Grace Timothy - Lost in Motherhood

It wasn’t just the mornings either – it rolled through my body 24 hours a day, waking me from sleep. I couldn’t escape it. Lying down, sitting up – it was all like riding a rollercoaster – and I couldn’t read or focus on the TV to distract me.

My acute sense of smell meant that I knew Rich was entering the house before I heard him. His aftershave, his breath, a cigarette he’d walked past that morning – it was all burning the hairs out of my nose, making me hate him. Hate him! This prick with a penchant for pickled onion Monster Munch was clearly out to piss me off.

‘YOU HAD A KFC, DIDN’T YOU? ADMIT IT! YOU SELFISH ARSEHOLE!’

Weirdly, he stopped asking me how I was feeling about the baby around then. And with my mum hovering like a nervous nurse, wringing her hands and counting Cheerios, it was easy to avoid the conversation altogether. I think he assumed I would be dead soon, anyway.

I felt so weak and so sad now; the need to stay in bed and sleep was overwhelming every other thought. This is what depression feels like , I thought one morning as I considered changing my pyjama bottoms but instead rolled over, a fresh wave of nausea drowning me under its sour wash. I had experienced brief pockets of depression in my teens, so I knew the familiar heaviness, the consistently tear-filled throat. Looking back, I definitely suffered from antenatal depression. It felt bottomless and constant.

It was pulling me under and away from decisive action, stopping me from making a plan to surface again and change. Suggesting anything as definitive as an abortion at this point felt too deliberate and I was wrung out, not capable of lifting my head from the pillow. I definitely thought about it. I was adamant I did not want to be a mother. And the craziest thing? I couldn’t tell anyone how I felt. Because the first thing a mother is expected to be is loving and grateful.

When I read about postnatal depression I felt a bell ringing – I’ve already had that, I thought, that’s how I felt as soon as I found out. Now I go to the PANDAS Foundation UK website and see that as many as one in 10 women will be depressed in pregnancy. As a clinically recognised diagnosis it is only about 20 years old, perhaps because the effects of pregnancy can make the most robust of women feel shit. The painful tits, the dizziness and breathlessness, the nausea, the realisation that your only source of support is a total bellend who can’t ball his own socks let alone care for a baby. But it can also be down to a hormone imbalance: levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone increase during pregnancy, which usually results in that ‘bloom’ women are supposed to enjoy as they gestate. But according to PANDAS, sometimes the placenta doesn’t produce enough progesterone, which can lead to chronic anxiety, incessant crying, lack of energy, isolation … yes, yes, yes, and hell, yes. Had I known this, I could have asked for help. But I assumed it was all part and parcel of me being such a bad potential mother.

Every outcome seemed wrought with sadness – having the baby, not having the baby – as I sunk lower and lower.

After years of routine smears finding those pre-cancerous cells you’ve got to have fished out from your cervix, I had a gynaecologist. It sounds grand, doesn’t it? – ‘MY GYNAECOLOGIST’ – but actually, it was the grim reality of having the suspect cells. I no longer needed to be referred by my GP, I was a regular at the salon-de-speculum. Anyway, when my mum eventually decided I wasn’t peeing often enough, she took it upon herself to call this gynaecologist (did I mention she was also my mum’s? YEP, we have the SAME gynaecologist) to ask her advice.

‘Bring her into the hospital this afternoon – I’ve got a clinic just outside the antenatal unit, I’ll squeeze her in.’

Perks of having a terrifying vagina, guys! Straight in! I was pulled from my bed, whimpering, refusing to put on clothes.

‘Could you just breathe through your nose?’ I asked my mum, tsking her appalling breath, as she drove me to the hospital, my neck craning out of the window like a dog.

‘Yes, you’re definitely pregnant, Grace, congrats!’ the gynaecologist crowed, as the transvaginal scan revealed a tiny, peanut-sized lump lying in my womb. ‘And there’s only one baby, great! I was worried about twins or triplets with the way you’re feeling,’ she qualified, cheerily.

‘Yay!’ I whispered. I cried quietly as she ran through all the brilliant things about this baby – the scan was showing it to be the perfect size, the placenta was on track, it would have a September birth, which is excellent … I mean, what fucking brilliant news, September you say? I’m so pleased that this foetus will most likely excel at school because it’ll be old for its year. Marvellous. But now what about if it was born in 2020? Because I think that might work better, actually? When I feebly mumbled I was scared for my vagina, she assured me that the vagina could be stitched up like any other battered body part – ‘it might actually be better afterwards’, she said, winking at my husband.

Then my test results came back and it turned out my ketones – the acid that remains when your body burns through its own fat because it has little else to burn for energy – were really high. Like, anorexic-in-hospital-for-a-feeding-tube high. So they decided to admit me, put me on a drip and try medication for the nausea.

I was officially diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG), which once Kate Middleton was diagnosed in 2012 became all the rage. Back then, I’d never heard of it. It’s a condition affecting 1 per cent of women suffering with sickness in pregnancy, according to Pregnancy Sickness Support. Symptoms include hardcore pregnancy sickness which could actually harm you and the baby, if left untreated. So if you took pregnancy sickness and gave it some crack and some Red Bull and said, go to town on that woman’s gag reflex, bitch, that’s it. The causes are unclear, but I suspected it was thanks at least in part to the fact I wasn’t that up for having a baby right now.

I felt like a massive failure, taking the drugs. Mainly because I hadn’t considered the risk to the baby until my mum had piped up. But also because my body – according to the doctor – needed the drugs. If I didn’t get a handle on the nausea, the pregnancy could end anyway.

It looked and felt as though I was dying. The nausea might last the entire nine months, said the gynaecologist, but they could make my body a bit more hospitable for the baby. Wait, why is nobody seeing what a terrible idea this is and suggesting it would be safer to end the whole debacle? I have very narrow hips. I silently begged them to find a medical reason we had to abort, using just my eyes. Which of course didn’t work. I wanted to talk to Rich, but he was ushered out with my mum so I could rest. It was as if he’d faded away from this picture altogether – it was just me being poked and prodded for signs of life.

When my mum came in to collect me the next day I stared at the TV, answering her questions with a grunt or a sigh. I was so cross with everyone who was meant to be on my side but had already sided with this new baby, who nobody had even met yet. I had been hospitalised! I had a cannula sticking out of my hand because the acid coursing through my veins would otherwise kill me! I am SO ill! Why is everyone congratulating me? I cried some more.

Back at home, my mum helped me shower and propped me up in her bed, facing the TV, just as she had done the last time I had puked Gallo rosé wine all over my own bed 10 years before. The drip had definitely taken the edge off and the medication was dulling the nausea so that rather than feeling violently sick with every breath, I could almost picture myself eating dry toast one day without heaving.