Pregnancy SOS: A diary of a first time mum to be

The day after the night before

“You look a lot less like death now babe” Gaz smiles broadly as I walk through the ‘dogs’ room (aka the dining room, we call it such as it has a sofa and the dogs beds and is where they all sleep) and into the kitchen. I smile back at him in response, noticing with enthusiasm that the oven is alive and there are saucepans of beans and tomatoes bubbling gently on the hob. I take a deep breath in anticipation and I’m not disappointed as I get a big whiff of the fry-up goodness, only to be shocked that the smell turns my stomach. I frown in confusion, but that doesn’t last long as I notice two full cups of tea next to the kettle and I focus my energy on making my way to one.

“What’s wrong?” asks Gaz, obviously noticing the expression on my face. I reach for my cuppa and look at him. “I dunno…regardless of how hungover I am, I usually love the smell of a fry up” I reply feeling disheartened and sorry for myself, while gently blowing the brown liquid in the cup after burning my tongue slightly when taking a sip.

Gaz pulls a surprised face, “What, the beautiful aroma of toast, scrambled egg and beans aren’t tempting you today?” he asks, feigning shock. I giggle slightly, aware of the horrible burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Apparently not, it’s turned my stomach a bit, but I think I’m starving so maybe it’ll make me feel better once I’m eating” I reply, taking another sip from my cup. The drink is nice – it’s going down nicely, and I can feel the small boost in energy that the sugar is giving me.

Full plate in hand, I follow Gaz and head towards the living room. We’ve decided to eat in the lazy way – on the sofa while watching TV. I plonk myself down, hoping to God that this food settles my stomach; the effects of last nights’ party is still causing me havoc, and to be frank, I feel like s**t.

As I sit in my momentary own world, still feeling sorry for myself while Gaz finds some easy watching trash TV, my phone dings loudly for a text, interrupting the peace. I frown, looking around, trying to work out where abouts the noise came from, as I have absolutely no idea where I’ve put it. At least I now know I didn’t leave it at Emilys’, which is always a bonus. I notice it flashing on the sofa arm nearest Gaz. I frown slightly as I try to remember why were downstairs last night after we’d gotten home.

Knowing what I’m after, Gaz reaches over with his Mr Stretch arms and passes it to me. “Thank you angel,” I smile, unlocking my phone and opening the text message that Emily has just sent. Dude, I feel like f*****g s**t. How are you? Xxx I sigh at the text and type my reply Dannii cannot come to the phone right now. She is momentarily in hell, please try again in a few hrs once this fry up has worked its magic. Thanks for a great night xxx

I smile as I press send, throwing my phone onto the coffee table in front of me. “Ta for the food darling,” I say appreciatively, picking up my knife and fork, deciding what I want to dig into first. I consider my options with as much excitement as my delicate self could handle; Quorn bacon, meat free sausage (we’re both vegetarian), beans, chopped tomatoes, hashbrown, toast and scrambled egg.

These eggs are the most gorgeous eggs I’ve ever eaten – they come from our friends rescue chickens that have taken over his huge back garden. They have a barn to sleep in at night, and they do whatever they want during the day, including play with a football that they stole from his small nephew about 6 months ago. One will head-butt it to make it move, and the others will chase it, apparently, it keeps them occupied for hours. Chickens are so awesome.

Anywho, I stare at my plate and decide that the scrambled egg is my starting point, so I dig in and shovel a huge forkful into my mouth. I chew delicately and savour the taste, before swallowing with a massive gulp. Yep, this is exactly what I needed. I make my way around the plate, slowly eating the contents on it. Each bite seems to bring relief to my poor stomach, and by the end of it, I’m pretty sure that I feel better. I look at Gaz to see that he’s finished his breakfast too, so I lean over, grab his plate from the coffee table and force myself to stand up.

It takes effort; I’m still struggling with my muscles – they feel heavy, like they’re made of lead and moving is hard work. What was I doing last night?? Were we dancing? I can’t remember dancing. But then again, I can’t remember coming home, yet here we are in the comfort of our living room, so what do I know?

