Today marks 23 weeks pregnant. Baby Shark is around 30cm and about 500g; at the fetal scan about 2 weeks ago he was measuring on target so all is well.
If you’ve been following my Instagram profile you’ll know that last week Tuesday (5 Feb 2019) we started some home renovations namely redo 2 out of 3 bathrooms, replace all the tiles in the house & replace the kitchen and finish the garden from last year. I wasn’t overly keen but we went ahead anyway.

Looking back now, I’ve been struggling (or avoiding going to sleep at night) for about 2 – 3 weeks before this, which in itself is rare for me because I’m a great sleeper and love my sleep. I haven’t had an actual panic attack, but I can certainly feel my anxiety levels are heightened, all the time. I haven’t felt totally calm & relaxed in some time. I have also noticed that I’m being overly snappy & harsh with Tristan and just snappy about things in general.
Initially I put it down to the stress of the renovation, but then last week Thursday I couldn’t sleep; at 3am I was still awake and just feeling really anxious. I hadn’t bought a single thing for Baby Shark (he currently has 1 baby grow) and I was just anxious about the timings of the renovation being completed. The next morning I made an appointment to see my psychiatrist.

D-Day arrived

Today I had my appointment with my psychiatrist. When I went through to his room he immediately said to me ‘I can notice a very high level of anxiety coming from you today, what’s happening?’. That was literally the first thing he said to me. And so all the feelings fell out of my mouth as I offloaded everything I’ve been feeling to him. Yes I cried but I think I needed to. It felt good to verbalise everything because often I keep it inside and let it go round and round my head which isn’t the right way for me.

Way forward

I have a script; I am going to start with both the mild, twice daily tranquilliser and antidepressant today. Now before you start with the “how will this affect your unborn baby sh!t” let me tell you I have discussed this at length with my psychiatrist and he is definitely not going to prescribe me anything that will affect Baby Shark so please, just pipe down. So I’ll be taking a mild tranquiliser morning & night for 6 days just to take the edge off; get more more calm and moving forward again. I will start the antidepressant at the same time; half a dose for 4 days then up to full dose.

It already feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders just knowing that I have the script and the meds will start to work soon. Don’t get my wrong, I am also know that these meds (mainly the antidepressant) will take a few weeks to truly start helping, but I am a firm believer in the placebo effect so know I will start to feel better sooner than that.

Tristan and I have booked accommodation starting Monday 18 Feb (read about my renovation survival tips to understand this part) and will be at the same property for at least a week. I think Tristan has had enough change, etc to deal with that we will probably stay there till we come back home; change is hard enough for an adult so I need to be mindful that he is only 3 so want to keep change to a minimum for him.

I’m sharing my story because, as I’ve always said, I don’t want mental health when pregnant, postnatal depression, pregnancy anxiety etc to be such a taboo subject. Let’s talk about it and hopefully we can all help each other.

Much love xxx