Four months in

16+3 weeks today. Yup, I'm still sick.

I am, however, making progress.

After what I can only describe as a mild breakdown on Sunday which involved my return home after a mammoth weekend on the road which began on Friday with a 6 hour drive into central London and concluded with a return journey from the Midlands after spending the night in an unmemorable hotel due to a weekend of trawling round his various friends and relatives scattered around his hometown feeling permanently queasy.

Anyway, I digress. I returned home to discover my parents had cleaned my much neglected house.

The floodgates unceremoniously opened without warning. They took me back to their home. I was not coping well.

That was probably the lowest I have been in recent weeks. Another sad, hard goodbye to J, this time with a 3.5 hour journey ahead of me, emotionally and physically exhausted, stocked up with crackers and prepared for the Archers omnibus (which I was actually a bit excited about) and knowing it'd be yet another 5 nights until I saw him again.

My good friend Yorkshire Lass said to me yesterday that she didn't know how we were doing it but we must know what we're doing.

But sometimes I don't. I want to beg him to come home so badly, I want to call him, to ask him, to demand him.

I have been here before, without the bump. When he was in New Zealand training, I would ache, I would hurt so much, but I never asked. Eventually, he called me and told me he was on the next flight home. I stood by him through the most painful of times, through hearing his hell out there, through missing him beyond belief.

And this time, at least, I have him on weekends. I don't know how service wives do it.

But I have these constant goodbyes, these constant feelings of loneliness, of endurance, of constant trial. It is so hard being on my own.

And now he won't be home until two weeks before the baby is due.

He has been away just two months now. And I have five to go. Even as I write this I have tears stinging my eyes, but I can never beg him. He is doing this for us, for our baby. He wants to be home just as badly as I want him. If he came home we would not be able to cope financially. And he has a commitment which he would never break.

But it hurts so god damned much. I am so lonely in a way that only he can ease. My family and close friends have got me through each day, but I miss him beyond all comprehension. I miss his cuddles at night, I miss hearing him breathe beside me in bed, I miss just talking to him, I miss just being with him, being in the same house, the same environment, together, how it should be. And now I can't stop these bitter tears which to me are just flooded with weakness and guilt and the inability to cope.

Thanks to my wonderful, wonderful sister, I visited the acupuncturist on Tuesday. A midwife as well, I didn't realise how much hope I had pinned on this visit until I was there. My voice was shakey, she must have known how I fought back these all too regular tears, as I told her how I felt. About the continual bitter taste in my mouth that plagues me and increases in intensity until I cannot cope in the evening, the rising of the sickness as the hours go by (its a good job I'm a morning person otherwise I'd not get anything done), the pressure headaches that feel like I am crumbling beneath the weight of sandbags balanced delicately, invisibly, on my head.

So she stuck pins in me. This midwife-come-acupuncturist treated me with such gentleness, promising me that she'd help me get better, listening to me, helping me, soothing me. She asked me such questions that I knew she knew.

I lay there, on the table, some gentle music playing, pins in my feet, my wrists, my chest, my head. I lay there and gradually, after my anxiety started to reside, after my giant gasps of air to surpress my tears has died, after my body began to accept to relax, after my mind slowly, slowly, with great effort, began to drop its crowded thoughts until I lay there just thinking about names.

I now have ball bearings in my ears and on my chest. I have an appointment next week and the week after. I am not sure whether anything is helping yet, it is too early to tell. My massive, unrelenting, unforgiving workload plagues me into exhaustion and tiredness that I know is a hindrance to my recovery.

But she gave me such hope. She listened and, I do believe, she understood. Where modern medicine fails with morning sickness, I have been offered a lifeline. Thanks to my sister and this woman, I feel like I have been given the opportunity to fight, to try again.

It made me realise how low I had fallen, and how far down I still am. I am still a shadow of myself, I still look at myself in the mirror and see a face riddled with the scars of pregnancy - dark shadows, spots, pale and tired skin. My body is unfamiliar to me. I have put on an incomprehensible half a stone. I have no tone, no definition. A mass of fat cells accumulating around my back and hips along with my bump, I feel like I am within a shell that isn't my own. I feel like I am within borrowed skin.

On Saturday morning, though, J and I saw our baby. J for the first time. I will never forget that moment. This time it had such long legs, such beautiful fingers and toes. It turned and stretched and rolled over and was just so incredibly beautiful for a few moments I forgot everything and there was nothing in this world other than J and our baby.