My First Pregnancy Journey

“In July 2019 I saw those 2 blue lines. Cue excitement and nerves. It was something we had been longing for, but straight away I felt worried about how it would change our lives and how we would adapt. We loved to travel and made the most of our freedom and I knew becoming a parent meant embracing a much more restricted life. Little did I know that restriction would start well before giving birth!

I’d heard about morning sickness, of course, but the constant nausea of my first trimester still took me by surprise. I had a horrible, metallic, taste in my mouth all day, every day. And the fatigue was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I was in bed by 7.30pm most nights and that felt like a stretch! Throw in some seriously strange food aversions (crisps and milk for dinner anyone?) and those first 12 weeks were a trying time for me and bump.

By 20 weeks I was starting to feel more myself again, I even had moments where I forgot I was pregnant! Knowing the third trimester could mean lots of discomfort I was looking forward to making the most of a few weeks of easier movement and getting out and about.

Then, week 22 hit and with it waves of the most intense abdominal pain I’ve ever known. These seriously painful twinges would last for up to 10 minutes and I’d be bent double on the bed, unable to move. I knew it wasn’t contractions, they didn’t feel in the right region for that but they were still seriously scary. When the pain started to make me vomit during these episodes we went into hospital to get more advice. I was severely constipated at the time and they thought I might be experiencing intestinal colic (a blockage that causes severe cramp-like pain) so got sent home again to try and get things moving down below.

Once surgery began they realised the diagnosis was wrong and in fact the lump was being caused by a pedunculated fibroid (a benign growth attached to the uterus). They closed me back up as removing the growth carries too much risk of inducing early labour.

I was discharged home the following day.

A few days after getting home and the pain levels reached their peak. I was vomiting frequently and couldn’t move. I couldn’t even manage to keep the painkillers down. When the pain didn’t subside at all I ended up being taken into hospital in an ambulance, another high stress moment in my pregnancy I could have done without!

Once admitted, I had a pelvic ultrasound and they thought I might be suffering from an intermittently torsioning ovary or hemorrhagic ovarian cyst (both about as nice as they sound!).

Thankfully I had a wonderful consultant and team who decided that given I’d already had surgery, they would try to manage this without further surgery. I was told to take things extremely slowly, even trying not to bend over too much or walk too quickly. I had to do this until the cyst moved up and out of my pelvis as the pregnancy progressed, otherwise it was too close to my bony pelvis and it might get pressed on and then haemorrhage or twist again. Overall, it was not the second trimester I’d been hoping for!

Thanks to the brilliant advice of my medical team I, at least, didn’t experience any intense pain again. I did have to limit standing to 20 minutes due to pain and I had to keep lying on my left side to take the pressure off the irritated side of my pelvis.

It got slowly better, week by week, and by 35 weeks the cyst had moved and I was able to start some gentle exercise and get my mind and body in a better position for birth.

My due date came and went and I was becoming more and more swollen. My hands, feet, ankles, face, everything felt enormous. At 40+4 weeks, I had my routine midwife appointment and they detected protein in my wee and my blood pressure was up. I had developed pre-eclampsia. This meant I had to give up my hopes of having a spontaneous labour. I was to be induced. I didn’t have much time to process how I felt about this but looking back it was hard to adjust my mindset from expecting an intervention free birth to being induced.

Thankfully, once I was induced with a pessary my labour progressed very quickly and my gorgeous boy was born 20 hours later. It was quite an intense labour as I experienced hyperstimulation from the induction. I was regularly given Terbutaline to slow down the contractions which made things a little more manageable. Around half way through my labour, it was discovered that my baby was back to back. This often makes labour more intense due to the back and pelvic pain that it can cause. I managed to cope for the majority of time with a dose of Pethadine, however after pushing for some time and struggling to get the baby to move down any further I had an epidural and was taken to theatre. I almost required a c-section but the team managed to help my baby around and down with the use of Keilland forceps and he was born safely just after mid-day.

As a fit and healthy person, I’d dreamt of (and naively expected) a straightforward pregnancy, joining pregnancy yoga classes and generally keeping fit and active. The reality, however, was oh so different! The combination of the pregnancy complications leading to a more troublesome birth hugely affected how I felt going into the postnatal phase (more on that soon!). It made me realise that, despite your best preparations and best intentions, there are some things in pregnancy and birth that you can’t control.

Realising how hard the postnatal period was ignited a passion in me to help women feel more knowledgeable in pregnancy and more in control of their postnatal recovery. However pregnancy and birth goes, women deserve to recover well and to start feeling like themselves as soon as possible again afterwards.

Have a look at our free postnatal resources and full online course for more information to help smooth the ride along your own postnatal recovery journey.