So this is what it's supposed to feel like: reflections on a second pregnancy

This second pregnancy is nothing like my first. I am calm, cocooning. I do my exercises, occasionally even yoga. I have an ample supply of comfortable maternity clothes and a giant (and I mean giant) horseshoe pillow that encloses and immobilises me in a firm hold at night. Sshhh. It whispers. I got you. 

I am on top of my medical appointments. I take my vitamins and monitor my blood pressure. I have been registered at the maternity hospital since around the third month of my pregnancy. My husband and I spent about 15 minutes discussing a baby name, decided, smiling, and haven’t wavered since. 

I am, in short, having almost the opposite experience as my first pregnancy. 

Would my pre-eclampsia have been detected earlier if I had not moved countries? Was my insatiable sweet tooth and over-eating a misfiring of my stressed body, desperately sounding an alarm but getting marron glacé instead of medical care? Would it have taken 10 months to diagnose my post-natal depression if I had not uprooted my entire life? Looking back, was it post-natal depression at all, or just a continuation of the heavy cloud that settled on my brain during months-long pregnancy sickness and the stress of moving during the pandemic? 

If you know me, you probably already know this story. My husband and I moved back from Beijing, where we had been living since 2018, to Paris, where we had met and fallen in love, at the end of 2021. The pandemic was still ‘a thing’ but after two waves of lockdown Parisians were more apathetic than ever. Leaving Beijing meant leaving the gilded cage of north-east China: at that time still free from wide-spread infection, but with severe travel and freedom restrictions. It meant leaving our very close-knit community, and the many friends who lived if not in the same building as us, then less than a few kilometers away. It meant flying out with the prospect of never returning, at 7 months pregnant, without the immunity of a vaccine, which I was denied. It meant returning to Paris… but not one we knew. Isolating in an Airbnb for six weeks with a narrow, inadequate bed, while we searched for an apartment to live and welcome our baby. Peering out the window at the familiar sights of the Parisian streetscape and the wintry foliage of the Buttes Chaumont. 

As we searched through a dwindling number of apartment listings that we could afford on one salary, the dining room of our rental filled up with bags and bags (and bags) of donated second-hand baby clothes and accessories which I had no energy to sort through nor experience to triage. My body got heavier, sicker, more uncomfortable. But self-care meant ordering a big fluffy dressing gown from Amazon and bingeing Poldark, not real care. Because real care like midwife appointments or physiotherapy or therapy or even regular doctors appointments was beyond me. My physical health was at the bottom of a long and overwhelming list of things that had to be dealt with before the birth. The baby seemed to be fine. My body was just the delivery mechanism, the meaty machine that trundled around the rental, up and down the stairs. My hair turned to straw in the unfamiliar hard water.

Other than a few suitcases, most of our worldly possessions were sitting in a container in Hong Kong where they would stay for another couple of months. We had no furniture, baby or otherwise. Friends asked what we needed. “Literally everything”. I would say. Then be inundated with more bags. I’m drowning is what I didn’t say. Because I didn’t know it.

When I started to feel sorry for myself, I would think. There are mothers in war zones right now with nothing, carrying their children, unsure of their next meal. We are fine. And that is true. My heart aches for them. Meanwhile, my social media would feed me ads of bespoke prenatal vitamins, silk bound pregnancy journals, and ethically sourced cashmere maternity leggings. Those are not for me. 

One might read this and get the impression that we were devoid of friends or family and support. This is not the case. There were those that met us as we got out of the airport taxi, loaded with groceries and gifts. The beautiful baby shower my friend hosted, and catered, featuring dozens of friends from Paris and further afield. My in-laws who met us to unpack every single moving box when they finally arrived, and took us shopping for a crib and baby essentials. My family in Australia who sent a giant care package stuffed with things for me and baby. My mother who lived with us for a month once the baby was born and did all the laundry, dishes, and cuddles. Other generous and thoughtful acts too numerous to mention. 

You might also read this and wonder ‘where is the husband?’. He’s right there, where he has always been: unwaveringly beside me and with me 100%. But also struggling with the pressure and stress of our new life, fatherhood, punishing shift work, and a wife that he recognises less with every passing day. 

