Prima visita!

I don’t know why, but by the time the doctor called me into her office for my first pregnancy appointment, I was physically trembling and my now ever-present all-day nausea was threatening to throw me over the edge. I’m not good with doctors; I don’t like to be poked and prodded – much less in the old ‘stirrup’ chair (if you know what I mean…) so, having waited the customary 50 minutes (she’s great but always running way behind), it was with some trepidation that I dragged myself into the consulting room and “made myself comfortable”.
The visit started with a half hour chat about how I’m feeling (sick!), what I should and shouldn’t eat (not an issue at the moment as I can hardly bear to let anything pass my lips!), what I should and shouldn’t do, and my fear of the dreaded complication (which shall remain nameless, but which has wreaked havoc for the women of my family for generations…). The doctor was - I have to say - fantastic. She put my mind at rest about a lot of things, saying things like “you don’t have to worry because if you do have complications, they are not your problem anyway; they’re my problem” and (talking about the illness) “if you invite her to the party, she might just come….. If you don’t invite her then she probably won’t bother, but if she does, try slamming the door in her face….”. A quick exam, a pregnancy certificate and a prescription for some anti-bacterial capsules, and I was done. Oh, she also gave me a two-month supply of folic acid to be getting on with, as well as some insider information about what goes on at the local hospitals – just so that I was properly informed. All in all I was pleased with how things went. I now need to organize my 12-week scan in Sardinia (we’ll be on holiday there for most of August and I hit week 12 on the 17th) plus a round of blood tests to do more or less straight away. Next gyno visit if all goes well will be at the beginning of September. Now I just need to get rid of this damn nausea and I’ll be much more capable of functioning like a normal human being…

Aversion!

I hope to have something more interesting to blog about than nausea over the next few months. For the time being, however, that sicky feeling is at the centre of my universe… Today I’m even home from work as I just couldn’t stand the thought of another day feeling nauseated by my colleagues’ perfumes, not being able to stomach even a cheese sandwich at lunch and generally wanting to curl up in a ball and cry. Yesterday we went to the usual bar under the office for lunch and, although I felt like I couldn’t face anything, I ordered what I thought would be the easy option – pasta in a tomato sauce. It arrived, I took one bite and couldn’t face the rest as it tasted somehow wrong. My colleagues assured me that it was perfectly fine, but my super acute sense of smell / taste told me not to eat it, so I ordered a plate of roast beef, potatoes and mozzarella instead. The minute they put it down in front of me I knew it was going to be a problem! Half an hour later, having left two full plates of food, I found myself arguing with the very friendly owner, who insisted that I shouldn’t pay for any of what I had left. She was convinced that there was something terribly wrong with her food (I’m usually a big eater and we go there every day…) and I felt awful for her. I couldn’t tell her my stomach was subjecting me to pregnant tantrums as I was with a group of colleagues so I got two free lunches which I didn’t even eat. Not quite “everyone’s a winner” but there you are!
So far the only foods I can even contemplate (and not even all of the time) are: cereals, mashed potato, cheese, breaded fish, ice cream, pasta, chocolate budino, apples and pears. This is not a balanced pregnancy diet! What can I do? I’m taking my pre-natal vitamins, eating whenever I feel I can and hoping for the best….

Fear of the system

Come on now, this is getting ridiculous. I have always known that nausea was part of the pregnancy package, but when you’ve suffered from it more or less constantly for the best part of a week, it starts to grind you down. Like this past weekend – it was 35 degrees out, the entire world was at the beach / in the mountains / at the lake, and what was I doing? Lying under the air con unit, holding my stomach, trying not to lose it. For TWO DAYS STRAIGHT. If Luca hadn’t been a complete sport and stuck the whole thing out with me, I don’t know what I would have done! No, honestly, come on now – a person has to be able to go about their daily life, no? I can’t eat, I can’t go anywhere…. Getting to work and staying there is a huge trauma…. Am just hoping that this supposedly short period of sickness does what it says in the text books, and packs its bags around week 12. Earlier than that would be lovely, of course – especially since we’re off to Sardinia in week 10 and I don’t fancy the long drive and ferry ride feel green around the gills! Not to mention being able to go to the beach or out for dinner without having to carry an emergency bag around with me the whole time!! OK, feeling worse just writing this stuff down….. This sucks big time!!! Thursday I have my first appointment with the gynecologist. Am pleased to be seeing her but a little apprehensive as it will really mark the start of a long process whereby I will be poked and prodded and generally man-handled… All stuff that really isn’t me! I’m English – I won’t take kindly to many of the situations that I know the Italian system will subject me to, but I’m trying to be open-minded about it. I know an American girl who was told to strip down to her bra in the waiting room at the hospital – surrounded by other patients and their random friends / family members (males included) – as the doctor was running late and they wanted to speed the process up!!! I know another girl who, having been admitted to hospital, received “spread your legs”-style check-ups from passing doctors with a room full of her room-mate’s visitors and not a hint of a curtain. She actually had to ask the random male visitor at the next bed to stop staring at her while the doctor performed his check!!! These are the sorts of things that literally give me nightmares. I know the medical care here is of a good standard, but I can’t stand the thought of being treated like a piece of meat, of not having my wishes respected (birth plans don’t appear to exist in Italy – you do what the doctor tells you), and most of all being put into situations I can’t control and can’t get out of. What if I have to be admitted to hospital in the 6th month and stay there (like my mum was)?? There are no creature comforts in Italian hospitals – not even a TV in the room, no private rooms (unless you pay 500 euros a night in one of Milan’s top clinics), and the bathrooms are filthy and shared by an entire floor of people. This is what I have heard from many different sources. I know it’s early days yet, but these “little things” are starting to play on my mind. I know the health and well-being of my baby is the most important thing, but I can’t help but worry that being thrown into a chaotic, un-friendly, impersonal system will cause me enough stress that my health – and maybe that of my unborn child – will in some way be affected. I know I just have to buckle up and take the ride as it comes, but my personality really gets in the way sometimes. I’m not easy-going, I need to be in control of situations which affect me, and I have to feel comfortable otherwise I’m capable of flying into a panic. I’ve coped for years with anxiety, verging at times on agoraphobia, but for the most part I’ve managed to keep it within tolerable limits. I’m worried that the experience of pregnancy in a country like Italy is enough to push me over the edge.

