I’m Not Ready for This

I hit the six-week mark and the morning sickness began but ironically, the morning was the only time I didn’t feel sick. From about 10:30am until 3:00am I felt ill constantly, not wanting to eat or move really. My new routine became work, sleep, repeat. I didn’t have any appetite to eat anything and any time I did fancy something, I ate it as soon as I could because who knows when I could next stomach something. I then became obsessed with googling when morning sickness would end or how I could stop it or ease it, but nothing really worked. I just had to power on. The only good thing that came out of the sickness was that I had a lot of time to spend lying on the sofa thinking over the future. All I could think about was how much my parents loved me and was I ready to give myself completely to this little kidney bean in my belly. This scared me but I put it down to being tired and under-fed and tried not to think about it.

The moment for me when I realised what those feelings were was terrifying, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I woke up one night and this booming voice in my head said, “I don’t want to do this.” I just dismissed it and went back to sleep. I woke up the next morning and the voice was there again, “I’m not ready for this.” Seeing there was something wrong, my partner tried to get me to talk but I just blamed being tired and vowed that I would be ok. I spent any time I could look online for articles about people who were in the same situation as me but couldn’t find anything. The guilt I felt at searching “How do I know if I’m ready to have a baby?” was overwhelming. There were quizzes and lists about all the signs that you are ready to start a family, but what if you were already pregnant and didn’t know what to do. Nothing I read seemed to fit for me and didn’t help me at all. I cried. I cried so much for so many reasons. For how sick I felt, for the fact that I felt like I was losing myself, for all the things in our life that would change that I wasn’t ready for, but mostly for the guilt and horror I felt that I wasn’t ready to have the baby that was already inside of me.

After the most difficult week of our entire lives, we finally decided that we didn’t want to be parents yet. We made the appointments and spoke to our doctor and midwife. Sitting there in tears, I waited to be told off, to be shamed and told what horrible humans we were. The midwife looked at me and told me that I had done an incredibly brave thing by admitting how I felt and by doing what we were going to do. She told me that I shouldn’t feel ashamed of myself or any of the horrible things going through my mind and I had people to support me if and when I needed it. I won’t talk about any details of what happened next, but I will never forget the medical staff that helped me and treated me with kindness, compassion and a caring that I can’t put into words. All I will say is I will forever be grateful to them for how they treated me.

I got home and had a long shower and tried to look at myself with the same care and compassion that the nurses and midwives did. I felt like I had lost myself and part of my identity while I was pregnant and grew to dislike myself because of how I felt, and I needed to learn to love myself again. Over time, my body started to return to normal, I lost the bit of weight I had gained, my old bras fit me again and my skin started to clear up from all the hormonal acne I suffered. Little by little, I returned to the person I was before, and I slowly started to forgive myself.

I wanted to write this article and share my story because during the days when I was looking for information online to try and explain how I felt, I couldn’t find anything to help me. Before I came clean about my feelings, I felt so lonely and afraid and I didn’t know what to do. So many people now turn to google or social media to try and find a connection in times where they might not be able to talk about their feelings, and when that connection isn’t there it makes us feel so much more alone. That’s how I felt. All I wanted was for one person to say, “It’s ok, I know how you feel.” I am sharing my story because if I can give a connection to one person who is feeling what I felt, then it just might help them to not feel alone. Because even when you’re surrounded by people, sometimes you can still feel completely isolated.

How has this experience changed me? I’m more forgiving. I love myself more deeply than before and I give myself more care and time. I allow myself to feel my feelings and accept them for what they are, I never say I shouldn’t feel like I do. I don’t judge other people as quickly on what they might be going through, because you really never know. But most of all, I know now not to take the people around me for granted because without them, I wouldn’t have gotten through this.