Pregnancy Week 36

Well, I can safely say I’ve coped with pregnancy. I don’t think it’s going to get any worse now than the bad relapse I’m currently suffering. I’m housebound – can’t get to Costcutter any more. My days are reduced to managing to wash, dress and feed myself. I get attacks of breathlessness as I feared I would. But it’s really OK. Not at all the torture I was dreading initially. And not at all the same insidious sickness and weakness of the first trimester. And, triumphantly, I CAN still get up the few steps to the pavement, slowly but surely. Which means I CAN still get to the antenatal class, chauffeured by M, stopping to breathe at each step. I’m so thrilled that I haven’t missed a class yet, even though I just sit there cocooned in pillows like a zombie and only take in half of what’s said. I’m THERE and I really didn’t think that would be possible.

I don’t think pregnancy can hold any nasty surprises for me now, in these last four weeks.

But beyond that is a whole new world. I get an unreal feeling when our antenatal teacher warns all the other mums-to-be about the exhaustion of the first six weeks with a new baby. I do a mental displacement of thinking that can’t apply to me because I can’t physically envisage being any more incapacitated through exhaustion than I already am when ME’s in full swing. I’m already in the state that the other mums are anticipating – struggling to wash, dress and feed myself, let alone keep up with the washing. How will there be any extra give for a baby’s needs to come first? I just don’t know. How will I find the resources to do night feeds AND keep feeding through the day, every 3 hours? It seems logically impossible right now.

But that’s how I felt in the first trimester of pregnancy when my legs turned to jelly and I could barely stand. It seemed impossible that I could be any stronger six months later with an extra 10 kg to bear. And yet I am.