or even drugs at the end of the day, all of which have been linked to low birth-weight (alcohol and drugs are also linked to birth defects). If any of this sounds familiar to you, don’t brush this under the carpet. Talk to your GP, Health Visitor or midwife.
TEN QUICK WAYS TO MINIMISE STRESS
1 Learn ‘mini’ stress relieving techniques. These can be very useful for labour, not to mention further down the line when you have an illogical toddler on your hands.
2 Make a list of things that, in the past, have reduced your stress levels, and do some of them if you can (leave anything chemical, nicotine-related or alcoholic off this list for obvious reasons).
3 Become an idler: leave the washing, let the carpet stay dirty, ask for deadline extensions and generally give yourself a break. Now is not the time to ‘prove’ anything to anyone.
4 Throw money at the problem. If you can’t do the above, and can possibly afford it, get a cleaner, get a cleaner more often or even bung a teenager a few quid after school to do ‘maid’ type duties for an hour or so. If you’ve got no money, divide your tasks into small, manageable chunks and plan meticulously for them: e.g. laundry (day 1), floors (day 2), bill-paying (day 3).
5 Negotiate divisions of labour with your partner. If studies are right, he probably does a fraction of what you do around the house, even if you are both working outside it. Inequalities like this will only be exacerbated when you have babies to cope with. He needs to be roped on board even (or perhaps especially) at this stage. Be aware that his standards and yours may differ (this does not mean it is his fault). He may in fact be exceptionally glad to feel useful at this point in your pregnancy.
6 Do small, beneficial things for yourself. Eat a yogurt before bed (calcium), keep fruit on your desk for snacks (and a water bottle), book yourself a lunch-hour massage (enforced relaxation), buy posh bath oil and use it religiously, at least once a week, and – why not? – treat yourself to an hour in the Waterstones café with a chocolate muffin and a good book.
7 Book an alternative therapist. Even if you’re a sceptic, things like massage or aromatherapy can help us all, at least temporarily. Sometimes just being listened to and pampered for an hour with smelly oils can really turn things around.
8 Get support: family, friends, neighbours can all be drafted in, even if just in small ways around the house, garden or with your other kids. But this involves asking for help. Which means no longer seeming perfect.
9 Try gentle exercise (if ok’d by your doctor or midwife). It is clinically recognized to lower stress levels. You don’t have to go to the gym but when you want to bludgeon a colleague or spouse, take a walk round the block. Ideally, join a pregnancy yoga class. Or try and walk for half an hour a day. But don’t beat yourself up about it if you can’t. You may just want to lie in a darkened room with earplugs in. That’s fine too.
10 Get help: counselling or even life-coaching can help you decode your stress and work out how to handle it better.
Career worries
Worrying that your career will evaporate when this baby arrives is also common.
‘Most women need to remember that their careers do not necessarily go away when they have children,’ says midwife Jenny Smith. ‘Maternity leave actually goes very quickly: to have 6–8 months off is nothing in terms of one’s whole life and what is most important right now is preparing your body and mind to nurture this baby. It’s a shame so many women ruin this precious time by worrying about work.’
If your pregnant-and-working life, like your belly, is starting to strain at the seams the hardest thing can be finding time to do something about it. The first thing to do is stop meta-worrying. Stress is a known part of pregnancy and to some extent we all feel it. But going into labour in a frazzled state is not ideal: you’ll have fewer physical reserves, be less able to relax during contractions, potentially have less endurance and then not be in the best position to cope with pain. A crucial part of your childbirth preparation should be to make stress-relief a priority. One way to start is by sorting out the practicalities of your maternity leave and eventual return to work so you can stop worrying about this for now.
Where to go for help:
Working Families is an organisation that gives practical help and information for parents about choices in childcare and employment rights; it also campaigns for changes in the law, and persuades employers to adopt practices which work for them and you alike. 020 7253 7243 www.workingfamilies.org.uk
Also try the webzine Mother@Work: www.motheratwork.co.uk. This is a good place to get a sense that other women are struggling with the same issues. The Daycare Trust This national childcare charity, promoting high quality affordable childcare, can help you find out more about childcare for when you return to work. 21 St George’s Rd, London SE1 6ES 020 7840 3350 [email protected] www.daycaretrust.org.uk
Further reading:
Balancing Pregnancy and Work: How to Make the Most of the Next 9 Months on the Job by Nancy Hall (Rodale Books, US, 2004) is worth a look, as is: Working Woman’s Pregnancy by Hilary Boyd (Mitchell Beazley, UK, 2004)
A WORD ABOUT TWINS AND MULTIPLE BIRTHS | In the UK about one in 35 babies is born a twin or triplet (in 1980 the figure was one in 52; the rise is mainly due to fertility treatments). There are nearly 10,000 multiple births in the UK every year. About a third of twins born in the UK are identical and two thirds are non-identical. Having twins can be a very different experience from your ‘average’ pregnancy but equally, you don’t want to end up feeling that nothing applies to you. ‘If you are carrying twins, you get a lot of fuss made of you by friends and colleagues and by the medical profession, but I also felt rather excluded from the “baby club”,’ says Rachel, 36, mother of Nick and Ella (4). ‘It started when we were told by the medics that “twin births are not normal” and then all the books I’d been religiously reading as a first timer stopped really applying. Even though I was getting excited about having two rather than one, I began to feel a bit of an outsider.’
Most of the issues we cover in this book should be as relevant to you as they are to singleton mothers. It is just as important to prepare for this birth if you are carrying more than one baby; to face your fears, understand your options, inform yourself, have a meaningful plan and good support. But as a healthy mother of twins or multiples you may face certain specific challenges. One of these is that your experience of pregnancy is likely to be more ‘medical’ than it would if you were expecting a single baby. You may have more frequent antenatal checks and your babies will be scanned regularly – very regularly towards the end of the pregnancy – to monitor their development. This is because pregnancy complications are more common with multiple births, such as pre-eclampsia, pre-term labour, anaemia or exhaustion.
‘We went for the first (of many) scans at twenty weeks and I think the nurse thought we must already know. She said, “There’s the baby” and gave us our first sight of Nick and then said “and there’s the other baby” meaning Ella, and Martin and I just looked at each other and laughed. I remember thinking “this is like a film” and I felt like everything had changed. I went home to bed and lay there thinking about two of everything, names and cots and buggies. The image of the little girl baby that I had been so sure I was carrying disappeared and I had to re-bond with two.’
RACHEL, 36, MOTHER OF NICK AND ELLA (4)
