8th February 2020 – the start of hormone hell

This was the week that everything began to change and my hormones started raging (not even being dramatic now). So my post depo symptoms began approximately 8 weeks after missing my injection. See I knew there was a good bit! An extended 8 weeks of feeling well and zero side effects. Anyway my main symptoms to begin with were nausea (sometimes vomiting), fatigue, aching body, period type tummy/back pain but no bleeding. Then I became constipated, bloated and needing to wee more. Back to old trusty Google - what do these symptoms mean? You’re pregnant! Fantastic! What a miracle when I’m not ovulating.

Obviously I knew this wasn’t the case, how could I be when I hadn’t even had one menstrual cycle let alone regular cycles. I think the worse symptom was the nausea/vomiting – it got boring really quickly! Although, in case you’re experiencing this, I found that lemon and ginger tea helped.
Being at work whilst feeling like this wasn’t much fun either, especially when you’re listening to a patient and trying to reassure them and all you can think of is how you’re holding in your vomit. Working out what you would say or do if you just threw up in that moment – thankfully that hasn’t happened yet. I’d like to add here that I work in the community meaning I go into patients homes and some of them have really nice cream carpets and sofas… some of them don’t. But still, you can see my problem.

These symptoms continued for maybe around a week or so. In that time you could really convince yourself that you’re pregnant. We had been having unprotected sex for a good 8 weeks and all of a sudden I’d got all these symptoms including bloating so I even looked like I had a little bump. I didn’t really expect the effects mentally that came with stopping the injection, but I found that I was convincing myself I was pregnant but then deep down knowing I couldn’t be. Quite an emotional rollercoaster. I remember at this time my best friend taking a pregnancy test (they were trying) and it being positive and she was experiencing similar symptoms to myself. Also talking to other friends who already have children and them reminiscing about how they felt during pregnancy. Everything just pointed to me being pregnant. So at some point that week I nipped to big Tesco (other supermarkets are available but this one is a 2 minute drive away). Bought myself a pregnancy test (2 actually as they came in a pack together). God pregnancy tests are expensive though aren’t they! My only experience of buying a pregnancy test was when I was about 14 at school and my friend had had unprotected sex with her boyfriend AKA a fumble in the bushes. But at that time we thought she needed a pregnancy test so pooled our dinner money and bought the cheapest one we could find which I’m not sure we used right now I think of it. Anyhow the one I bought this time seemed a bit more reliable and was a well known brand. Even before I pee’d on the stick deep down I knew it was going to be negative but secretly hoped it would be positive. I texted my boyfriend who was at work saying I was doing a test (that’s how much I thought it would be positive). So there I was peeing on a stick and waiting for about 2 years for the lines to appear. Negative. Yep I knew it but god I felt disappointed.

But then thanks to my supportive and equally hilarious friends we quickly called it my phantom baby and my boyfriend affectionately compared me to when his family dog had a phantom pregnancy, although by the sounds of it, I wasn’t as aggressive with it, thankfully.