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Autistic and pregnant and not coping

Tamsin

Hi all,

I'm 31 and identify as autistic and am in the process of being referred (but it'll take goodness knows how long for the NHS waiting list at the moment). I am 10 weeks pregnant and suffering with severe nausea, hyper-hypersensitivity to smells (always been super sensitive anyway but now it's a million times worse!!) and general sensory overstimulation from hormonal changes, and my body is doing all kinds of weird stuff that a pregnant body usually does but I'm totally not coping with the change and feeling different and feeling constantly ill and out of control. My sensory overload is pretty much constant and my masking is going through the roof, especially at work in a pharmacy, and I just curl up into a miserable ball when I get home and my poor husband can't get much communication out of me by that time.

Have any other autistic women gone through the same sort of thing in pregnancy and do you have any solutions, suggestions or self help ideas?! Everything I try to relieve my symptoms of pregnancy seems to work a bit once and then stop so I'm at a loss yet again, and that leaves my autistic symptoms going haywire.

Hope I'm not the only one and that I'm not just plain weird. Hope someone can help!

Tamsin

  • Ginger biscuits helped me with nausea.

    I wasn't too bad with pregnancy, it is the aftermath of pregnancy that is the problem. 

    Can I suggest that as part of your birthing plan you look at doing a "hospital passport" specifically around your autism. I believe the NAS has a template on the website. I wasn't aware I was autistic when I had my children and hospital was a traumatic environment for me. As an autistic person you are about to go through the biggest life change possible - becoming a parent - and as you probably know by now, most of us don't cope well with change. I made the mistake of a very detailed birthing plan, my daughter was breech and had other ideas, so I was faced with trauma before I even went into labour because my whole plan was futile. 

    I'm not telling you this with the intention of scaring you, just hoping to give you the heads up for what is yet to come. 

    I ended up with PND after my eldest. I knew to expect the worst with the youngest (yes, I put myself through it all over again?!) and I coped much better. 

  • 10 weeks is when I started to feel better and at about 14 weeks I realised I hadn’t heaved for a couple of days! Up until then I found lemon squash helped my nausea and also sucking on boiled mints. Then I felt pretty good until about 28 weeks and I just got really tired. Apart from the sudden ewww I feel gross feeling I found the rest happened quite gradually. Have you looked at hypnobirthing? I think people also use the techniques before birth as a kind of meditation, might be worth looking into