Reflux at night — what helped you

I would gently say that twelve weeks is not long. It felt endless from inside it and looks very short from here, and both of those readings are honest.

The first twelve weeks are also when you find out what your prescriber is like when you ask a question between appointments. Mine was much more available than I expected and I had spent weeks not asking.

The thing nobody tells you about the first twelve weeks is that you are learning a body that keeps moving. By the time I had a rule for something, the rule needed updating.

Something that helped me through the middle stretch: I stopped judging a week by the last day of it. Fridays were always the worst read on how the week had actually gone.

I asked here in week five whether I should be further along, and somebody replied asking further along than what. I did not have an answer, and that was the answer.

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

I want to say plainly that my first twelve weeks contained one week I would describe as bad. One. The other eleven were somewhere between uneventful and quietly encouraging.

The bit I underestimated was how much of the first twelve weeks is logistics — collections, dates, where things live, who knows. The physical side took up much less of my attention than the arrangements did.

You have described the bit that nobody warns you about.

Do not compare your week seven to somebody else's week seven. I did that for about a month and it cost me a fortnight of unnecessary worry.