Friday, February 20, 2015

Pregnancy after stillbirth: 13 weeks 1 day

So, I typed up the care plan post yesterday, Today is about reflecting on where I am.  Messy mostly.

When I lie down I can feel my stomach much higher than it was a few weeks ago.  I can't pull my navel in as far as I could a few weeks ago.  I can feel my uterus above my pubic bone - it's quite solid.  I could first feel this about a week ago.  It's larger now. I'm clumsier than I was - that could well be stress.  I got a few shooting pains down my bum/leg earlier today.  That reminded me of the sciatica I had with C, but much later on.  My chin hairs are growing much more quickly.  My head hair is thick.  I woke up with lower back aches, that hasn't happened in a while.  My linea nigra hasn't much changed.  My stretch marks have faded a hell of a lot after the last nearly 8 months.  I'm quite sad about that.  I liked them all purple and fresh, they had a beauty to them.

In the city today I went a bit funny.  I just started feeling off colour - like I needed to sit down, then like I needed to eat something.  I got a bit sad and shaky.  I put this down to hormones.  I went and got lunch and felt emotional, in waves.  Then I had a massage, which although it's a deep tissue massage and therefore painful, I also find quite meditative and relaxing.

In my head, I feel a bit relaxed after the dating scan.  But also worried.  Just worried in a different way now.  Worried about different things.  I started telling people at work after the scan, and they are all really happy for us, but it makes me feel really uneasy being this open.  Like I'm going to have to tell them soon that I am no longer pregnant and this one has died.  I also got a few stories of other people's losses, and that makes me unbearably sad, that so many of us have to lose our children, whether it's in the first stage or the last stage.

I told someone who doesn't know my history too - another lady in my pilates class.  That got awkward, but I think I handled it well. She thought it was my first pregnancy, as you would, and said I didn't look too excited, so I said I am very high risk, then as the conversation developed I said something about how I'm tired all the way through my pregnancies, so she knows it's not my first, but she clearly doesn't think I got as far as I did.  Which is fine, I don't know if I really want to tell her, because it's an awful thing to put on someone.

She did come up to me at the end and apologise for being insensitive, which she wasn't being at all, she was reacting to pregnancy news with joy and happiness, which is entirely right and it's how people should react.  I am honestly glad that people are excited for us, we should be happy too, but it's so hard.  I think I reassured her that she shouldn't feel bad, I hope I did.  She did nothing wrong.

Telling people makes me feel queasy.  Gods know how I'm going to cope with the women in the pregnancy pilates class.... if they ask if it's my first I won't lie, but that's an awful thing to tell a pregnant woman, especially first time mothers.  But they need to know babies die and they need to know what they can do to stop it.  I think I'll have to follow it up with the correct movement advice.  Ye gods, this is an awful position to be in.

2 comments:

char said...

I'm hoping that things get easier, but I can imagine how you are feeling. I don't know how I would react if I were to fall pregnant again. Not that it's something we're planning at the moment, of course. My loss was a lot earlier on (12wks) and it hadn't been planned. But I still don't think we ever fully came to terms with it.
Congratulations and I hope things go OK.

Saranga said...

Oh Char, I am so sorry to hear of your loss. It had never crossed my mind you may have been pregnant or had a baby. I don't know why, it happens to everybody, all sorts of people. I'm so sorry.