House arrest by hormones... Please help...

[Muddychipmunk]

Hi
This is my first time posting so if I 'get it wrong' somehow (not sure how but...) I apologise!

I'm 9 weeks + 2 pregnant and I really wanted this baby. My OH and I had talked about it for over a year and I thought I would be so excited. But I'm not. Everyone and everything seems to be wrong and I'm guessing that when everyone else seems to be getting it wrong, the person who's out of sorts is likely to be me rather than everyone I know...

I have horrible morning (un)sickness; while I do throw up, I spend most of the time feeling so sick. Last time I tried to go out, we went to the sales, and I was practically in tears from the exhaust fumes and perfume smells (I ran out of the perfumed hall of hell known as Boots and was dry heaving by the door. Dignity? I wanted to cry)

I feel really alone. I can't leave the house cos I feel so horrible, and my OH is kinda over this stage already. I'm getting lots of 'pull yourself together' advice which just makes me either angry or beaten depending on my mood. If I could pull myself together, I would. I don't like feeling ill... I missed Christmas with my family for the first time ever cos I wasn't well enough to fly and I don't know anyone who I can talk to where my OH lives. The more I have to apologise for being grumpy and snappy, and for feeling sorry for myself, the more I feel I just want to hide in a corner somewhere.

Please tell me that this is just hormones and I'll feel better soon? That someone understands and doesn't want to give me a big hard slap? Being under house arrest isn't really helping...

I totally understand! My morning sickness was dreadful, in the same way as you - I would have the odd vomit but it was mostly intense nausea that made me want to cry, and/or bury myself under some blankets in a dark, cool room with NO smells at all. I had to catch a train to work every day too, and all it took was strong perfume, chewing gum or food smells, and that was it, my day ruined. My partner and I are raging carnivores but I couldnt bear the smell or sight of meat (or anything spicy) for weeks, so he had to ocook himself while I sat int eh front garden while he made his tea until he had washed up every last dish and neutralised the food smells!
I also understand the teariness. I think it is partly because you are planning getting pregnant for so long, but it is like this lovely dream you have, and when it is actually reality, it can feel different to how you expected... it really is also just hormones and in a few weeks (I know it seems ages but it really isn't) you will feel much better. Meanwhile, explain to your OH how you feel, that you are aware you are not yourself and are sorry it is hard on him, but that being told to pull yourself together makes you feel worse. Your hormones are haywire, you are building a little body inside you, it is a huge task and no wonder it affects us all strangely. Just ask him to bear with you for little while longer. Although my partner was absolutely saint like and very patient with me, I knew it was hard for him too and when I felt The Rage or The Blues rising, I would just go for a nap or take a book into another room until I felt better.
Hope this helps - you will feel better soon!!

hi welcome to MN

sorry you are feling the morning/all day every day sickness

i had quite bad MS during my pregnancy with DD so i know how you must be feeling i got through it by telling myself at the end of each day that i was A) 1 day closer to the end of morning sickness and B) 1 more day closer to holding my much longed for baby i also tried to find foods/drinks that helped the sickly feeling for a while and avoided places that had strong smells associated with them the first weeks seem to last forever but try and remember they WILL be over soon and you can stat to enjoy the pregnancy oh and i would kick your oh in the balls and then tell him to pull himself together next time he omments

Huddychipmunk, if it helps at all, I had awful 'morning' (all-day) sickness for the first trimester - it was utterly miserable. Like you, mine was triggered by perfume, food smells and traffic fumes. I found that a couple of drops of peppermint oil on a hanky helped to keep bad smells at bay (don't get it on your skin, it's not allowed during pg). It only lasted until about week 11 or 12 and I haven't had it again since.

The hormones don't get better, I'm afraid, but they do change. You'll go through all sorts of stages, misery is just one of them! Hope you start to feel better soon doll. You can get through this XX

I had terrible nausea and morning sickness... and my work meant that I was around a lot of truly horrific smells (think dead animals!)... there are lots of lovely photos of me working with twists of olbas oil infused tissues stuck up my noses... I am still sensitive to smells at 29 weeks so have packs and packs of these tissues around just so I can hold one over my nose if necessary.

Don't beat yourself up about feeling bad. I had rose-tinted spectacles about my much, much wanted pregnancy... but I have felt rotten, in all sorts of ways, every single day... and then I feel guilty about all those people who can't get pregnant.... but it doesn't help! I hate how much I have had to slow down too, all sorts of frustrations!

Try and just take very good care of yourself, just do what you can do and try to find ways to get around the worst things and also to treat yourself. Ignore any one else's comments about 'pull yourself together' etc. Each pregnancy even for each woman can be different and they can be truly awful!

Thank you for your comments! It is nice to have people suggesting things rather than just dismissing it briskly... ("Oh! Really? If I try, I can just get on with it? Outta my way - I can conquer the world! Uh oh. Outta my way whilst I spin to the floor...")

