Coping with pregnancy.

[Gawain]

I'm currently about 7 weeks with dc4 which I know isnt many for a lot of you.
I was wondering if you could give me any tips on how to cope with managing how I feel and my other brats little loves. To be frank I feel rough. This is my worst pregnancy yet and am really struggling with the all day sickness and tiredness not to mention snappy hormones etc.
How did you all do it or are only people with easy pregnancies the ones who go on to have larger families?
Please... anyone?

[reban]

Erm not sure how helpful this will be but i am currently 26 weeks pregnant with dc4 and this is also my worst pregnancy to date. I have had numerous scare and complications and am awaiting scan number 9 (!) at 28 weeks. The only way i have coped is by handing over a lot of responsibility and accepting help or asking for help whenever i can.

So i would say explain how ill you feel to your other children and if they are old enough get them to help out (my dd aged 8 makes the beds and earns extra pocket money now doing various things around the house). DP has had to become more involved in housework even though he works quite long hours and extended family often help in other ways. This makes me sound like a complete lazy cow but i honestly wouldnt have coped without the help! If i could afford it i would have a cleaner and pay someone to do my ironing too

Pregnancy is difficult at the best of times but if you have 3 others that need you its just exhausting so take care of yourself

[Gawain]

We havent told family yet and don't want to as they would just worry. Our last Dc was born 3 months early.
DC1 is 5 so I think I may hold off telling them for a while if we want to keep it a secret .
I think I'll have to just drill it into DH that he'll have to live in squalour for a while. fingers crossed its only to the 12 weeks mark or before.

[reban]

I can appreciate you dont want to tell your family but im sure they can cope with the worry and really at the moment you need to put your own needs first. We had to tell parents really earlier because i was under EPU from 5 weeks and then had to tell SIL at 6 weeks because i had a major bleed when she was there. RE chidren i didnt tell them about new baby till we had all clear at 12 weeks but up tp then explained that mommy wasnt very well and they were quite good about it
Fingers crossed for you and hope you feel better soon x

[struwellpeter]

Congratulations, and here's hoping the sickness doesn't last too long.

We kept the 4th pregnancy a secret from nearly everyone until about 15 weeks even though I felt gruesome and almost never managed to keep a meal down. I had had bad sickness,but not bad enough to be admitted to hospital with all the others. So by then I sort of knew how to 'manage' it. I found that everything was much worse when I was tired so I did whatever I could for an easy life. I could eat a little after losing a meal, and I suppose I kept going on that. Ds1 was 6 and was pretty helpful with the others, and I just holed up at home if I didn't have to be chasing round after the dcs.

At 12 weeks we moved to the other side of the world, which was why we hadn't felt we wanted to worry our families with news of the next grandchild, as they were already pretty flappy about the whole thing. It was really horrid packing up our house without being able to say why I felt so rotten, but I think I used some white lie about being anaemic.

Looking back I do wonder how I lived through those weeks, but I remember very fondly the feeling that dh and I and no one else except the midwife knew about our little creation. It was our baby and our business and it was very special to keep it to ourselves. When we came back a year later with a bouncing 5 month old we'd missed a lot of the adverse comments!

Reban, hoping things go well with you, too.