“Would you like a drink of anything while I’m in the kitchen?” I ask Gaz, turning to look at him as I do so. He’s currently on his phone, and he shakes his head in response without saying anything. Ah bless him – he can’t multitask at all.

I walk into the kitchen, followed by 4 hopeful dogs with wagging tails, expecting scraps that aren’t there.

I place the plates in the sink, run the taps over them for a few seconds and turn around, instantly falling over a bloody little black dog who had decided to plonk herself down right behind my feet. “For f**k sake, Maggie!” I cry, struggling to keep my balance as I very nearly face-plant the wall.

Our kitchen is tiny, and it’s extremely annoying. I look at Maggie and shake my head as I see her big dopey face and wagging tail – and I know for a fact that she’s genuinely proud of herself right now.

As I’m giving her my best “I’m not impressed face”, I feel my stomach bubble, quickly followed by a weird churning and before I can do anything about it, I feel a burning coming up to my throat and I just about have enough time to turn my body around and lean over the sink before the entirety of my brunch lands in the sink, and on the plates. Oh f*****g hell. Gross! The sight of it makes me wretch again, and that in turn brings up more. I shut my eyes and grab on to the side for dear life.

I hear quick footsteps from the living room, which is followed quickly by Gazs’ concerned voice, “babe, are you okay?”

I stand over the sink, feeling my whole body shake as my stomach turns again, and I shake my head in response. He puts his hand on my back and gently rubs “Jesus, you’re boiling darling” he says, reaching over and opening the back door to let some fresh air in. The freezing January air rushes over my body, and it’s a welcome feeling – I wasn’t aware I was sweating so much, but now Gaz mentions it, I can feel myself burning up. I inhale deeply through my nose and after holding my breath a few seconds I exhale. It’s a shaky breath but my stomach feels calmer, so I slowly straighten my back and stand up. I look at Gaz, feeling a little bit like death, “f*****g hangover” I mutter.

It’s been a terrible day overall, it seems that the hangover has killed me off, and I ended up spending most of the afternoon lying on the bathroom floor, throwing up and feeling extremely sorry for myself. Gaz has been coming upstairs regularly and checking on me, bringing me fresh water and sympathy every 30 minutes or so. It’s about 8pm and I’ve finally stopped being sick.

Although to be fair, there really isn’t anything left in my stomach to come up; it’s been bile for the past 40 minutes and it hasn’t been fun at all. I’m now curled up on the sofa (with bucket on standby just in case), in my PJs, hair once again plastered to my face, wrapped in a blanket with severe stomach ache and my throat feeling like I’ve been swallowing razor blades.

Like I say; it’s been a terrible day overall.

Gaz looks at me, and I can see the pity in his eyes, “would you like something to eat babe?” he enquires, shifting his position so he can see me better. I pull an undecided face as I consider the question – do I want anything to eat?

It’s a tough question when you’ve been ill; I mean, there is literally nothing in my stomach; so in theory having something to eat is a good idea to help reduce the stomach ache.

However if I put something in my stomach, I may well end up just being sick again, and to be quite honest, I’m over the whole throwing up thing for the foreseeable future.

I’m not sure how my throat will cope with anything tough or scratchy either, it’s definitely feeling worse for wear. Maybe soup? Soup is good. Actually, do we even have any soup? I’m pretty sure we don’t, so that’s out of the question.

“Hello…Earth to Miss Clewley…” Gaz’s voice interrupts my thoughts. I look up at him, “erm, I don’t know to be honest” I reply. “I think I’m hungry but I don’t want to be sick again…any ideas?” I ask. He frowns, “what are you in the mood for?” he asks. I think about it for a second “actually, I could just go for waffles with tomatoes and grated cheese on top.” I reply, suddenly imagining how nice it would be to devour that. As in right now.

He gives me a quizzical glance in reply but nods his head, “sounds good to me, you stay here and lie down, and I’ll go through and make some. I’m going to have some too, I’m bloody starving” he says, pulling himself off of the sofa and walking over to me. He kisses my head as he walks past, “you’ve never looked more beautiful” he jokes as he walks out of the room.