But with the benefit of hindsight I can clearly see how the degree of my depression and overwhelm rendered me unable to ask for the help I really needed, because I didn’t know what it was. I was lonelier and more lost than I had ever been. Trapped behind a thick pane of glass, unable to reach my people or be reached. Performing the role of the expectant and then new mother, a role I didn’t have lines for, drowning inside. Pre-birth, I was assumed to be a soft madonna, thrilled, content, eagerly anticipating the arrival of our daughter. But in truth, I felt detached from my body, unable to truly connect the idea of my swollen belly with a real human child. And once she arrived, although I loved her more than any living thing in the world, I felt no warm, cosy fuzziness of early motherhood. Just fatigue. 

Sometimes looking back on photos of the earliest post-partum days is painful. Not because of the panic I can detect behind the exhaustion in my eyes as I clutch my sweet, perfect, doll-like baby (undersized, but thriving). Because of the bare walls in the background of the photo. The sparse, uninviting living room. Our home was far from a home, but as I was recovering from a caesarian, learning how to be a mum and generally holding on for dear life (the depression still undiagnosed, you see), interior decorating would simply have to wait. The bleak, half-formed shape of our apartment reflected my state of mind: functioning, just getting by. 

The brightest, hottest week in July 2022 resulted in what I now think of as my rock bottom. An historic heatwave punished the country, and I drew down all the shutters to keep our un-airconditioned apartment as cool as possible. With no daycare or reason to leave, I stayed inside the stuffy gloom for two whole days, growing increasingly unmoored, panicking about climate change, and my child’s future. Now, I know that my feelings towards climate change are a direct barometer of my overall mental health. It’s a wide open field for my anxiety to run loose in, as it cannot be constrained by rational thought or logic. How willingly my mind goes galloping off into that field is a clue. It’s my canary in the coalmine, if you will allow another sloppy animal-related analogy. Then, I was afraid to go outside, and moved from room to room clutching my oblivious sweetheart, anxiety driving me wild and despairing. The wolves were at the door. 

I’m in a very different place now. Once I did get diagnosed, the SSRIs I was prescribed made their impact indecently quickly. Within weeks I felt catapulted back into my own life. Laughing, I re-introduced myself to friends as if I had not seen them since the pandemic, because that shadowy self that had already returned to Paris was not the real me. I was back, baby! 

Now, four years later, when I scroll, I get the same ads for luxury, unnecessary maternity items as I did in 2021. But I ignore them, because I have the mental space to consider them, and know I don’t need them. I did get a Sodastream though. Sparking water helps. 

Ironically, this pregnancy has been much easier than the first. My physical health and wellbeing is no longer at the very bottom of my list, but I need care and attention much less than I did the first time around. Is it because I’m forced to be active, chasing my nearly-four year old around, that my blood pressure is stable? Is it because we already do a weekly meal plan and cook at home that eating healthily feels so easy? I even have a different relationship with the soul growing inside me. Mr Bubbles and I chat regularly, he is my constant companion. I now understand what other mothers mean when they say they are excited to meet their child.

I think a lot about how different this pregnancy experience is to the last, but I no longer want to talk about the hardships of the first one. I’ve processed all that. I only put it down on the record, because of how it informs my experience now. And I do not regret it, because I cannot think of a single thing that we could have done differently to prevent it all. The circumstances of our lives, the choices we cheerfully made, and the almighty force of the pandemic led us to that perfect storm that resulted in that long dark night of my soul. 

That said, what’s the big takeaway? That I’m simply enjoying being on the other side of the looking glass. I feel terribly grateful for my health, my family, for the stability of my life. For my family and friends. For my beautiful daughter and son to come. I always wanted to be a mother and being one is my favourite thing in the world. I am deeply grateful that life worked out for me this way. I am also grateful for the perspective that my difficult period has given me: it is easy to become caught in the cogs of the capitalist machine that is modern parenting, and the pressure to do absolutely everything perfectly right. The way I limped through my early days of matrescence proves that almost all you really need is what you carry in your mind. 

I also know how short this season is, and how short the season of infancy that follows. What was once pure abstraction, a child is now a very real, loud, delightful, permanent fixture in my life. I know from experience, not just anecdote, how wonderful parenthood is, and how fast the days fly by. So, I’m enjoying it. 

Wish us luck.