I created a human being

From scratch.

I grew a tiny liver and heart and stomach,

I grew hands and feet and a little face,

And I birthed him.

I pushed the human who lived inside me out: earthside.

It was beautiful.

It was terrifying.

It was incredible.

It left me with trauma and questions and guilt

And yet it gave me my biggest blessing: my son.

Over 2 years later, I am growing a new human,

Preparing to birth again

This time with more knowledge, and strength, and power,

This time knowing my rights

And hoping beyond hope I have the courage to use them.

Today was a hard day. I haven’t cried so much in weeks.

Last night I had a panic attack. They aren’t uncommon anymore.

I thought I had things under control… but mental health is complicated. Under control doesn’t mean it stays that way. You need to keep working at it. You need to remember that you matter – something I am not very good at.

Social media shows the pretty sides of life.

I often fall into that trap.

But the reality is that everyone is struggling with something.

For me, pregnancy has made everything feel so much more. More intense, scary, worrying, angering … low moments that should be fleeting end up overwhelming. Today was that kind of day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Someone said to me the other day, if you want to get anywhere with a toddler, you double the time and add half to what it would take normally.

The next day we were half rushing and my son decided that his usual breakfast time should double. He took extra care with every spoon of cereal, and made sure to clean up every single drop every single time he spilled anything.

He was in no rush. 

But I was.

I watched him getting exhasperated; we HAD to go to get to play group. He NEEDED to finish.

I had 2 options.

1. Get angry and take over feeding him.
2. Breath, and sit down with him, and let him take his time.

I am not known to always taken option 2, in fact recently I’m finding it increasingly hard. But I did this time.

I sat down, asked him if his breakfast was nice, and told him I could see how much he was concentrating on each spoon.

He nodded, said “breakfast nice” and kept going.

We were late. It was worth it. It made me stop and think about my priorities, and about the way we pace life.

Life with a toddler isn’t meant to be fast paced… Life in general is too fast. We run and rush from A to B and rarely take the time to just taste our food, or to watch the birds, or to pick up beautiful leaves. These are all things integral to my son’s life, and he is so much more content that any adult I know.

Maybe this is why.

Because he eats his breakfast slowly.

Because he looks at colours and birds.

Because he marvels at slugs and gets excited at spiders.

Because he doesn’t have an agenda.

Breakfast at my toddler’s pace could have led to an angry and rushed day, but I am glad I chose option 2; it led to a beautiful day an a good chance for me to realign.

Morning sickness, or pregnancy sickness is one of the tell-tale signs of early pregnancy; for at a significant percentage of women. It’s estimated, I have read, that around 2/3 women experience some form of morning sickness, some only for a few weeks, others until they deliver their babies.

For the lucky ones who don’t have this pleasure, well I envy you! For everyone else, though I am definitely no expert, I thought I’d share what helped me, because while with my first pregnancy I managed to cope fairly well, this time round, I really struggled to begin with.

Please consult a doctor before trying any of these remedies and do not use them if contradicted with any other medical circumstances.

I found out I was pregnant and about a week later, at approximately 6 weeks, the sickness hit, and got really very bad. I’m pretty sure I looked like I was seriously ill and my husband now tells me that he was actually quite worried because he hadn’t seen me struggle so much before. Despite having Theo Prana to look after and play with, I stayed home a lot, cancelled appointments, cried far too much, carried a sick bowl around or had my head in the toilet and at one point I actually wanted to be knocked out just to gain some relief. Thankfully, it took me around 3 weeks to go through several remedies and figure ones that worked for me, and ones that didn’t!

In this time, I also go a prescription for anti-nausea tablets, but I was told they wouldn’t recommend me taking them while breastfeeding (which I still am doing) so these were only for the worse case kind of days. In total, I’ve taken 3 tablets, each time because I was travelling and could not face sickness and travelling alone with an emotional toddler.

Here is what I learned about morning/pregnancy sickness, and what worked for me, and what didn’t.

What half worked, or didn’t at all:

• Eating frequently: for about 3 weeks it made no difference how much or often I ate or sipped water, I was sick with everything. However after I found ways to keep the nausea at bay, eating very small amounts of food did help, but as a snack eater anyway, it was not really much of a change from my usual diet.
• Sleeping/resting: our body works so much harder during pregnancy that rest is essential. I think that’s how I managed to cope with my first pregnancy but this time round rest wasn’t much of an option with a 22 month old! He was as understanding as could be expected though, and despite the guilt I felt then, I know I have made up for a lot of days in by doing lots of days out while the good weather has lasted.
• Ginger: commonly used as a natural remedy for nausea. I tried ginger tea and chewing on ginger: the tea helped but mostly because it was loaded with sugar, chewing on ginger made me feel worse.
• Peppermint: commonly used for feelings of sickness. This is the worst one for me, it made me actually want to throw up even more. I’d smell peppermint and feel sick, in oil, tea, leaves or even peppermint chewing gum! I didn’t try to have any tablets, but I have read that this helps more effectively.
• Fennel: like peppermint, this made me feel worse.
• Cardamom essential oil: this half helped, but wasn’t something I used often because I found other remedies.

What worked for me:

• Fresh air: I didn’t read this anywhere, perhaps because it’s obvious or perhaps because it isn’t something that works for others but getting out of the house really made a difference to me. I would walk with my son and spend hours just pushing him around and singing songs or looking at the flowers, birds, buses etc and I would feel almost normal. Conversely, days we stayed in went from bad to worse.
• Controlled breathing: just counting 4 in and 4 out helped a lot. I tried various forms of pranayama but honestly nothing lasted long apart from the 4×4 which I mostly did when my son was breastfeeding. This helped because the feeling of sickness would increase while he fed, but I never managed long before asking him to stop because along with sickness, breastfeeding in the early months of this pregnancy caused me some significant anxiety.
• Lemon: the citrus smell is said to help reduce feelings of sickness in pregnancy, usually either through an oil or by slicing a lemon and inhaling the slices. This one helped! I had a bottle of lemon essential oil so I made a roller-ball by diluting it with fractionated coconut and would roll it on my wrists and below my ears. Smelling it really helped, but only for a very short while.
• Grapefruit: similar to lemon, the citrus is meant to ease feelings of nausea. This was my absolute savior. I sadly lost my bottle of grapefruit essential oil on holiday but for around 6 weeks I would dilute and dab it on my skin and on the scarf or top I was wearing. It didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling sick, but it helped me carry on and actually function normally, without a sick bowl attached to my arm.

I never tried things like acupuncture so have no idea about it, but I hope that sharing what I learned makes a small difference; even if this list helps just one person.

Xoxo

R