The Middle of the Night

On Thursday night I went to bed with a headache. Not just “a bit of an ouch/I’m tired” headache but a full blown stinging, pounding hammering in my head that made me just want to close my eyes.

I have high blood pressure. I have had high blood pressure through both of my pregnancies. High blood pressure caused the low birth weight (5lb 3oz) of the Batsman and led to his emergency delivery. We almost lost him because of it. Thankfully, things were a bit better with the Bowler. Not only did he enter the world at 8lb 11oz, but the elective caesarean at 38 weeks meant he had a far less traumatic and much safer arrival.


But back to my headache. Since the arrival of the Bowler (5 weeks ago), my blood pressure has remained very high. I am taking meds for it and it is a bit of a “wait and see”…..but it has stayed right up there. It worries me for it to be this way but I know that it will gradually go down as I get fitter, lose some weight and generally recover from the pregnancy and the birth. But it still worries me. So when I woke in the middle of the night with my head pounding so hard I thought it would explode, I worried that maybe I would have a stroke or a heart attack. And you know that feeling in the middle of the night….the feeling of “everything is so much scarier/worse, I feel so alone and what is happening must be going to have the worst possible outcome” kind of feeling?


Well that was where I was in the middle of the night. Convinced that this was it, that something very serious was about to happen and I thought about what it would be like for my boys to not have me around. In the black, dark middle of the night, this is what I thought about. I woke the Captain and told him I was scared and he did his noble best to reassure me until I drifted back into a fitful sleep. Until I fell asleep, in the black, dark middle of the night, I was terrified.
When the sunny next morning came, my head still pounded but I felt less frightened with the light of day. And when the doctor reassured me and told me that it was hugely unlikely to be a blood pressure complication causing my headache, I felt better. Some regular paracetamol and big drinks of water chased the headache away. Phew.


So in the black, dark middle of the night last night, when I woke to feed the Bowler, I looked into his wide eyes and watched his flailing little fingers as he fed and tried to think of good things – of family trips, of online shopping, of blog posts to come, of playing in the new cubby house with the Batsman. When the Bowler fell asleep again, so did I – a peaceful, deep sleep in the black, dark middle of the night.


What do you think about in the black, dark middle of the night?