Surgical Support

Peggy at  A Mother’s Secrets is compiling stories about pregnancy lows, so I thought I’d share mine:

I hated DH, who wasn’t DH at that point (by which I mean he wasn’t my husband rather than he wasn’t my darling) for making me learn to drive. I hated the lessons, though he found me an annoyingly nice teacher, hated the car he bought just so I could learn to drive, hated the driving he made me do every evening when he got home from work. I hated the test so much I remember nothing about it. I hated the shiny red car sitting on our driveway just daring me to go somewhere in it. I refused to drive if DH wasn’t in the car. Until I got pregnant, got SPD and had to drive everywhere; driving stopped me from going mad.

Pregnancy didn’t come as easily as you imagine it will when you spend your twenties praying for your period. But after over two years, one miscarriage and five cycles of Clomid, I had peed on 12 sticks and had 24 lines to show for it. DH and I floated on cloud nine planning and preparing, putting the house on the market and trying to pick the perfect name. I started getting this odd feeling in my pelvis, but just assumed that it was part of the expanding process, until it got a lot worse and I went to see the Doctor. Funnily enough the doctor turned out to be pregnant too, but that didn’t stop her poking me in places that shouldn’t be poked (unless you are Samantha in Sex and the City) until I cried, which admittedly didn’t take much.  She gave me a diagnosis of Symphysis Pubis Disfunction and a referral to my local Physiotherapy Department. I thought it was pregnancy karma.

I had a sympathetic phsiotherapist; she had suffered with SPD through two of her pregnancies. Over the second half of my pregnancy I saw her regularly as my mobility became more and more restricted. I was measured for a Surgical Support Belt, one of many as I expanded. I was urged to get crutches but living in a house with lots of stairs and a small bouncy dog, that wasn’t really a practical option, so settled for a cane. I was monitored and measured and told what I could and couldn’t do. I did my best to stay positive and perky, because I was actually pregnant and we were so happy, but it got harder and harder to deal with. One day I found myself in tears trying to get up on the couch  for my midwives’ appointment, and couldn’t stop crying once I’d started. Pain medication was prescribed, because I’d been chomping Paracetamol like they were Smarties, and the midwives started coming to the house for my appointments. From there on in, things got more and more difficult, until the God that is my husband started working from home so that he could help me do everything, from getting dressed and going to the loo (those wedding vows really mean something now!) to laundry and housekeeping. I had to take feather pillows everywhere because I couldn’t sit comfortably. Neither could I stand, or sleep comfortably, and not just because I was the size of the Goodyear Blimp. The women at my NCT group thought I was disabled; given that I showed up with stick, belt, painfully slow walk, two feather pillows and more pain meds than Gaviscon, you can understand why. I sobbed with joy (in much the same way as I did on the day I found out I was pregnant) when, after a considerable session with the Consultant in which I wailed and cried and begged in a pitiful fashion, they agreed to an early induction at 38 weeks and, joy of joys, gave me a zimmer frame and a private room. And a baby!

Babydeux has officially made it to 20 weeks today, and sadly this pregnancy is going the same way. There’s some irony that I, a person who thinks that running is for madmen and whose only exercise is going to the fridge for more Fruit and Nut, should have the flexibilty of a person who has spent years doing ballet and yoga. This so-called hyper-mobility seems to be the main reason for my SPD. I recently fell down the stairs and landed badly on my hips which, when combined with the general insane amount of activity involved in keeping up with the Pocket Dictator, means that my condition is degenerating far quicker than I had hoped. I have ordered a brand new walking stick, and outsourced the dog-walking to our house-guest. The PD has to nap in a newly-installed travel cot in the study whilst I nap on the sofa. I am driving everywhere again, and re-learning the closest places to park to entrances. I am even taking the bus so that I don’t have to walk up the hill to the centre of Bromley (an embarrassingly short distance). My working days are numbered. It’s disappointing and painful at this point, though not unbearable. More than anything it’s frustrating. I’m frustrated that it’s come on so much earlier and that the alternative therapies have not helped make it manageable for just a bit longer. I’m sad for the Pocket Dictator, who has had to learn to go upstairs by herself and that Mamma can’t always pick her up. Some days Mamma can’t even get her out of the cot. I’m annoyed with myself; my lack of mobility is limiting our ability to go out and do fun things together. Some days it’s all I can do not to cry. It’s going to be an awfully long 18 weeks for us all. But at the end of it we will have another beautiful baby, and all the trying and the miscarriages and the misery of painful pregnancies will be forgotten.