It was all I could do to point, sobbing, to the relevant section in What to Expect When You're Expecting and wail, "Mum, I have this.  And the baby is GOING TO DIE."

And what if the baby did die?  What would I do?  How would the news be shared on Facebook?  How would I go back to work and face all the puzzled teenagers wondering what I was doing there?  How would I put myself through it all again?  And some people actually have to do that.  It's too hideous to contemplate.

Anyway, I have spoken to the midwife this morning and they are going to do some tests today to establish if I do have This Horrible Itchy Disease.  Hopefully the results will be quick.  And at least the baby won't be premature.  Which is pretty much all I have to comfort myself with at this point, given that EVERYONE in my antenatal class (even the ones who weren't due until mid-August) has managed to miraculously pop out their babies already, leaving me as the bottom of the class loser who's a bit slow and holding everyone else up.  All I have to feel smug about is that hopefully, if my baby is born alive as planned, he will be so advanced that he'll probably walk straight out of the womb and off to university, and I'll never have to worry about getting the hang of breastfeeding, weaning or toilet training as he'll pretty much already be a fully formed adult.

I wish the Internet had never been invented.

Bloated Whale

Urgh.  Lounging on the sofa like a bloated whale.  And every now and again my belly goes all hard and pointy, and I am told that this may be a Braxton Hicks contraction.  I had thought it was just the baby moving around.  Still, hopefully this means that by the time I finally go into labour my body will know what it's doing.

Anyway, just because I am a glutton for punishment, today I went to Topshop (my haul: a pair of leggings and a T-shirt) and American Apparel, where I almost wept as I yet again realised I will probably never again be slim enough to wear a crop top, and had to settle for something called a "tent dress."

And on top of all this, I feel sick.  In fact, last night I woke up at 3am and actually was sick.  I have become disgusting.  This better be worth it.

Revelation: Having a Hangover is Basically Just Being Really, Really Tired

So apparently I should be relaxing and not overdoing it now that I am pregnant.

I also shouldn't be crossing my legs, as one person usefully reminded me, as I may "crush the baby."

I now feel infinitely guilty about all the times I have crossed my legs.

Also I must look massive, as at a friend's wedding on Friday, someone looked at me and asked "is there a midwife in the building?"  I should hope I don't need one at this stage, or we're in for a very long stay in the neonatal unit at best.

Anyway, at the aforementioned wedding I was delighted that I managed to stay up until 1am two nights in a row, AND dance to a great many tunes, feeling almost normal.  Until, that is, I went to bed and had to get up again within half an hour to be violently sick.

This is it, I thought.  I've got food poisoning.  I've got listeria.  OH MY GOD THE BABY IS GOING TO DIE!  Fortunately I was only sick the once, which I quickly decided ruled out food poisoning.  So the moral of the story is, a) don't stay up late and b) don't act as if you are not six months pregnant: i.e. by jumping up and down repeatedly and punching the air to the strains of Set You Free by N-Trance (what a tune.  It just doesn't age, that one).  If there's one thing I've learned from being pregnant, it's that sometimes you don't need to drink to develop the signs of a hangover, which I'm pretty sure I had the next day, although mercifully minus The Fear that comes upon realisation that you probably did something-or a great many things-that were bad the previous night.

Anyway, speaking of tiredness, it's now almost 9.15pm so definitely past my bedtime.

The Anti-Cravings

I have not written on here for ages.

This is because a) I am too scared in case everything goes wrong and
b) I have been very lazy (blame the pregnancy tiredness).

Anyway, I am now 11 weeks and still running to the loo every five minutes to check that Blastocyst (who has by now hopefully graduated to the status of "Foetus") has not fallen out because I have killed it with my negative thinking, or simply because the whole situation is just too good to be actually true.

On the plus side, I am feeling very queasy and tired, and have gone off basically all food (these are obviously pluses, as presumably they mean Foetus is still in there and making its presence known).  So much for pregnancy cravings, I have had zero cravings, and about twenty million aversions including all of the following:
Coffee (at least this saves me worrying about killing Foetus with caffeine)
Tea (TEA.  I ask you to take a deep breath and really think about that one for a minute, just to let the gravity of the situation sink in)
Pretty much anything fried, especially eggs
Chips (CHIPS) or any kind of fried potato
Curry (WHY?????  This just goes from bad to worse)
Anything from the canteen at work
Patak's Lime Pickle (O THE CRUELTY!)

So basically all I can now eat is pasta, which I have to scoff at regular intervals as not eating also makes me feel sick.  I even threw up a couple of innocent After Eight mints this morning.

On the plus side, for the first time in my entire life I am happy to be staying in on New Year's Eve, feeling completely smug about it, and going to bed at 9pm.  May this be the start of many happy teetotal nights in to come.