Another old post, written during my last few days of being pregnant!

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked incredulously as my best friend of ten years stood in front of me in the parking garage of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, having given me ZERO indication that she was coming.

“You sounded sad and lonely lately,” was her only reply.  As though it told me everything I needed to know as to why she up and left her 4-year-old and hubby-to-be in Iowa and hauled her ass to Texas, and, I suppose, in some ways, it did.  (Read more about her trip to see me, here, on her blog!)

These last few months have been a very trying time for me, being pregnant and away most notably, from my two bestest friends, going through this move-not-move crap with Col’s company, and, most recently over the last month or so, my health issues whilst pregnant.  Trips to the ER, hospital stays, tests, bloods, urine, scans etc – it’s been trying, scary and exhausting.

I wasn’t doing so bad at all, until the ‘rest’ thing was mentioned.  I don’t do good with resting, especially when I have a four page, room-by-room, ‘before the baby comes’ to-do list staring me down every day.  I get frustrated, I get cabin fever and I feel trapped and caged – it’s bad enough as it is that we can’t go flying, sailing or on a long road trip somewhere, never mind, ‘one store per day, max, no long walking, no rodeo, no this, no that, no the other…’

I was starting to get pretty down about the whole situation last week, the list wasn’t getting done, the house was getting worse, not better and I couldn’t do anything without getting scolded, or spiking my blood pressure readings, so I just had to sit there.

Staring at everything that needed done, and making a new list of things that weren’t on the original list to begin with!

Thankfully Col stepped up over the weekend, on Saturday he (with limited help from me) halved our list, so I started to feel better, but given the high BP, the swelling, the potential that baby could come any time, I just wanted to have things done.

Between that, drama, and being so far away from people who would bend over backwards to help us.  Friends here in Houston moving, away for Spring Break, sick, with have guests in town, or just too busy to play ‘distract Las from her misery’, I’ve just been slowly disintegrating into a pool of self pity and sadness.

It kind of came to a head the other night, we were sitting watching TV and I got up to get a bowl of ice cream (Col had brought home ice cream with the groceries earlier that night).  He said something like, ‘Wow! Moving fast on that ice cream!’ and I replied, ‘well, it’s a pretty good cure for depression’.

‘You’re not depressed!’ he gave a half-laugh, until he looked at me, stopped what we were watching on TV and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

I just burst in to tears.

Maybe I wasn’t depressed, maybe I wasn’t *yet* depressed, maybe I was just sad and hormonal, but it was a scary place to be and I’d tried hard to be brave, I’d tried keeping my fears to myself, but it just wasn’t working.

I told him I was frustrated, upset, lonely, afraid and when your newly hired cleaner tells you, ‘I’m here to help you’ and you burst in to tears – something is most definitely wrong.

I physically felt like crap, my blood pressure was all over the place, my feet were so swollen they hurt, I was seeing stars, having headaches and feeling generally miserable.  It’s bad enough feeling miserable, but when you’re ‘confined to quarters’, it serves as a constant reminder that you’re feeling miserable, and then you start to feel emotionally miserable too.

At that point, there’s not much that hubby could say, or do.  He just held me (after saying he didn’t know what to say or do) and reminded me what we’ve accomplished recently.  He told me that for him, the measure of this pregnancy, has been the water bill – that by the time the next water bill arrives at the house, we’ll have our baby home, to keep my eye on the prize and how women draw the short straw in life – lol!  He’s an amazingly calming influence in my life, but not even his kind words could keep my tears from flowing.  It was tough, and, thankfully he totally had my back.

Maybe it was early onset depression, maybe it was just a severe case of the blues, but, it got me thinking.  Depression while pregnant is more common than you think.

You think it’s normal, everyone says that hormonal changes can also make you feel more anxious than usual. But depression and anxiety during pregnancy can often go undiagnosed for many women – because they often dismiss their feelings, chalking them up to the temporary moodiness that often accompanies pregnancy.

According to The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, between 14-23% of women will struggle with some symptoms of depression in pregnancy.

For more information about depression during and after pregnancy, call womenshealth.gov at 800-994-9662 (TDD: 888-220-5446) or contact the following organizations:

• American Psychological Association Phone: 800-374-2721
• Mental Health America Phone: 800-969-NMHA
• National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, HHS Phone: 301-496-9576
• Postpartum Education for Parents Phone: 805-564-3888
• Postpartum Support International Phone: 800-944-4PPD, 800-944-4773
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration Publications, SAMHSA, HHS Phone: 800-789-2647