Week 6 mostly continued in the same state of feeling surreal and pretty distracted all the time – I couldn’t help but Google questions every 20 minutes! This week, the fatigue also hit me HARD. I found I’d manage until lunchtime then I’d totally crash in the afternoon – by 3pm, I’d be staring blankly at my screen. (And apparently I wrote that sentence during this time – it just ended half way through! Good thing I checked!). I fell asleep a couple of times after coming home from work this week and I had to nap in the daytime at the weekend too. I literally NEVER nap and I tend to survive on very little sleep (I just always have done), so this was very strange to me.
At this point, I wasn’t really feeling all that many symptoms. A lot of this week was spent not quite believing it and wondering if I was just making up any symptoms I was feeling. I doubted that the tests I’d done were right, I doubted my symptoms, I doubted that my eyes had seen the test right… And when I wasn’t worrying about this, I was worrying about miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. People talk about miscarriage a lot more than they used to, so it’s more apparent that they’re more common. While I think this is amazing and people should totally talk about infertility struggles, ectopic pregnancies and miscarriage, I seemed to manage to stumble across seemingly every blog post out there about these topics as well as reading a book that had an ectopic pregnancy in it. Throw in the occasional niggle in my side (I get these all the time anyway – I think it’s a leftover niggle from gallbladder surgery), and the lower abdomen cramp type pains that I’d started with a couple of weeks before (apparently that’s just implantation, uterus stretching or ligaments) and yay – lots of worrying!
See more of my pregnancy diary posts here or check out the whole thing:
The only thing that was really bothering me this week was heat rash – eurgh. And I can’t really say that was a symptom of pregnancy, more likely it was the heatwave we were having – the craziest, hottest, longest heatwave everrrr I should add – but apparently your skin is more sensitive during pregnancy anyway. This started on the underside of my upper arms then spread under my arms and down the side of my body too, which was super fun because your arms and side tend to touch a lot. I also wasn’t sure what I was allowed to use or not use, so I ended up slathering myself with various gentle body creams and Sudocrem.
As a result of the heatwave, I also caved to buying maternity shorts on ASOS. Yes, this was SO early, but they were on sale, and I knew that if this baby stuck around, I’d most likely be needing some for our Disney trip (when I’ll be around 14-16 weeks), and I was worried they’d go out of stock before then. I’m very glad I did buy them because, while I can still fit into my normal shorts now (at 12 weeks), they are just slightly uncomfortable. I have one pair that’s always been too big which are wearable, but I think I’m a bit more sensitive to pressure around my stomach right now. I’ve actually worn the maternity shorts several times already even though I don’t need to, so I’m pretty happy about this purchase.
But sadly, my other purchases have been very restrained – at least, clothing-wise. Mimi Holliday had a set I’ve been watching for months go into the sale, but I couldn’t justify the purchase as I literally have NO idea what bra size I’ll be over the next few months and whether I’ll be able to wear my old size again post-baby. This was a very sad moment!
Midweek, I had my hair chopped off! I knew I wanted it doing post-wedding as I’d been growing it just in case I wanted it long for it, but I was getting sick of it, particularly with the hot weather. I’m so glad I got it done! We also had my parents’ dog, Lottie, to stay with us at the end of this week while they were away so that was lovely, although walking her in the heat was really hard work.
On the Friday evening, we did a local village feast quiz with Charley and Frankie – sadly we were nowhere near winning (even with a quiz champion on our team!) but we had a lot of fun. I was a little concerned about how I would cope that evening as I’d had a couple of waves of feeling sick earlier in the week and was worried in case that happened while we ate our fish and chips half way through, but luckily I was absolutely fine. The only problem I had was dealing with my first proper craving: white wine!! I don’t even normally drink wine (and am not bothered about alcohol in the slightest usually) but a couple of days earlier, I’d started thinking about wine and it was all I wanted in the world. Charley had a glass and I had to smell it to try to curb the craving!
And finally, this week marked some more fun news – we got to tell more people! Coming up towards the end of 6 weeks, in fact, 6 weeks 6 days (at least, according to my original due date), we were having Ben’s family over for a BBQ then probably not seeing them again for a couple of weeks, so we made the decision that it was time to tell them. If my family had been around and not on holiday, we would have told both our families the news straight away – I can’t keep secrets from family! – but we decided it was time to tell them, and at least we’d have more people behind us if something went wrong (can you tell I was terrified of this in the early weeks?!).
So we needed another announcement plan! The gathering was for Ben’s mum’s birthday, so I thought we could make a sign that simply said “Happy birthday Grandma!” when she walked in, which we did, but Ben’s sister and boyfriend arrived first so we had to hide the sign because we wanted them all there together. In the end, we printed off an Amazon voucher as a birthday present and wrote the “Happy birthday Grandma!” message in there.
But apparently we’re always too subtle! Ben’s mum briefly opened it, said “Thank you!” and put it down on the table! Ben and I caught each others’ eyes and tried not to laugh before he handed it over to his sister saying “Look at this“, quite emphatically, to which she muttered, “Well that’s rude, she’s not THAT old!” before suddenly jumping to her feet with a gasp! It still took a few more seconds for everyone else to catch on, but there was excitement all round then. Telling people is THE BEST and also pretty nervewracking!
