u/insockniac

I (23F) currently have a joint universal credit claim with my boyfriend (24M) of 6 years. We have a 3yo together and I am 26 weeks pregnant. We privately rent and get housing element. My only income is child benefit but i am also a part time openuni student so i get just a tuition loan from student finance.

Unfortunately my boyfriend has just informed me he no longer loves me so he will be leaving at some point soon. I have a vague understanding that if i want to stay in our house (both of us named on the tenancy) it will become an untidy tenancy at which point i will be at the mercy of the landlord and estate agent if they let me stay but it seems like either way i am going to end up in arrears.

Is there any way to get through this without destroying my financial history? Our bills are due at the start of the month and from what i understand he isn’t allowed to help me out if we go from joint to a single claim plus he will need his wage to find somewhere new to move to so i’m not sure what i do? I have absolutely no savings and i can’t return to work because of the pregnancy and my son has only just started the 15 hours at nursery

This is my 2nd and final pregnancy so i just want to throw myself a bit of a pity party if thats okay?

My first pregnancy sucked i had horrific pregnancy depression and anxiety that required huge amounts of support, i was less than a year post op from a gastric sleeve so had to have regular growth scans (sounds cute but not if you’re miserable and anxious) to check baby wasn’t iugr, due to the gastric sleeve i couldn’t have the glucose drink so i ended up having to do the blood sugar finger pricks for 2 weeks twice in my pregnancy though never diagnosed with GD and to top it all off my eyesight deteriorated rapidly so i was undergoing frequent eye tests at the hospital and having to have mri scans because they legitimately thought i had a tumour in my head. All ending with a 5 day induction at 37 weeks over concerns he was going to be too big to deliver if left any longer.

Thankfully the mri was clear, the depression went away pretty much with the placenta, my son was a normal size and life went on… until for some reason i decided to do this all again 3 years later and remembered exactly why i was so miserable only this time i actually have good reason to be!

For starters i want to apologise to anyone who had to speak to me when i was pregnant with my firstborn because i clearly did not appreciate how good i had it only having vomited maybe 3x and feeling pretty much no negative pregnancy symptoms until my 3rd trimester.

This baby on the other hand… i feel like i’ve been in my 3rd trimester since i found out because in every single way i feel crummy and only stopped puking 2 weeks ago (i’m 26 weeks today) on top of that i was flagged for being group b positive and today diagnosed with gestational diabetes. On top of that i was already considered high risk because of the previous gastric sleeve and that i am now on adhd medication though weaning off of it soon.

I just wanted a normal hands off relaxed second pregnancy. I wanted to preferably go into spontaneous labour, hopefully have a waterbirth and then get stuck into establishing breastfeeding for 12 miserable weeks instead i’m going to probably need glucose blood testing in labour, frequent fetal monitoring and definitely will be on an antibiotic drip if baby doesn’t fly out. This all ignores the really scary stuff that i’m not even allowing myself to think about right now such as the copious additional risks to baby that group b strep and gestational diabetes pose.

Anyone else in this completely shitty position?

Since the betrayal of twisters adding milk i am struggling to find vegan ice cream that isn’t crazy expensive anywhere?! I’ve got a 3yo with severe egg and milk allergies plus we try to reduce animal product consumption where we can but its so hard now when all his favourite options have been taken away from him.

Vegan magnums are almost £5 for a pack of 3 and you can never find them sold separately. Swedish glace is nice but not really portable for a nice summer day and don’t even get me started on the blueberry vegan magnums that seem to have disappeared and broken my toddlers heart forever! So frustrating! Any tips on where to find cheap ice creams?

This is mostly for allergy parents but feel free to weigh in regardless.

My son has ige egg and milk allergies that in the past have led to an ambulance being called. He also has undiagnosed bowel issues that have dominated the last year of his life. For those reasons and a few others we kept him at home until the term after his 3rd birthday but I had his nursery picked out from day one as they are a lovely private owned montessori nursery thats been part of the community for the last 30 years. Despite this ridiculous situation I genuinely cannot think of a nursery I would rather he be in especially in our small seaside town.

Unfortunately on Tuesday I received a phone call that my son had been given egg fried rice at lunch instead of just plain rice. He was given his medication and apparently had not reacted yet but obviously the nursery and all professionals involved with him understand that this should never have happened. A lot of the investigation is out of my hands now and the nursery has been incredibly transparent with me about this so while an element of trust is gone I am grateful that there is no fight to be had.

What I can’t say or I suppose really isn’t important in this situation or for my son’s long term care is that I don’t know how to process how scary this has been for me. He was okay but thats sheer luck. If the variables were even slightly different, if it hadn’t been picked up on relatively quickly he very likely could’ve gone into anaphylactic shock. Its really hard to have a toddler shout gibberish at you about sandwiches but its even harder to stand there and not just want to burst into tears with how lucky i am that he is here to even do that.

We have had scary incidents over his 3 years of life and in the grand scheme of things this is a drop in the ocean but as he gets older and i have to let go i don’t know how to cope with sending my beautiful boy out into the world so fragile that someones brain fart and a plate with egg fried rice on it could have ended his short life.

I’m due with our second at the end of august and my sons allergy team has been really honest that due to our family histories we are very likely to be dealing with things like food allergies, asthma and hayfever for both of our kids for the majority of their childhood if not longer. So not only am i feeling this fear and to be honest this feeling of complete anger at how unfair life has been for my son health wise i also have it in the back of my mind that baby #2 might have to deal with all this too.

I just don’t know how many more scary incidents I can handle. How do we do this as parents? I don’t want to be this neurotic anxious mum i try so hard not to fall into this worried way of thinking but i just don’t know how to get on with life being reminded that its all SO fragile?