MamaLazarou - I would try the peppermint but my toothpatste is mint and it routinely makes me throw up, which makes me want to brush my teeth again, which makes me puke... I have asked my OH to get me some different flavoured toothpaste but he keeps forgetting and gets annoyed when I remind - no, sorry, "nag" him.

Lucy101 - I shall try the olbas oil - it'll help my stuffy nose anyway. Thankyou. Just have to persuade the OH to bring me some in...

Panda - There are times when I would love to kick the OH in the cream crackers...I'm trying to fight the battles that I needs to fight; after a huge row a few days ago about frying onions in the flat, I had to try and persuade him that frying bacon would also have me on my knees heaving. He got upset because I'm stopping him cooking in his flat.
Sharon - if I could sit in the front garden, I so would. Too snowy...

But thank you all for replying. Hearing that other people had this means that I don't feel quite so much of a failure - and the stories counteract the "Lots of women have babies. Stop making such a fuss" arguments that are being said to me by people who are very far away from my vomiting zone, and therefore have no idea how rubbish this is.. I really really want this baby but I don't think I'm going to be very good at pregnancy (even having a shower makes me throw up - the steam! the smell of shower gel!). I keep on worrying about the various aches n pains (Is that back cramps beginning or is it cos I slept on the sofa last night?) and the only possible way of getting through this seems to be staying in the flat on my own. Which is lonely...

I went to see my very lovely pregnant lady doctor and she gave me some anti sickness tablets {that i only sometimes throw up}....I know people can be against any medication whilst pregnant but I trust my doctor {esp as she is pregnant too} and I do feel more like i can cope now. Also sucking boiled fruit sweets seems to help me. Hope you feel batter soon.

sorry better...not batter...!

muddy You must be due in August.

Come over to our shiny new thread. Lots of support on here

here

Lots of us at similar stages and with similar concerns. It can be a bit scary but there will be lots of fun too. x

Poor you. Try listening to "morningwell" on your mp3 player all day..... definately worth a go...

It is easy to say "Lots of women go through it, just deal with it" when you are not in the throes of it... Like many things, people can blank out or "forget" how truly horrible morning sickness can be and act like they never suffered or never felt like sleeping for a week.
It doesn't mean you aren't a "good" preggers person - some women love pregnancy and are lucky enough to sail through without a worry and some women (like me) find it all a bit frustrating and wearing. Don't let people make you feel like a failure for not swanning round, glowing and shrugging off any bad symptoms, its not fair and you have enough to deal with.
Remember - the sickness, tiredness, smell aversions etc all mean your body is working really really hard at making a lovely healthy baby

muddychipmonk You are most definitely not alone. I'm 11+6 and I've been suffering terribly. I had stages where I'd wake in the night just to feel nauseous - funnily enough (ha!) the actual vomiting didn't kick in until around week 9 or so but I'd spend every waking moment feeling "sea sick" - nauseous, off balance, dizzy and disorientated. Some days I'd need to have a good long sit down and rest after brushing my sodding hair!

All I can say is that in the last 10 days it has eased a little, I get 48 hours of vileness followed by 48 hours of "coping". But the entire experience has been awful and I just had no idea that my very much wanted pregnancy would be like this. I've cried buckets wondering if I could actually do/go through with this.

As sharon says though, every time I get another wave of nausea I remind myself of how strong and healthy the baby is doing.

Hello muddychipmonk
I feel your pain and as all these posts prove you are most def not alone. I'm only 6.5 weeks with my second child - I've got a 4 year old daughter already. I'd been starting to feel a bit out of sorts over Christmas and am still reeling from the shock of being pregnant again. My dh and I had both said we didn't want our little one to be an only child, and were more or less trying for another one but if I'm truthful I don't think I a) thought it would happen (don't ask me why?) and b)really wanted it to. You see, even though i absolutely adore my little girl (which by the way makes me cry, when i think about how her life is going to change too), I absolutely detested being pregant the first time. Like you, I suffered extreme nausea triggered by waking up in the morning, perfume and food smells. It did go away between 12 and 14 weeks into the pregnancy, as did the tiredness, but even then I hated the experience of growing a baby. At the risk of sounding utterly unmaternal (which I'm truly not) I hated the feeling of the baby moving inside me, the heartburn and the huge old belly. I also felt like people in work treated me differently too - lots of ladies love all the attention a baby bump brings but I'm afraid I'm just not one of them. And now here I am again, just starting round two The nausea has returned with a vengeance this week and I just know the worst is still to come. I could cry at the drop of a hat and generally feel very depressed at the thought of how our lives are about to change.

