Pregnacy #4
I’ve been here before… This will be baby number four!
Forever grateful that my body has created four incredible humans, my first at 18 and my last at 38. I have learnt so much in the past 20 years about pregnancy and motherhood. Most importantly is you will never fully understand this journey until you have embarked on it yourself as each pregnancy and child is completely different.
With bubba number three, I had a so called ‘unicorn’ pregnancy, Manning, my only son. No sickness, no food aversions, he arrived three weeks early, it was perfect. So those pregnancies do exist!
However this is my third pregnancy with HG. I began to feel nauseous and vomit before the pregnancy test confirmed that I was pregnant. With all three of my girl pregnancies I was unwell through out the entire pregnancy, that’s 40 (well 37, 38 and 38) weeks of feeling like I am on a boat with the worst hangover imaginable. Vomiting so much I get petechiae (burst blood vessels around my eyes and covering my neck.) I take medication to ease the vomiting which causes migraines, constipation and drowsiness.
This final pregnancy I also have gestational diabetes, with my blood sugar levels being so high and unable to be controlled by diet and exercise I have to inject insulin. That means four finger pricks to test blood sugar levels and four stomach injections to administer insulin, a total of eight needles a day and my blood sugar levels are still not ideal. Which causes worry about a baby being born very large.
However, I also have hypothyroidism this pregnancy, if uncontrolled can lead to high blood pressure. There is also an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth and having a baby with a low birth weight. So even more to worry about. Perhaps it was the combination of both GD and hyperthyroidism which allowed this baby to stay perfectly average at each ultrasound.
I have the usual indigestion and reflux, normally I would avoid eating before bed, but have been informed I should eat yoghurt and fresh berries before bed to help with my blood sugar levels, so I start the night feeling very uncomfortable.
Baby girls head was also incredibly low throughout my pregnancy, which meant sonographers were unable to measure the size and I was walking like a cowboy after leg day from around 30 weeks. Lots of toilet stops and pressure below. It also caused pelvis instability (SPD) which had me dreaming of a motorised scooter.
If anything other than cotton or bamboo touches my skin, I itch. I had blood tests done to check for obstetric cholestasis - a liver disorder that can be very dangerous in pregnancy. Fortunately it isn’t anything serious, just a reaction to certain fabrics, washing powder or my skin stretching. I found when the itching got really uncomfortable a warm shower without any soap helped, along with sorbolene (without fragrance).
My cravings have been to smell eucalyptus oil. I clean every surface around the home constantly with eucalyptus oil and eat eucalyptus drops constantly.
If crying were an Olympic sport I could win gold, I cry often. From lack of sleep, from hormone changes, from feeling like a complete and utter failure this pregnancy.
I can’t wait to hold my daughter safely in my arms and be able to look back at this time. Pregnancy truly is an honour, it is an incredible journey learning how magnificent a women’s body is, to understand what we are capable of mentally and physically, it is magical, but my goodness - it can be so damn hard!
One thing I know for sure is that it is okay to feel however you want to feel about pregnancy! We fall pregnant to create life, not to be pregnant.
