In a funk

May 11, 2009

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I’m not quite sure how I’ve managed to get myself into this state, but I need to find a way to drag myself out of it.

Actually, I’ve got lots of ideas about how I got here. The first trimester of pregnancy was rough, with a constant feeling of nausea and a definite dislike of pretty much all food and drink. Plus there was the stress of trying not to be stressed – having had three missed miscarriages in three years I no longer believe that pregnancy is straightforward, and even though this one is proceeding very differently to those early losses I can’t help being worried about it in a way that I didn’t worry during Big and Small’s pregnancies.

Shortly after (two days!) I stopped feeling sick from pregnancy, I got Tim’s cough and cold that he’d had, and started feeling sick from coughing and not being able to breathe. I’m only just getting over that – I still have a dreadful taste at the back of my throat all the time that I just can’t clear. Plus I’ve gone off tea and can’t find anything I enjoy drinking, so I’m struggling to keep my liquid intake up high enough that I don’t get headaches.

So that’s all the physical stuff, plus the assorted aches and pains that come along with your body stretching and changing. It doesn’t begin to cover the psychological effects – I feel run down and pathetic, and I think not having anyone near enough to just drop in for for a chat (and a not cuppa, sigh) is having a definite adverse affect. I’m not used to not having a job, I’m not used to not having a car, and I’m not used to not knowing the area or anyone around. On top of all that, I’m pondering the miscarriages – I don’t think I took any time to myself over the last one in November, life was just so crazy at the time, I only took four days off work for the physical affects, and that was a week after the fact. I can’t really explain what is going on in my head about them, it’s not grief precisely, but I’m niggling at it.

So all in all, I’m feeling physically and mentally pathetic, and I’m struggling to snap myself out of it. Still, this week I should see ppl (even if some of them are my family!) and that should help a bit.

It’s where it is

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Comments

5 responses to “In a funk”

TBird
11 May 2009
gentle hugs etc from me for emotional stuff. Hope you can find something that you can happily drink soon.
Reply
mamacrow
11 May 2009
I’m so sorry you’re having a tough time 🙁 hormones are all up and down in pregnancy – mine are making me uncharacteristically (even for me!) agressive!
I swore loudly in front of the children the other week – like, they were standing there looking at me, and no stubbed toe excuse, and it wasn’t just once, it was a whole string – and did traditional hand gestures at some idiot boy cyclists with a death wish in the car today and called them ‘idiots’ (on the banned list in our house along with stupid, boring, that kinda thing)… all very unlike me. Things haven’t been irritating me, they’ve been making me literally SEETH WITH WAVES OF RAGE.
Which has been a little scary, but seems to be calming down a bit now. This has never happened before either!
I also find I go ‘off’ things as they taste ‘different – this time it’s lemmons (I ADORE lemmons and usually drink a lot of honey and lemmon juice in hot or cold water), chocolate (i know!) and… water.
I LOVE water usually, I’ll happily drink gallons of it, it dosn’t have to be flavoured. Now – yeurk! Luckily I still like elderflower cordual, but was struggling and starting to get headaches and the like. I’m also loving stewed rubarb (tis the season down here) which has lots of liquid, so that’s probably helping.
The scary thing is, that intense dislikes that arrive in pregnancy often stay with me forever.. I still have problems with spaggetti bolignase, and can’t even contemplate a sealed jar of nescafe on the supermarket shelf. I’m not sure I can conceive of living the rest of my life with out lemmons and chocolate 😮
no car, no friends and new area is BOUND to be having a negative effect… hope things look up soon!
I can’t speak from personal experience re the grieving over miscarrage, but from what other people have said, you do definitely need to and it does often seem to come out in another pregnancy, if you see what I mean… your midwives or gp surgery should be able to point you in the direction of services… which are very good precaution to take against the risk of perinatel depression (she says with her Mental Health Issues hat on)
(((hugs)))
Reply
Merry
12 May 2009
Maybe your funk is in fact exactly what you need and you should go with it and ride it and see where it takes you? Even if it is deep into yourself for a while?
I don’t know about you but i have a tendency (i think it is more than a tendency really, i think it is a very bad form of avoidance behaviour) or hurling myself at lots of things so i don’t THINK. Max gets increasingly frustrated with my inability to just stop and think and process or just relax without a screen or a book or a something to do – anything to avoid thinking.
Perhaps the only way forward is to sit and stew? Last year i did an online counselling course (different slant, similar slightly incomprehensible process of undefinable emotion, as you know) and part of that was buying a nice diary and writing in it, about the experience, every day, every night whether i felt like it or not. Some, anything, even if it was “i don’t want to write this” 100 times. It had to be handwritten, in a book i had gone out and looked for and found and which spoke to me and was something i could bear to consign my pain to.
What i discovered, very quickly, was that what was eating at me was not grief, or not grief as i knew it, it was anger. Once i got to that, i had a way of dealing with it – which we did.
Perhaps you are niggled because you aren’t grieving as you feel you should, or because you want to grieve about one loss and feel you can’t because there is a bigger one you feel you should care more about? Perhaps you are angry, frustrated, let down, cross with your body, cross with the world, you sister, your children? Perhaps several pregnancies and a feeling that you “shouldn’t mind” that you are “luckier than some” or “unlucky in everything” is stopping you get on with a process.
I’m not trying to project or compare, just throwing out some thoughts as they occur to me. I resented the diary process enormously but it did show me, very clearly and very quickly, what was wrong.
There were 2 or 3 other very useful techniques i took part in – i won’t put them here but if you want them, i’ll email them. And you might be able to find a similar type of course for miscarriages as i found for my problem.
Reply
SallyM
12 May 2009
*hugs* Nothing useful to say just *hugs*
Reply
HelenHaricot
13 May 2009
hugs too, looking forward to seeing you
Reply