Buns in the oven

[Tits McGee]

Oh, Ken. I'm sorry you're feeling so rubbish. Also not wanting to diagnose you over the internet, but just to let you know I saw a psychologist for prenatal depression/anxiety so if you wanted to ask anything about that I'd be happy to help.

Losing your main coping mechanisms right when you need them most is crap, but is there anything else that is doable and might be comforting or distracting? I comfort-read the Harry Potter books when I was pregnant with L, watched old familiar boxsets and that sort of thing. And got quite into jigsaws, which I'll admit might not be everyone's cup of tea.

[olive]

Ken, you poor thing. I’m so sorry you’re feeling like this but really there is no right way to feel pregnant. This isn’t some mind over matter thing you can power through. Pregnancy is hard and yours doubly so at the moment so you need to give yourself a break rather than thinking about what you should be able to do.

I completely understand feeling trapped and like you should be able to pick yourself up but it just doesn’t work like that. I’m sure P feels absolutely useless right now and I’m sure your friends and family understand too.

[Kenickie]

That link is helpful, Hamm.

I'm really sorry you went through that, Tits, thanks for sharing.

You people are making me feel a lot better.

[Luce]

I think we're reasonably well practiced in talking down the newly preggos You'll be doing it yourself, before long enough.

[Hamm]

Based on that link, my disorganised friends with twins were evacuated out of New Orleans, right before Katrina. Totally fine. Income and lifestyle seem to be the game changers.

I hope it changes for you very soon, I do think this week is exacerbated (quite rightly) by stressing about your holiday and seeing your last little taste of grown up freedom go. That alone would make a person feel miserable.

[Jet]

I think we're reasonably well practiced in talking down the newly preggos You'll be doing it yourself, before long enough.

I remember the doom and wtf have we done well and I can’t imagine the heightening factor of a surprise like twins. I found the unknown and anticipation excruciating first time round.

[Loralei]

Ken, I sat with a woman this morning as she cried because everything in her life was fine and then she decided to have a baby and now everything is really hard. Obviously a lot of this is because her baby's in NICU, but a lot of it was guilt at not feeling 100% ecstatic about her new baby and harbouring fantasies of running away. She was so relieved when I was unfazed and told her everyone in the room had probably felt exactly the same. For most people it's a huge shock when their first baby arrives, and I am convinced more people get the "what the fuck have we done?" moments than don't. And that's when they have met their baby, and none of them would send it back. When you have a difficult pregnancy it makes sense that those feelings hit you earlier.

Don't worry about P; he's a good egg and is probably also a bit shocked at how difficult it is for you. I'm sure he doesn't remotely hate coming home but just wishes he could make things better. I like to declare publicly, in front of my P, that I didn't really suffer mood swings during pregnancy, just to watch him wrestle with whether it's worse to let such an outrageous lie go unchallenged or to poke that particular bear again.

I was out with a twin-mum friend on Sunday and she gets so angry about how negative people are when they hear you're (one is) having twins. Of course it will be difficult at the beginning, but so is getting a PhD and eating your body weight in pizza on a weekly basis while staying slim ( ). You have totally got this, and I'm glad you have Scooter here to point out the benefits, too.

[Princess Morripov]

I like to declare publicly, in front of my P, that I didn't really suffer mood swings during pregnancy, just to watch him wrestle with whether it's worse to let such an outrageous lie go unchallenged or to poke that particular bear again.

I love this

[Leap]

I like to declare publicly, in front of my P, that I didn't really suffer mood swings during pregnancy, just to watch him wrestle with whether it's worse to let such an outrageous lie go unchallenged or to poke that particular bear again.

Lora I am tucking this away for future entertainment.

[F'Artiste]

I’m sorry you’re feeling low at the moment Ken. Lora speaks much sense . I most definitely had moments of wtf have I done when pregnant with A2, and even now will routinely bitch to A about how I miss bits of my old life. Everyone expects you to be utterly in love with someone you haven’t even met yet, and it’s hard to do that when you’re still trying to get your head around the logistics.

One of my NCT friends had twins and honestly the things that made life hard for her weren’t the fact that they were twins (but that they had a dairy allergy, for example, and she needed to modify her diet to breastfeed them). I love seeing them when we have meet ups . They like to rough and tumble and are constantly wrestling one another in the sweetest way .

The cost of childcare can be very daunting, but it isn’t forever.

[Luce]

Lora! That's so mean!

[Hamm]

I’m assuming Mr Lei goes with discretion being the better part of valour?

