Thanks for the kind replies!  I’ve written and deleted many posts about what I’ve gone through emotionally since about June, but I don’t know if I’ll ever bear my soul on this blog about those days.  They happened and hopefully they’re over.  Right now I’m trying to focus on the fact that I seem to have gotten through this and look forward to being able to put it all behind me when as life continues to balance out.

I learned very quickly that pregnancy is not all shiny, happy moments as TV, movies and blogs would have us like to believe and between hormones and the regular stresses in life it’s hard to have those moments if at all.  Like I said, I’m not ready to bear it all on the screen, but have wanted to put it out there for other to use.

For those friends and family of a woman expecting a few words of advice:

1.  A sincere “How are you?” is great (and amazingly rare), but as early as July I wanted to bite the head off of any person who asked “Aren’t you so excited?” and was visibly disappointment when I wasn’t jumping up and down, ridiculously giddy and then I felt worse for disappointing them.

  • There was a day when a younger co-worker asked that very same question and I just couldn’t muster up a fake response after days of throwing up, dehydration and mounting anxiety.  She was visibly and vocally disappointed in return and that all just made me feel worse!  Don’t expect your expecting relatives or friends to be excited all the time.  Let them know that it’s okay to just be okay with it.

2.  Unless you really know the person, most likely ANY comment about how they look or assumptions on how they feel (emotionally, physically, etc.) or how the pregnancy is going or has gone is better left unsaid.

  • One of my biggest peeves was the people who assumed that just because the pregnancy was visible, that it (the baby, my body, my health, etc.) was a totally open subject to discuss.

3.  Pay attention and be supportive!  Seriously!  Ante-partum depression is not as widely know as post-partum depression, but it’s believed to be more common, just less discussed.

  • Don’t assume that once your friend or cousin is pregnant that it is all they want to discuss or think about; if they don’t want to talk about baby clothes or diapers, let that be okay.  Heck, if you get the vibe that that day they actually want to pretend that their bodies aren’t going through major changes and there’s not a countdown ticking to their lives never being the same again, let that be okay!

For any ladies who think they might have the baby blues, and don’t even have the baby yet… It’s going to be alright.

I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice, but this is what helped me out.

1.  Talk to your doctor!

  • Even if it’s just a concern and you don’t feel like you need or want a complete psychiatric evaluation, let them know how you’ve been feeling.  If you have a good doctor they’ll know what to do with any info you give them, something as simple as rechecking your vitamin levels could make a world of difference.

2.  Keep up with your vitamins.

3.  Even if you don’t feel like taking perfect care of yourself, make yourself feel good.

  • Get a hair cut, take a bath.  Even if you don’t think you want to it can make all the difference if just for that day. While you’re probably denying yourself all those things on the “don’t do or eat” while pregnant lists, find a way to let your life be normal while being healthy.  Eat fake-y Americanized sushi, drink a can of Sprite or Root Beer when you’re craving a caffeinated beverage, etc.

4.  Turn off the media! I can’t stress this enough.

  • Don’t subscribe to every baby website, don’t order tons of books and magazines if you get the feeling that looking at those articles or the ads that come with them make of feel in the slightest that you’re not doing something right.  (My mother was kind enough to get me a subscription to Parenting magazine back in June, and I threw out about 6 issues straight from the mail box because I just couldn’t bring myself to read them yet)
  • I even went so far as to delete a good number of blogs from my blog roll, any one who’s blog-shown life made me jealous or envious went away.  Craft and fashion blogs even got deleted as too many of them were making me focus on what I didn’t have rather than what I did.
  • Just like the media is responsible for so many of us believing that skinny=happy, they also want us to believe that pregnant will always = happy and if for a moment pregnant doesn’t = happy than there’s something wrong with you and how dare you try to be a mother…. and it’s all a bunch of crap and the best thing to do is just walk away from it all.

5. Talk!

  • Even if it’s in bits and pieces, talk to your spouse, your mom, your BF, somebody; you’d be surprised with how much is just in your head.
  • One of my best turning around moments was admitting to my Mom and hubby that I’ve hated about 90% of being pregnant and am not jumping at the chance doing it again any time soon and you know what?  They got it, they understand and I felt so much better.
  • There I’ve said it!  Judge me if you want, but at this moment it’s the truth!  Also just to clarify – I’ve hated being pregnant, not the pregnancy.  I’ve loved this little guy since the first moment he was a possibility on June 1st 2010.  However, if he wants a sibling to play with I’m going to need a few years or I will be the first human ever have a kid by laying eggs (which I’ve volunteered my husband to sit on for 9 months).

6.  Find at least one thing that can distract you and one thing that can provide a little solace.

  • For me it was Logic Problem activity books and a number of prayers I found at the Prayer Chapel Online (I love this resource), my favorite and most used recently have been the Serenity Prayer, the Prayer for Freedom From Anxiety, any of the Courage Prayers and the Prayer for a Mother Awaiting Childbirth.

Wow, I’ve written more than I expected and I’m going to publish it, in the hopes that perhaps one person will stumble over it one day and it might be just what they need.

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