NC for this. Sorry it’s long!
I am 7w5d pregnant and really struggling. In the past I have suffered from severe anxiety and agoraphobia to the point I couldn’t leave the house. I had pretty much dealt with this, I still like to have a plan for the day and don’t like big crowds but otherwise it’s fine. I no longer need to spend a whole day psyching myself up to go to the corner shop 100m away.
But, I also have severe emetophobia (phobia of vomiting) and while I’m not actually being sick, the nausea I’m experiencing is bringing my agoraphobia back full force. I’ve not left the house in weeks, I’ve barely got out of bed. I do know this isn’t good, and am planning to deal with it with the techniques I used to improve my agoraphobia previously. But I cannot do this in the first trimester while the nausea is this bad, at the moment it is just about survival. The same thing happened when pregnant with my daughter, and at 12 or so weeks, I improved, and was able to pretty quickly get myself back - I was back at work by 13 weeks for the rest of the pregnancy for example.
My booking appointment with the midwife is tomorrow morning. And I just can’t do it, I just can’t. From last time I seem to remember this was just form filling, and I’ve done all that as they sent me through a link to a site where I could log in and fill it all in, and they asked that this was done prior to the appointment. In the questions around mental health I answered honestly and did say that I would like support.
What are my options? Do they do these appointments over the phone? Do they even need to do this appointment if I’ve filled everything in online? I know I’ll get responses telling me to just go, but I really would if I could. I am utterly miserable being stuck inside, if I could change it I would. I know I need help and have every intention of telling the midwife that, but right now I’m stuck and I don’t know what to do? I’m my area we have a central midwife phone number which you call to book yourself appointments, if I call them will they help? I’ve not been able to get a GP appointment.