The not knowing them is very valid, you’ve tipped up your life, on purpose to this tyrant alien that makes you feel like shite and sucks away any joy you had for your future. In addition to the adoption plans I also had one evening when I put my wedding ring and our photos in the bin then matched to the bus stop, fully planning to go Scarborough and start a new life.

Can you get out tomorrow, Ken? I know you won’t fancy much but a wee drive to the coast might help, you must have cabin fever. And then come home and watch something ludicrous like Father Ted or The Inbetweeners.

[Smunder Woman]

Lora, you are my hero

[Kenickie]

Lora!

That's a good idea, Hamm. P is at work so I can't go out properly but if it's nice getting out for a walk might do me good.

You have all really cheered me up. As have P's colleagues who have sent me a big bunch of flowers.

However, Facebook keeps showing me adverts of Kayla bloody Itsines looking amazing prancing about doing lunges with a perfect baby bump which is not helping.

[Hamm]

Sorry, I’ve spent the whole afternnon thinking it’s Friday. Sad now.

It’s also that she probably feels like shit but her brand means she has to. I bet she pisses herself 5 times a shoot.

Flowers!

[Figaro]

The Kayla Itsines FB ad thing drives me bonkers too. But so do all the comments telling her she’s endangering her baby by exercising whilst pregnant, etc etc.

Everything you are feeling is a normal and in some ways totally rational response to an emotionally and physiologically stressful situation. But I do also agree with the people who have said that depression in pregnancy his a very real thing - it is. Hyperemesis is enough to make anyone question their choices and consider steps to change things. One study I read about showed that 10% of women with hyperemesis terminate their pregnancies. You are far from alone in finding it miserable.

I wonder if it might be worth asking again for some different anti sickness medication. Are you still vomiting a lot and losing more weight?

[Heebie Jeebie]

Aw Ken. You're supposed to glow through pregnancy and be filled with joy and I remember feeling exactly like you and half wishing we hadn't done it because it was all no fun at all and a baby would change everything anyway and why do that when life had been good. A woman I worked with told me she could go through childbirth again but not pregnancy and I've never forgotten the relief at someone understanding. I hated it all but would go back in time and relive it in a heartbeat now i know what was to follow. It's such a leap of faith to believe that it will all be worth it more than you can ever imagine (yes there will be hard times but they will be worth it too) so does it help just to know that people are resilient and adjust to change and you will too?

I also seem to remember having a huge wobble soon after the 12 week scan so perhaps there is something hormonal that happens then?

A lot of people seem to feel sorry for people expecting twins but that just seems to be a more acceptable view to express than to say publicly you'd have loved to have them yourself. There will be people thinking that too, but just not saying it. My aunt and uncle had twins and coped well enough that she was pregnant again within a few months (and then again, and then he had the snip ). They used to listen to them talking to each other on the baby monitor

[maya]

I’m another one who thought I had ruined everything and would never feel happy again (mostly after the baby was born, but I didn’t enjoy the pregnancy either). People here really talked me down and told me it would all be ok and it really was - that baby is 6 now and I had two more by choice after that, which would have been completely unfathomable to me at the time. I’m sure with twins it’s even tougher to adjust to everything, especially with sickness on top. Hang in there - it really will get better. While those early days were extremely low lows for me, and parenting is hard, I can confidently say now that I had never felt joy like my children have given me and continue to.

[Kenickie]

The abortion thing is interesting. Even when I was ambivalent about having kids, I always felt certain that if I accidentally got pregnant I'd keep it, but as soon as I began to feel pregnant and especially as the sickness ramped up I had a new understanding of why people would choose to terminate. It's the reason I had the early scan at 8 weeks because I needed to know that there was actually a purpose to feeling so bad to keep me going. I know I've been a bit excessive with the scan booking but it's the one thing that makes me feel a bit better. So the upside of a twin pregnancy is getting scans every four weeks from 20 weeks, although as Leap has said before when I start feeling movement it might help too.

I've stopped losing weight and I'm not dehydrated now as I'm being sick a lot less especially when I don't do anything so it seems that none of the GPs think a change in medication is justified. I think it's because they see the job of the medicine to stop the dehydration /weight loss rather than get me to a stage where I'm able to go to work /do stuff.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences, it really is helpful to know that other people felt like this and got through it. I think it's the relentlessness and the lack of an end in sight that's really got to me.

[Hamm]

How are you feeling today? Able to get out a little or are you sapped?

The scans help and so does movement. I wanted to know the sex with T because I wanted to start thinking of the bump as a person and not just this thing. You’ll be surprised at how fast it goes even though it seems interminable now.

Baby babble on monitors is gorgeous, I can’t imagine how cute twins will be. I wonder if twins language skills are faster than single babies because of it.