Your reaction to a positive pregnancy test might be 'Hurray' or 'Help!' or 'What now?' or a combination of all three!

This page shares one mum's experience and emotions at finding out that she was pregnant.

"So there are two blue lines on pregnancy test! That's it then I'm pregnant, something I've been hoping for a long time, but how do I feel? Thinking back to the weeks after I discovered I was pregnant I felt a real mix of emotions.

There was of course the immediate elation that YES! we'd managed it, plus the excitement of thinking what the next 9 months would bring. Racing to the Internet to find all the sites that would keep me informed as we went along! Wanting desperately to shout and tell the world but having to confine myself to waiting until my husband got home from work!

My husband's reaction was very different to mine - no elation but rather a look of shock - "Oh how did that happen? I'm not sure I'm ready yet! What if I've changed my mind?" At the time this was all very disconcerting as we had both planned the pregnancy but looking back now I think he just went through the different emotions in a different order to me. By the time he'd come round to being excited about the idea I was in the throws of morning sickness plus had moved onto a general feeling of panic - "Oh no what had we done - this was it now - no going back!"

Another unexpected feeling was that of huge impatience. I felt that everything had changed the instant the second blue line appeared on the test stick but that in turn nothing had changed. Day-to-day life went on relatively unchanged - apart from the hanging over the toilet bit - and although I was desperate to tell people our news another part of me felt that we should wait until I'd reached 12 weeks. Week 6 seemed to go on forever and I remember thinking how on earth am I going to get through another 34 weeks of this! Every day seemed to be more like a week! I also felt constantly anxious about having a miscarriage too! Up until 13 weeks I just seemed to be an emotional wreck.

The other frustrating thing was that nobody in the medical professional was remotely interested in the fact that I was pregnant either - my Doctor didn't even do a pregnancy test and the hospital didn't register me until about 13 weeks - "well there was no point was there until the pregnancy was established!" The waiting for week 12 seemed endless and there was nobody to really talk to about how I felt except my husband! While I'm sitting here writing this I'm just thinking about how many women are probably going through a similar experience right now!"

Janet

Other Personal Experiences

Well, I found out I am pregnant 2 weeks ago and it has been the longest 2 weeks of my life.

Good luck to you all, I hope we all have safe pregancies and very healthy babies. xx

Charmaine

I remember with my first child being over come with lack of sleep and fustration at not being able to understand why my baby still cried after it had been fed, winded, nappy changed etc. Family and friends always told me it would get better, but you dont believe them, I remember thinking 'i need it better now!'. It does get better and knowing that definatley helped with my second.

Claire

Becoming pregnant at 35 after trying for so long has been I've found a daunting experience at only 9 weeks I've found I've become bad tempered and on occasion resentful of my partner. I suffer with fybroids and at the best of times its painful to say the least and being pregnant although its something I longed for is not at all what I"d expected. With all the pain I'm experiencing and the morning sickness and being constantly tired at times I wish it would end but then I wake in the night and find myself touching my stomach and smiling to myself thinking I can't believe I'm going to be a mum god help us all.

Maureen

I became pregnant at 34 after trying for 3 months. Although all tests have come back positive and I am perfectly healthy, my strongest feelings have been of disbelief. Am I really growing a human in my belly? It just seems too sci-fi. I fully understood that the odds of miscarrying are higher than anyone would like to believe and 3 of my friends miscarried while I was waiting to hit my 12 week mark. I suspect my feelings of disbelief are to protect myself from the disappointment of a miscarriage. My doctor used her doppler radar to find the heartbeat and she found a healthy strong heartbeat. This has reassured me that everything is going well, but hasn’t really made this pregnancy feel any more real to me. I am hoping that once I begin to show then perhaps I will truly believe that this is happening. I am now at my 14th week and as far as symptoms go, I am happy to report I haven’t thrown up once. However, most days I feel like I have a hangover all day. I am one of the unlucky 30% that have increased allergy symptoms, all day and all night is spent sneezing and blowing my nose. I have intestinal discomfort and I have had heartburn since day one.

Some days I feel my husband has to suffer through this pregnancy more than I do. Previous to getting pregnant, we were a very intimate, cuddly couple. As soon as I became pregnant, I felt irritable due to my intestinal problems and my allergies. I no longer want to cuddle and mostly I want to be left alone. He wonders when he will get his wife back. I try to re-assure him that it should get better soon, but worse case scenario would mean I will experience this irritability until I have the baby – I certainly hope not! Mostly I try to remind him that I don’t like being this uncomfortable in my own skin, that I am not rejecting him personally, but that my symptoms are making me miserable so he needs to respect that and give me my space. Overall, I consider myself lucky, but it is these little things that add up to the general discomfort. My fingers are crossed that the 2nd and 3rd trimester will be better!

Chantal

If you would like to share your own experiences please email the site at contributions@forparentsbyparents.co.uk

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