Surprising Emotions During Pregnancy.

I was prepared to be weepy or depressed. I knew I had the chance of getting manic. I was ready to be an emtional basketcase during this pregnancy. I was worried that my pregnancy could trigger a bipolar episode. But it never did.

I am amazed. My sister told me when she is pregnant she starts crying at TV commercials, she is very emotional. So I figured this too would happen to me. And yet it never did.

So what did I feel. Pretty stable almost the entire time. Don't get me wrong there were days were I felt a little down. Days I felt a little up. And days I felt really angry for no reason. But I never felt weepy.

What I was suprised at was how physically demanding pregnancy has been. I developed Hyperemesis (excessive vomiting) around week 7. By week 8 I was on zofran to control the nausea. I remained on zofran until the day I gave birth. Whenever I tried to stop it I would start vomitting again. And when I say excessive I mean by the time I went to the doctor to discuss the vomiting I was throwing up 10-12 times a day. I couldn't even keep down water. When I got to the doctor I was dehydrated and was in a starvation mode (evidence by the ketones in my urine). MY doctor diagnosed me very quickly and I was put on the right medicine and was then able to eat - however for the first half of my pregnancy I was still nauseated everyday while on the medicine but it wasn't bad enough to make me throw up. It was manageable.

In the first trimester I went to a conference in June and caught a nasty cold -- I ended up in the ER one night with symptoms like menegitis (luckily I didn't have that). But I was sick for over two weeks. I couldn't do anything and especially not sleep. My doctor even thought I was starting to get manic becuase I wasn't sleeping. And I became scared that he would put me in the hospital. Luckily he finally realized my problems were physical not mental.

During the second trimester I started getting pretty bad heartburn. It would be so bad I couldn't sleep. Then I had an allergic reaction to Zantac. And had to switch to Pepcid -- eventually that started working and I was able to once again sleep through the night.

In the third trimester the nausea increased ... and once again I had to start learn how to control it better.

In the last month, I had my sciatic nerve bother me every day. Which disturbed my sleep however I was taking long naps to make up for it.

The point of this is -- I expected pregnancy to be mentally challanging for me given my history of depressions, mania and psychosis. And yet -- that was stable. It was the physical issues that were a problem.