Given how common it is to be exhausted when you’re a mother to a toddler and you have another baby on the way, blogger Steph Pase didn’t think much of it when she began to wake up in the morning still feeling as though she
"hadn’t even slept a wink."
"hadn’t even slept a wink."
Soon, it became more than just being tired.
In a post to her blog (cheekily named "Just Another Mummy Blog"), Pase wrote that ignoring her symptoms eventually sent her to the hospital.
"I didn’t feel 'sick' but I knew my tank was very much empty," she wrote in the post. "My life, work, housework, running a blog along with trying to be my active self started to become impossible."
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When things got worse, she went to the doctor, where she passed out and was sent to the hospital. After hospital staff ran blood tests and monitored her and the baby, they let her go home to rest — but things didn’t get better.
"I got to a stage that afternoon I physically couldn’t reach my arm out, walk, sit, roll in bed…ANYTHING without [my husband] Ryan doing it for me because it was such excruciating pain," she wrote.
Pase ended up in the hospital again, where she said that she wasn’t even able to go to the toilet without help. While blood tests didn’t reveal what was going on with her body, she said, "The doctors said the body can do bizzare [sic] things when pregnant and stressed."
The experience, she said, taught her that there are moments when she has to put herself first. Even if you aren't pregnant or a mom, it's important to listen to your body's cues.
"Don’t let the importance of running a household and a family override the importance of your physical and mental health," she wrote. "I can only hope another mother reads this and it gives her the wakeup call that she needs. You can’t pour from an empty cup."
Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
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