Sorry, this has turned into quite a rant - no-one bar my husband knows about this pregnancy yet so it's good to have somewhere to air my thoughts! But I dont' meant to hijack your post. My real reason for writing is because I have discovered a few things that do actually help. The first is FULL FAT COKE! I possibly won't have any teeth left by the time I get to the end of this but I swear it makes me feel a lot better. If you can let it go flat, it's even better but I don't always have the patience for that and even with bubbles it can work a little temporary magic. The second is COFFEE AND BANANAS. I know they say coffee isn't good for you when your pregnant so you could try the decaf stuff, but this works for me too. I'm normally a tea drinker, but can't bear the look, smell or taste of it at the moment. And finally, you can get LUCOZADE GLUCOSE SWEETS - I used these in my first pregnancy and they worked. They are a kind of chalky consistency but i remember them really helping me.

Of course as we know what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another, but I'm guessing you are at that stage where you'll try anything!

Good luck, I hope you feel better soon and that happier times are just around the corner for you X

Muddychipmunk (love the name!) I know exactly how you feel. Up until....well, a few days ago, I felt just as you describe.

Opening the door of the bathroom, smelling my husband's shower gel, walking around shops, being in busy places, sitting in front of my computer screen, the smell of almost anything cooking.....you name it, it made me feel terrible.

My face was screwed up and miserable up until last week, I honestly struggled to get through it.

You will feel better at some point, but I know it's no easy task to try to live a normal life until then.

And the person who told me sickness is just mind over matter and all down to mental strength...well the less said about that the better.

Hey

Thank you all for your posts. Its made me a little weepy to see people being so nice (but then, I cry at Deal or No Deal at the moment...)

acatcalledfidget - I did eventually go to the doctors - I was broken when I had a migraine as well. I was throwing up so much - MS or migraine - I couldn't tell. The doc gave my cyclizine which isn't a magic pill, but takes the nausea down a few notches for 12 hours each day (the rest of the time I sit in a semi meditative state, saying "my child cannot hate me; it doesn't know me yet - this isn't personal" to try and reassure myself... The doctor did miss the point a little - confronted by a muddychipmunk losing it completely - crying and whimpering with the combined MS / migraine effect, he peered at me with concern and said "I do worry that you aren't coping..." - I restrained myself but did want to point out that very few ruddy people would cope with a morning filled with vomiting, blinding pain, and culminating with heaving violently and VERY publicly in the street (with curious staring onlookers) before entering the doctors surgery with notable grace...

Plus30 - rant away! It makes me feel less whiney and selfish if my feeling sorry for myself posts actually help other people get it off their chest. I was really looking forward to the whole pregnancy thing and now, I feel cheated, a little. Lots of my friends seem to be able to breeze through it, while I left the house for the first time since before Christmas (except for the doctors) to go to Tescos tonight, and I was almost having a panic attack at the sight of all that food, looking at me, being around me... I grabbed things which I could bear to touch, put my head down and dragged my OH out of there so fast. I think he quite likes shopping now with me... But I have tried full fat coke - as my special New Years Eve 'tipple'. I was head first down the loo by 1 am. What a way to start the new decade...

Foxyrevenger - I have a friend who I am deliberately avoiding telling about the whole MS thing cos I 'know' that she'lll come out with some kind of thought creates / mental attitude thing and I may just have to kick her if she did...

lia...duff - I will join you. Thank you!

MumNWLondon, sharon137 and skihorse - thank you for your support. I feel so much less alone - if you see what I mean? It is appreciated! Sod em all if people can't understand that its no fun being forced to stay awake and watch World Darts at 2am cos the nausea is so bad!

And a tip for all - do not let your OH believe that it is OK to eat spring onions. Mine came home yesterday oozing spring onion smell so strongly, I was exiled to the sofa overnight, cos it just... ugh.

Poor you Muddy your OH sounds a bit of a dick tbh. Has he never been really hung-over? That's not too dissimilar to having MS but it doesn't sound like he has any empathy so probably not worth the bother of explaining it to him. He should be sleeping on the sofa though. Not you.

You can get your own back when the baby comes... daddy jobs are: bathing baby (who will piss/shit all over him given the opportunity ) and all nappy changes (more piss/shit! ) But pregnancy does get better. Promise.

I hated being pg and I only had a bit of morning sickness relative to your situation. I hated the way people treated me differently and patronised me when I had been so independent and I hated that my body had been invaded by this parasite and was turning against me!

Although DS is lovely and we're all very happy

Poor you, I didn't have morning sickness anywhere near as bad as you and it was still incredibly nasty. One thing I didn't realise until it stopped was how much my overall mood and sense of optimism had been dragged by just feeling and being sick so much.

On people doing the whole positive thoughts thing - my step-mother cheerily told me not to let the morning sickness drag me down because 'it is 90% psychological'. I found thinking about vomiting on her shoes and telling her not to worry about the mess because she was mostly imagining it helped me enormously.