Pregnancy and Sciatica

When I was pregnant with my first child, I felt like nothing could be worse. Constant vomiting situated with any kind of smell – any time of day. Back-aches, cravings, lower abdominal pain – I felt like I was being punished. How the nine months passed I can’t remember as my son is now four – but there is one moment that has stuck in memory and will never leave me and that is seeing my baby’s face when he came into the world. Not that he looked like he was the cutest baby on Earth (well actually he did) but he made me a proud mother.

For that one moment in my life, nothing else mattered. It felt like my punishment was nothing compared to the reward. Two and a half years later, I went through the same again – to enjoy that one moment. But this time the punishment was severe.

When I was three months pregnant, my husband had a car accident in which the passenger died. I was so worried that I had complications in my pregnancy – luckily the baby was alright but I was in physical agony. I discovered that the baby was lying on my sciatic nerve, which in turn, meant that I would need to aid my life with the support of crutches. I couldn’t get up and I couldn’t sit down without being overturned by a searing pain shooting down from my hips to my legs. While my husband was recovering in hospital, I was at home with my eldest son trying to cope.

It was hard not having my husband’s support and everything in life seemed a mess. I was worried for my husband, myself, my child and my unborn baby. No matter what anyone said, nothing made anything better. It was a situation faced with time. Only time could heal. But I never gave up, because in life, if you are strong enough – you don’t. You carry on being happy and living life hoping that things would get better. Especially when you have a children – they make life worth living. My hopes all came true one by one, though.

My husband got better, my child was happy to have his father back, my baby was a healthy boy and my sciatica eventually disappeared when my new baby was two months old. I had to take medicine called Codeine, which helped me a great deal in recovering. Of course, the sciatica did return later on but it was treated with another course of Codeine and it disappeared. I have been advised that it can reappear but then I have my Codeine to rely on as well as the love of my children and family.

Now that I am fully recovered and suffering from being a stressful working mother and wife, I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s when I was faced with hardships that I was dreaming of the life that I have now and I realized that maybe the accident and my ill-health taught me to appreciate life a lot more. My two boys are keeping me busy as is my husband. I have a loving family with lots of support from my friends. The people where I work are so lovely as well. Life seems almost perfect. Almost.