Bonkers: A Real Mum's Hilariously Honest tales of Motherhood, Mayhem and Mental Health. Olivia Siegl

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       CHAPTER 3

       PREGNANT AND BLOOMING – (AKA BLOOMING DEMONIC, STARVING AND WILLING TO KILL FOR A CHEESE BURGER AND A FULL-FAT COKE)

      Those weeks when we carried around our secret really were magical. Just the two of us, feeling excited and special, sharing the baby whilst the rest of the world was unawares. We went to the doctor and he assigned us a gynaecologist (down the mountain). We already knew of him thanks to his God-like status; he had delivered most of the babies in our village. My mates and I used to joke about how the same man had seen all our fannies! Bit crude maybe, but hey, when you’re pregnant and not drinking you have to get your kicks somewhere right?

      MORNING SICKNESS – AKA FEELING CONSTANTLY HUNGOVER MINUS THE FUN OF GETTING INAPPROPRIATELY SMASHED!

      Boy, oh boy, do we need these kicks when the all-day, ‘When is this going to end?’ morning sickness kicks in.

      Oh yes, along came the seven weeks pregnant mark, bringing its stomach-turning mate with him, and so ensued six weeks of me feeling worse than I did the morning after drinking my body weight in Jaegar with the Vietnamese mafia. Oh and not to forget me looking radiant and blooming aka stuffing my face with Fizzy Haribo, Cheese Burgers and full fat Coke under a blanket on the sofa whenever I got the chance.

      God, it was hell (not the stuffing my face obvs that was pretty, darn special). The sickness. Ugghhhh! My early pregnancy days consisted of peeling myself out of bed and wanting to puke or crumble into smithereens of exhaustion (usually both). And then having to get my sorry-for-myself ass ready to face the long and winding drive down the mountain and then across the border into Switzerland. All whilst switching between wanting to suck the life out of orange segments to wanting to puke up in the plastic carrier bag I now carried as a staple accessory on the passenger seat.

      So, as you can imagine the last thing I felt at nine weeks pregnant was sociable! And I so wish someone at the time had told me it was OK to want to cocoon myself away from the world, to be able to come home, put on my fat bum pants and flake – after a day of fooling the rest of the outside world that I was feeling my usual normal self. If you are currently pregnant and wanting to do nothing more than sit on your gorgeous pregnant bottom and chill out, then guess what? You can! Now, go get your stretchy telly pants on, get horizontal and enjoy every moment of it, my lovely.

      I was not prepared mentally for the level of emotions and exhaustion I felt. I had brought into the ‘I’m not sick, I’m just pregnant’ malarkey and was determined to carry on as normal despite just wanting to rest. No one had told me to ease off the pressure, to allow myself to be pregnant and tired and to know that this is OK. This is normal.

      Without this little nugget of advice, my hubby had to learn the hard way of what it is like to cross swords with a knackered creator of human life.

      One evening, I was feeling like total and utter dog turd thanks to the morning sickness. I’d spent the day at work pretending I was on top of my game to all my work colleagues whilst taking sneaky naps in the staff loos. I’d finally made it home after a particularly stomach-churning and exhausting drive home up the winding mountain roads, which had me dry-retching at every bend like a rabid dog. I walked into the house desperate to get into my PJs and onto the sofa, bury my face into my standard bag of Haribo, when my darling hubby reminded me that, there were other plans afoot: I now had to get my glad rags on because we were leaving in ten minutes to go for dinner with friends.

      WTF?

      I had no words. Literally not even one bloody syllable.

      However, I did have huge, ugly, face-distorting, snot-dripping sobs, and proceeded to soak him, the kitchen floor and anything within three feet of me with them.

      The look on my hubby’s face was priceless. Like some weird bugeyed, snot-a-whalling creature had just slithered her way in, pretending to be his wife. (He had no idea what was yet to come!)

      Bewildered and fearing for his life, he dared to approach and try to convince me that it would be a good and enjoyable thing to go out for dinner with our friends.

      He might as well have been inviting me to dine with Satan himself whilst sat on a pile of upturned drawing pins.

      Now obviously, he was not growing body parts, so he couldn’t quite get his head around either my hysterics or the levels of unadulterated exhaustion and irrationality. As far as he was concerned, I had just finished work for the week and we could now look forward to a lovely night with our friends. However, for knackered and pregnant me, it was the end of my sofa-obsessed world. I’d driven to and from a different country to get to work, whilst trying not to puke my guts up on the mountainside or at the border control. Then I’d faced a long day of meetings talking about internal ad campaigns, meeting agendas and newsletters; endured a team meeting where everyone stank of coffee and fags; listened until my brain hurt trying to fathom out what everyone was saying in their lightning speed French – all whilst wanting to crawl under my desk, puke in the plant pot and take a nap on my colleague Jean-Luc’s discarded and very expensive laptop bag. I’d kept up the farcical charade that all was well, I was ‘fine’, on top of the world and my job.

      Now the thought of having to continue the pretence and lie to my good friends, to desperately think of a believable excuse as to why I was not drinking my usual Friday night gallon of vin blanc whilst watching everyone else get pissed – when all I wanted to do was put on my elasticated PJ bottoms, curl up under a blanket and stuff my face with anything that would stop this nausea – was all just too much for this pregnant lady to take.

      After more sobbing and some demonic grunts from my good self, the pregnancy penny finally dropped and my hubby realised that holy hell, he was actually talking to his wife who was now pregnant, overtired, overemotional and wanting to puke and then sleep for a billion years. With his life hanging in the balance, he got the message, tucked me up on the sofa and went to dinner armed with apologies and excuses for me not being able to make it. The moral of this story? Listen to yourself and do what’s best for you. You ARE allowed.

      PREGNANCY CAN BE BLOODY SCARY

      All was going well with my pregnancy. I felt like dog turd most of the time, but I’d read on one of the baby websites now bombarding me with emails, that it was a good sign to feel so ill. Then, at around seven weeks, we had the shock of our lives: I noticed I was bleeding. I felt sick and devastated, immediately thinking the worst. We phoned our doctor, who reassured us that this can be normal at this stage, but we wanted to go into hospital just to be on the safe side. The hospital was an hour away down the mountain (I was now beginning to curse the fact we were so far away!) and it became one of the longest drives of our lives. We drove most of the way in silence, not daring to voice our fears that the little person we had been secretly planning and celebrating was being taken away from us. We tried to fill that hour with reassuring words, but the fear in the air of our car was palpable.

      Once we got to the hospital and were ushered into our room, the nurse explained she was going to do a scan and see if she could find a heartbeat. I felt sick, panicked and couldn’t dare let my mind wonder: What if she can’t?

      They were long and terrifying minutes as she smothered my unpregnant-looking tummy with cold jelly and then proceeded to look for the baby and any sign of a tiny heart beat. She assured us that she was having trouble finding it only because the pregnancy was so early. Then she pressed down harder and bingo, she found it! We were relieved for a millisecond – until she informed us that she was worried that it was very faint and told us that we’d have to come back in a week’s time.

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