Sick

I feel sick. Sick and gross and yuck. For the past few days, I’ve had a constant underlying feeling of nausea, which only goes away if I eat, and only if I eat very specific things. Cheese, pizza and pasta are at the top of the list, and chocolate is also in there somewhere, albeit much further down. I feel so queasy as I am writing this from my office that just typing out the names of food is making my stomach turn! And those are the “safe foods”…
My phone just rang and woke me up. I am NOT KIDDING! Right after the words “safe foods” I must have started to nod off because I jumped out of my skin! Not too pleasant so far this pregnancy stuff…. The usual healthy eating which before was part of my everyday lifestyle is now totally out of the window – I’m not even going to list the foods I used to love and now can’t think about because just writing them down will certainly make me gag! I had trouble getting my folic acid pill down last night – that’s how bad the situation is!!!
I told my boss. It’s way too early, but we work very closely and I was getting stressed out trying to constantly think of new ways to explain my lateness in the mornings. Headache, forgot to set me alarm, traffic on the tangenziale, doctors appointment… After about a week and a half it was all too much, and so I took him aside and told him that it’s still early but for the sake of me not getting stressed and him not wanting to fire me, this was the reason. He said he had already guessed!! It makes sense I suppose – his wife had a baby not too long ago and so he probably helped her to make up the very same excuses in the same way that Luca has been helping me! Bless… So anyway, I told him I would ‘inform the company’ after the summer holidays (assuming everything goes to plan….) and that until then he was to leave me alone if I didn’t make it in before 11 or disappeared in the middle of the day! I think he got the message….
OK, back to concentrating on not throwing up all over my desk. Apologies for the detail ;-)

Voglia!

I can’t stop eating cheese. Just can’t stop. And in the office this afternoon, from about 5 o’clock onwards I couldn’t concentrate on anything as I couldn’t get thoughts of ricotta and spinach tortelloni out of my head. And lasagna. And cannelloni. And it really was a need – like a “if I don’t get to eat a bowl of pasta in the next 5 minutes, I might just throw up” need…. So, in the absence of a hot, steamy bowl of creamy pasta with cheese (mmmmmm….), I raided the vending machine at work for the next thing on the list – Fonzies. These are basically like cheesy watsits – very cheesy, very salty, fried corn chips. Not one pack but THREE! So much for trying to be as healthy as possible…. The problem is that I feel nauseated at the thought of anything else, and I guess that eating something is better than eating nothing so I’m kind of going with it at the moment. I was healthy before my pregnancy and just as soon as the sicky-hungry-cravy-sicky period is out of the way, I absolutely promise that I will get right back on track. Until then, I’m just going to try and listen to my body and take my cues from it. It’s weird, also because I can’t bear to not be in control (of everything!), especially when it comes to health issues. I think that this is an opportunity for me to learn that I can’t always have a perfect grip on every situation, and what better teacher than my very own body….

I'm not ill, I'm pregnant...

Well, the gynecologist was 50 minutes late arriving at her office, so our 15:30 appointment was actually at 16:20. No problem, but she could have called her secretary so that we knew that she was on her way, but didn’t. Ho hum. We didn’t really get any further to be honest – she answered a few of my questions, said there was no point in doing another “official” pregnancy test as I’d already done two, and that if I wanted to become her patient, that was fine but she’d be on holiday starting in two weeks’ time and had no free appointments before then. So that told me basically. I left feeling not much more informed or looked after than before and, the next day decided I would cut my losses and go back to my previous gyno who, despite being the most expensive in the city and not connected to a hospital, would at least provide me with a decent level of care. Just a few hours later, having sent her an “It looks like I’m pregnant, what should I do now?” email, she got back to me with a long, detailed response which I received at 11pm. Now that’s dedication. In fact it was the first of 3 consecutive evenings at around that time, during which I received further communication from her about which blood tests to do and when to book my first appointment with her. Friday morning I battled the nausea to do my first bHCG test, which is the pregnancy hormone, and which is supposed to double every 3 days or so, indicating “normal” progression. So, tomorrow morning I will drag myself off for the second one, hopefully feeling a little better than I do today! They say pregnancy isn’t an illness, but when the slightest movement makes your head pound and your stomach churn, it’s quite hard to believe!! Now where did I put my ginger biscuits…??