“Pregnant & Winging It” is a short series about a first-time pregnant Autistic woman in Nottingham. Claire writes about her views and experiences around pregnancy and how it’s not all as she expected
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How Did We Get Here??
In September 2023 I did the only logical thing an Autistic woman could do when engaged to be married; I eloped. The idea of an event with lots of people staring at me wasn’t a top my list of “things that bring me joy” so we rand off into the woods (something I highly recommend)
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We discussed children at the time but thought we’d hold off until 2024. Both our birthdays are in December, plus Christmas, a trip to Disney and another wedding which was a small church ceremony (because we’re Catholic and wanted to get a blessing). In short; lots to do in December and I didn’t need feeling sick and not being able to have a drink to deal with all the socialising.
In October 2023 I was referred for an MRI of my hip; I have a minor hip deformity and my legs were having a lot more numbness than usual so went to get it checked out. The findings came back inconclusive on my hip but boy did they have a lot to say about my uterus and how it wasn’t looked good. I saw a Gynaecologist pretty quickly who sent me off for some tests.
Friday 17th November 2023, off I go to the hospital for some tests to check fertility. I was going into it with a mindset of “whatever the outcome, I need to know”. I didn’t want to spend months trying for a baby to later find out it wasn’t in the cards for me. I remember the woman asking about my last period and I was like “it’s due to start today so let’s get on with it”, she noted it down and we did all we needed to.
This was also the day of my belated Hen Do! So Friday morning I am being poked and prodded and Friday evening, well, there was a lot of drinking!
Obviously waking up on the Saturday morning and I don’t feel great. I am quite good at pacing my energy so I had written off the whole weekend for eeuurrgghhhh (I’m sure you know what I mean!). Then, we get to Sunday. Usually, the “eurgh” feeling I get from drinking (and I don’t drink heavily often) goes within 24 hours, and this time it had not.
It’s around 10am and I am lying on my sofa, the husband goes out to the ASDA for our click-and-collect and I’m just wallowing in my own self-pity. Then, a thought hits… where is that period?
I get my phone out and look at the tracker… Friday wasn’t the predicted start day of my period, it was the predicted end day… I wasn’t 2 days later, I was 9.
I roll off the sofa and crawl up the stairs to the big cupboard where we keep additional toiletries and pull out a box of pregnancy tests. I have zero concerns at this point, it’s not uncommon for me to get so stressed a period would disappear for a month, but it’s good to make sure.
So I do the test and I put it down on my PC desk, turn on the PC and start doing some bits on the internet. I had forgotten it was there for a good few minutes and then turn to have a peak at how it’s coming along:
…
Brain is still loading
…
What?
…
I sit for a good few minutes just staring at this tiny little screen like… ??? I heard the car pulling in and go to the front bedroom window, fling it open and tell the husband to leave the shopping and come upstairs;
“Should I prepare myself?”
“Yes.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Potentially”
I shut the window and he comes up the stairs and I am doing a flap-dance on the landing and waving a pregnancy test at him. So now we’re both flap-dancing and having brain-loading issues!
What Do We Do Now??
I will start this by saying that we are both thrilled about this, but as we’re both Autistic and our plans were “let’s discuss this properly in January 2024” and our reality was “you are pregnant in November 2023” it was a lot to a handle. I would say it took a good month before it was more of a comfortable reality. If you’re considering having children with anyone, you’re going to need good communication with each other. Being both Autistic we have good Autistic communication with each other, we get our points across directly and we share things even though they might sound bad/offensive.
The next thing to consider is communicating with other people; about your pregnancy and your needs around it. There is a general consensus that you “don’t tell people before 12 weeks” or during the first trimester (that can be classed as up to 14 weeks). The reason behind this is mostly that this is the riskiest time for a pregnancy, the likelihood of something “going wrong” is much higher in the first trimester compared to the second and third. My advice would be to find a few people close to you who will be supportive that you can confide in. People that, if something did go wrong, would be there for you. I can’t think of anything worse than declaring a pregnancy to everyone and then a few weeks later having to write a retraction due to something happening. I certainly wouldn’t say “tell no one”, as I will go into in some of the next posts the first trimester is hard. I don’t know if it’s harder because I am Autistic but it is a big physical and mental adjustment and you will need people on your side.
If you are on regular medication, do a quick google to check if those medications are safe during pregnancy and if they are not or it is unclear ensure you call your GP/prescribing person as soon as possible (got a lovely story for you about that next time). If you are taking a general multivitamin, stop. Large amounts of Vitamin A can be harmful during pregnancy and many multivitamins will have your 100% daily allowance of Vitamin A. As this discovery happened on a Sunday morning we were able to nip down to boots and get a pregnancy multivitamin. Please invest in a pregnancy multivitamin as soon you realise you are pregnant. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive, Boots have their own brand that costs £3.80 for a pack of 30. These are usually in their 3 for 2 so you’d be spending £7.60 for roughly 3 months of multivitamins. That’s £22.80 for the majority of your pregnancy and will really support your baby’s growth as well as your own health and wellbeing.
You’re On Your Own… For A Good While
Something I learned very quickly is that medical professionals are now afraid of you and will deny you basic medical care all because you are pregnant. I will go into this more in my next post but in my area of Nottinghamshire, you won’t see a midwife until 10 weeks and will have no access to any maternity/midwifery services until then.
This was not boding well for me as I was due to take an international flight on boxing day, at which point I would not have been past 10 weeks for my first appointment and so I had no option/pathway to get myself checked over to be sure I was safe to fly and that I was actually pregnant in the first place.
We went to a local private baby scanning place called “Meet Your Miracle” (they have a centre in Basford near our office) and they offer a “Viability/Dating Scan“. This is basically a really early scan where they can check that you are pregnant and that it is growing where it should (so they can tell you if it’s ectopic and growing in your tubes which would need urgent medical attention).
If you go for one of these early scans, do be prepared it won’t be very exciting to look at, we went in 9th December which we guessed was around 7 weeks and this is what we got
This is basically a view of the uterus and a small sack where the egg is growing. They were able to tell me it was a “viable pregnancy” which meant it was safe to continue and they had no huge concerns at the time.
Next Time:
I will go into what happened next, getting set up with a midwife and how to get through First Trimester with little to no information or professional support.
Autistic Nottingham 