I didn’t know I was autistic when I was pregnant, or actually until my son was five years old. Looking back now, I can see how being autistic affected my pregnancy in a lot of ways, but of course I’ve also never experienced being pregnant and not autistic so it’s hard to know how many of those things are just a universal experience, or unique to me for other reasons than my autism. Either way, it was certainly an experience!
Getting pregnant in the first place probably showed my difficulty with change and with processing things outside of my direct control. Because I was convinced I wanted my child to be born in September, reasoning that then they’d be at the older end of their school year so at an advantage that way (not figuring in that actually that would also mean higher childcare costs for a few extra months!). So, I was not ready for that plan to go awry at all. Finding out that first month that I wasn’t pregnant was a shock – even knowing logically that it was unlikely, especially having been on the pill for years. But I immediately fell down a hole of despair, assuming my body was broken and it was never going to happen. I was convinced at that time there was something ‘wrong’ with me in general, and assumed this was just another part of that. It’s definitely one of my strong autistic traits, having a clear picture in my mind of how something is going to go, and being completely thrown off if reality doesn’t match up. And pregnancy was a whole load of small instances of that happening to me again and again.
Two months later and I did get pregnant, and weirdly I wasn’t as freaked out as I’d expected to be when it became real. But it did come with a lot of change.
For me, change is always hard, and changes in my body especially so. I struggled during puberty and if my weight fluctuates at all I find it hard to feel at ease in my body. In fact, I’m not sure I ever really feel at ease in my body. So I was expecting the significant and rapid changes during pregnancy to really bother me, and surprisingly they didn’t anywhere near as much as I thought.
However, my sensory sensitivities went through the roof, pretty early on, and all the way through pregnancy. Smells and tastes were both stronger and different. I went through a period early on of barely being able to eat or drink anything as it all turned my stomach – even drinking water was hard and I got by with quite a lot of ice lollies for a while! Some foods I couldn’t touch at all and when I did find something I could stomach, I’d eat just that for days on end – to be honest not that dissimilar to my usual approach to food, but on a massively magnified scale. Weirdly, some of the changes to my tastebuds seem to have been permanent as well. There are things I love now (namely peanut butter) that I wouldn’t have touched before I was pregnant, and others I can no longer stand. An annoying one there is sugar free anything. I swear I could never tell the difference between diet and regular fizzy drinks before – now anything with the slightest hint of sweetener in it tastes awful. Probably not the worst thing from a health perspective, but annoying as it’s added another thing to my list of foods to avoid.
I know that morning sickness, queasiness and changes to tastes are common for all pregnant women so it’s hard to know if mine were anything more than that. But given I know now that my baseline for sensitivity is a lot higher than most non-autistic people, I’m assuming that what I experienced was more than the usual changes. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get my head around – how we never know how someone else experiences the world to know whether it’s the same or different than ours.
Touch, for me, was a big thing. Although my changing body didn’t massively worry me, the feel of clothes on my skin was more uncomfortable than ever and I could never get comfortable sitting or lying down at night. I struggle with clothing at the best of times, and it’s hard finding things that are comfortable and don’t make me immediately want to rip them off because they touch my skin in the wrong places and the wrong ways. Turns out maternity clothing is not designed with neuroinclusivity in mind. Or with shorter, petite women who don’t want to remortgage their home for a few outfits that they will wear for less than a year! I did manage to find some vaguely less uncomfortable clothes that got me through, but was constantly aware of my clothing and felt quite restricted and not ‘myself’ in it.
Another very important element of touch, for me, was the feeling of the baby moving. This is supposed to (from everything you see and hear) be an amazing, beautiful experience for all mums-to-be. I absolutely did not find it that way. Yes, it was obviously reassuring to know the baby was healthy and there was a certain fascination with this proof of the tiny person inside of me, but the actual sensation made me feel quite ill. It, to me, is like the feeling of a wobbly tooth, I can still feel it now, and think the memory of it will stick with me forever. It was disconcerting and uncomfortable, although not actually painful. It made me feel strange and then incredibly guilty for not enjoying it. Turns out lots of things to do with motherhood come with bucketloads of free guilt attached! It was one thing I found I couldn’t talk to anyone else about, because I felt it made me look ungrateful, even though I couldn’t help it.
One thing that was actually a big positive for me, especially once I was showing, was that the horrors of small talk became a bit more manageable. Because as soon as you’re obviously pregnant (and people don’t have to worry about mentioning it in case actually you’ve just eaten a bit more than usual!) everyone wants to talk about the baby. You have a new script to follow, and it’s easy to know what to say. Due dates, birth plans, gender guesses, name ideas…there are so many things that people suddenly want to know, and I actually found that so much easier than usual conversations because it was predictable and somehow felt a bit removed from me. Even hearing other people’s graphic descriptions of their own birth experiences didn’t really bother me!
Another positive was that for the only time in my life, I wasn’t constantly cold. I’m the person who will have a hot water bottle at night 360 days of the year – only daring to kick it out if the temperature goes above about 28 degrees. I’m always shivery and my hands and feet are like ice almost all the time. So being warm, with all the extra weight and blood in my body, was amazing for me, especially during the autumn and winter.
One thing I did notice while pregnant, that ties in with now being out in the world and knowing I’m autistic, was the surprising lack of consideration from others. I was working in an office up until a couple of weeks before my due date and travelling in and out by train. By the end I was very clearly pregnant, being a grand five foot three, petite and about 90% bump. There was no mistaking me for a heavily pregnant woman. And I wasn’t expecting a seat to be offered all the time – in fact I’d probably have declined it anyway as it was slightly more comfortable to stand by the end and bending in the middle wasn’t very easy. But I lost count of the number of times people would actively shove past me, sometimes actually pushing me out of the way, to get onto or off the train. So, not the best of experiences there – but then again, I didn’t get any strangers asking to touch my bump, so I guess it’s swings and roundabouts!
ot knowing I was autistic meant I never asked for any accommodations. But looking back, I’m not sure there was anything I would have wanted. Perhaps if I hadn’t had a partner who was there with me for all of my appointments, I’d have needed a bit more explanation for some of the things. And understanding my sensory sensitivities more would probably have helped me to plan better around those.
I think the pregnancy and birth (not ready to talk about that one just yet!) were tough but somehow manageable as they were timebound. Where knowing about my autism would have been infinitely more useful would have been planning for the actual parenthood part. Because that was a huge shock to my system and only recently, having learnt about my autism, am I truly finding ways to adjust and parent in ways that suit me, my family and my brain.
Useful Resources
I have since come across a couple of really good podcasts about pregnancy / parenthood and autism / neurodivergence that are worth checking out for anyone who is going through it or planning to. The linked podcasts contain lots of useful information I would have loved to have known beforehand.
Princess and the Pea Podcast: 9 | Autistic Mothers Group on Apple Podcasts