Anastasia Brien?s pregnancy diary - weeks 32-34

Anastasia and her husband, Nick, have been married for 3 years and are expecting their first baby. Here’s her pregnancy diary for week 32

Itch, itch, itch. I have had the most maddening desire to jump out of my own itchy skin. The thing is, it’s not just my expanding belly that I want to scratch to death; it’s every inch of me. I’m like a Mexican jumping bean, forever squirming and scratching, and going crazy. The nights are the worst. I just can’t lie still, and poor Nick is being kept awake too. (The face of things to come, I suppose). I’ve tried changing laundry detergent to non-biological, I’ve bought vats of aqueous cream and calamine lotion (yuck) but nothing helps.

Last Friday afternoon Nick was working from home, and I was attempting to clean out my home-office, in preparation for our impending move. I ran across the Bounty Guide to Pregnancy, which I planned to bin and, for some reason, it was opened to a page of pregnancy symptoms. My eye was drawn to ‘itching’ and, suddenly, I went white. It said, ‘severe all-body itching can be a sign of obstetric colestasis, a liver disorder, which can lead to serious health problems for both mother and baby. Suspected to be a leading cause of stillbirth.’ Oh my God, I thought. I have this disease. I immediately showed the page to Nick, who reacted with equal alarm, and I rang my midwife’s pager number.

One of the midwives rang me back, immediately, and told me that although it was very unlikely I had this rare disorder, I should come into the labour ward of the hospital, right away, for some tests. I asked her what the ‘cure’, was and she replied that the only cure was to get the baby out of my uterus, and that, at 34 weeks, if the baby had to be born, it would most likely be just fine. Help! And I don’t even have a Moses basket or a single nappy. My head was swimming, and Nick looked mildly ill. We packed a bag filled with magazines, water, and snacks, and prepared for a possibly long and momentous night ahead.