Pregnant and terrified: It's maternity's biggest taboo, but antenatal depression is very real

Pregnant and terrified: It's maternity's biggest taboo, but antenatal depression is very real | Mail Online

For as long as I can remember, I hoped I would have children. In my late teens and 20s, I imagined I'd have four. When I reached 30, I readjusted my expectations downwards to two or three.

By 35 and still single, I began quietly to panic as I tried to get my head around the possibility that it might never happen. Then, two-and-a-half months ago, at the age of 39 and after a miscarriage last November, I discovered I was pregnant.

I was momentarily elated, as was my partner. But for me the joy and excitement quickly and surprisingly disappeared. In its place was fear, often verging on terror.

I tried to reassure myself that part of it was normal - physical and hormonal. The constant nausea, the ever-present feeling of exhaustion and the complete loss of appetite are horrible.

As is having such a heightened sense of smell that I can no longer apply moisturiser or open my fridge without feeling sick.

I was also struck by an absolute terror of the birth. I reminded myself that I was not the first person in the world to get pregnant and that nearly 500,000 women worldwide give birth every single day.

This didn't, however, make me any less terrified. Nor did my well-intentioned friend who, in response to my plea for the honest truth, told me that on a scale of one to ten, if two is having your foot run over by a car and five is having your jaw reset without anaesthesia, then childbirth hovers between nine-and-a-half and ten.

But, she tried to assure me, you do forget how awful it is. And I know the birth is not the end of the story; it's only the beginning.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1290139/Pregnant-terrified-Its-maternitys-biggest-taboo-antenatal-depression-real.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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