I laugh to myself as I hear the kitchen door open, well aware at how pathetic and gross I must look, but in all honestly, dignity went out of the window years ago, before we even became a couple.

He used to work behind the bar where I went to drink with my friends, I remember the first time I seen him, standing there behind the bar, looking all calm, bored and somewhat arrogant. He looked up from what I assume was a regular he was conversing with as we closed the door and walked towards the bar. He smiled at us, but it wasn’t a real smile – it was an obligatory smile that was necessary because it was his job. But it was enough, and from that moment on he was well and truly imprinted in my mind. We had never been in before – the bar looked like a shithole from the outside and it never interested any of our group going in, we were more of a cheap and cheerful Weatherspoons kind of group (to be fair, we still are). But about a week before, Molly had received a flyer through the door with 2 for 1 cocktails, and who were we to say no to that.

He walked over to us and gave a half smile as he raised his eyebrows, “what can I get for you ladies?”

We ordered, had our drinks in hand and sat down, and I remember vividly looking at all our drinks and finding it really ironic that not one of us had ordered a cocktail.

As we sipped our drinks and chatted, it started getting busy and before long, the place was pretty packed, and he was joined behind the bar with another member of staff to help with the workload.

I had no idea if it was because of how busy it was or not, but Mr Barman didn’t look at, nor to talk me again for the remainder of the night. We had a good night though, and that bar quickly become one of our regular places to drink – it turns out the cocktails were actually really good, when we finally got around to trying them, and the 2 for 1 offer never seemed to end.

It had been a good 8 weeks of us going in on a Friday and Saturday night when we started to get talking to some of the regulars and the staff and within 12 weeks we were on polite first name bases with everyone. One random Wednesday evening, Molly and I had had a particularly rough day at work and said f**k it – pub, literally the second we walked out of the office door.

We didn’t even get changed, we went in our work uniform to Weatherspoons and got us a bottle of wine to share. It lasted about 20 minutes between us, the second bottle lasting not much longer than the first, and after that we were bored of the taste of wine and we hit the gin. I’m not going to lie – a lot of that night is a blur, however I do remember throwing up in a shop doorway on the way home, and while doing so, a familiar voice from somewhere out of my sight asked in amusement “been on a bender, Clewley?”

He was my blurry knight in shining armour; holding me up and practically carrying my home, telling me not to worry when I threw up all over his shoes, telling me not to worry again when I nearly fell, grabbed his coat for balance and broke it, unlocking my door and helping me over the doorstep, which I remember being convinced was a mountain. He then helped me into the living room and lay me down on the sofa and covered me with the throw. I woke up 8 hrs later convinced I was dying, but opening my eyes to a pint glass of water, a large potato pan by my head on the floor and a note that said “Morning sunshine, here’s some water, I’ve locked your door and posted the key through the letter box. Enjoy the hangover. Ps; you owe me a new coat ;) x”

I was f*****g mortified.

So yeah, dignity went out of the window years ago with us. I actually still have that note in the draw of my bedside table. It was actually in my pant draw for a while, but the consistent innuendos from Gaz got too much for me to deal with (I’m sure you can think of some too), so I moved it to my sock draw. Much more innocent.

I pull a face as it occurs to me that actually, I never got him a new coat.

He came back into the room with a fresh glass of water and looked at me, “What are you thinking so hard about? I could smell the concentration from the kitchen” he jokes, smiling to himself.

I shoot him a disapproving look, “I’m thinking about the night you had to carry me home” I reply, reaching for the water and taking a sip.

He laughs out loud, “which one? There’s been that many” he responds, plonking his beer on the coffee table and sitting down next to me. I laugh with him, “I’m thinking about the night you left me that note, before we were together” I clarify, kicking him gently with my right foot.

He flicked my foot in response to my kick and he smiled at me, “oh yeah…didn’t you throw up on my shoes?”