I am absolutely terrified of losing one or both of my babies.
Which is fair. I mean, who isn't?
But it's an almost all-consuming fear. I keep getting images in my head of me on the table and the doctor saying, "We're so sorry..." And I try very hard to cut them off. I don't like engaging in these horrid daydream nightmares. But I don't know how to turn them off.
I bought a Doppler. I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself. It's one of those cheap ones. Before buying it, my husband made me promise I wouldn't freak out if we couldn't find the heartbeats. "Oh, I promise." I've been hearing a heartbeat consistently since about 9 weeks. I can't tell if we're hearing 2 or not, because...sometimes I pick up 3. I know there are echos and such, and so, rather than assuming I've found them both, I assume I've only found one. In fact, my standing hypothesis is that at least one baby is dead. I use my Doppler to try to disprove this.
That's not healthy. Walking around so unsure of Itsy and Bitsy is not fun.
When I was seeing a therapist (for IF), she'd tell me, when I would start saying, "And it didn't work this time so it might not work next time and adopting in Utah when you're not Mormon is so hard and my husband's age and not knowing his family history makes us bad candidates for international but maybe donor embryos would just die in my toxic uterus..." not to go there. Just don't go there. Don't borrow trouble.
I would love to return trouble. I'd love to hand it out like Halloween candy, just get it the fuck out of my brain.
I try to replace my visions with me giving birth (ends badly) or seeing both of them moving on the ultrasound (ends badly) or pushing a double stroller (can't quite do it). I do my Anji pregnancy meditations. I try to think positive.
But...it doesn't work very well. How, please tell me, can I stop my brain from going there?
10 comments:
I used to worry all the time too, someone told me early on- no matter what you do or how much you worry, what is meant to be will be. And for some reason that helped me not to worry 24-7. All that worry isn't good for your little babies!
Someone told me one of the best things I can do for my baby is not to wory. That you don't have much control over how your pregnancy will, butyou can control the enviroment you give your bab(ies) and you should think of it as contrling your thoughts for them and their comfort.
I still freakedout some, but not nearly as much.
Good luck!
I'd like to be all sweetness and light and tell you "don't worry" but I know I will be THE SAME WAY :) We can try and try sooo hard to put things out of our mind, but especially after one goes through a miscarriage, it's almost impossible not to constantly worry and hope that things are going well. What I will say is that you've made it this far already, and things are looking great :) And Im no psychic but I have a good feeling this is it for you and that Itsy and Bitsy will most definitely be chilling in a double stroller next year:) If you dont mind me asking, how much is a "cheap" doppler?
You might try tapping- It is a technique that helps relieve anxiety. I swear it works, if you can just remember to do it. This website explains how to do it.
http://eft.mercola.com/
It is very hard to not go there. I didn't believe I was taking home two babies. I bought two cribs, but I only set up one. I figured if I prepared for the worst, when it happened I wouldn't be so devastated. Yeah, right.
The doppler won't help you very much, I'm afraid. What will help is when you can feel them kick and move. Right before my emergency C section the nurses were freaked out because they couldn't get baby b's heartbeat, but I could feel him kicking one side, while his brother punched the other. They were laying right on top of each other so their hearts overlapped, it was almost impossible to hear them separately.
I wish there was something I could tell you to help you relax. Just try to remember that most parents of twins bring home two healthy babies, believe it or not. Hang in there! When you start to feel them move it is an amazing experience! Not to mention a reassuring one :)
I was like this, too, during my twins pregnancy.
My OBGyn banned me from the Internet. I watched a lot of bad TV and read a lot of good books. My OBGyn traded me the Internet for availability to her nurse's advice anytime and she returned all of my calls. I called her, a lot.
(((Hugs))) feeling like this is totally normal, but sucks nonetheless.
I hate to say this but I think - to a certain extent - that it's impossible for your brain not to go there. When you've lost before, that experience can be overwhelming, even in the face of a pregnancy that seems to be okay.
Just know this: it gets easier. Someone said this to me and I didn't believe it. This does not mean that there won't be moments of panic and moments of extreme doubt. But with every week that goes by, you are in safer and safer territory. It doesn't feel like it (I know). But you are.
The trouble is that the very act of trying not to think about something means that you've already started to think about it....
I had a miscarriage and when I got pregnant again I too was filled with worry. Once I could feel him move it helped, but even then, some days he was quieter so I worried still, and even in the delivery room I was filled with terror when the midwife couldn't immediately find his heartbeat. When I wake before him in the morning, my mind tries to take me down the what-if-the-worse-has-happened path. If you are a worrier, there will always be something to worry about.
The only thing I can say is that when your mind starts to go down that path you have to try really hard to stop going all the way, so if you think, 'I haven't felt movement for a while, direct your mind to 'he's just having a rest etc', rather than doom, worse case scenario.
So much easier to say than do, but it's all you can do.
Also, whatever thoughts you conjure up can't change what will be, so always better to try and think the happier thoughts and tell your brain that you are in control of it, not the other way around, thanks very much.
Hope you can find some peace soon.
I have been through this WAY TOO MANY times. I am not good at advice ont his subject as 1. This is my 9th pregnancy (1 living child)2. My last pregnancy I lost at 20 weeks and 3. Currently pregnant with Boy twins and EVERY SINGLE DAY I have to say to myself "It's going to be OK". I talk to "the boys" each and every night. I beg them to continue to have heartbeats and to stay healthy. It's weird. I bought a doppler, it cost about $50.00 and it is seriously the best 50 bucks ever spent. The only bad part even if I only hear one HB I will say to my husband "well at X time they were still alive", all the while with the intention that if I go to another appointment and they are dead I can say they were alive at X time.
No good advice. I know how hard it is. Just making it through one day at a time. My peri's office has been awesome about seeing me every two to three weeks and just today they reminded me again they would see me a few times a week if they needed to. Most offices are understanding, I just don't want to be the "CRAZY LADY".
For me it has gotten a lot better over time, as more and more things go right with this pregnancy, it's sort of helped balance out all the things that went wrong with previous pregnancies. Not erased them: I'll always be a bit more paranoid than an expectant mom who has not had miscarriages or fertility challenges, but it's just that there's been more of a track record of "my body doesn't always do everything wrong" to help reassure me that things in fact might not be currently going wrong.
Making it out of the first trimester helped. Making it to medically considered stillbirth territory rather than miscarriage helped. Movement helped a little, but then the days of no noted activity were much more terrifying. Regular movement helped even more. Making it past milestones like viability and ever-less-crappy odds of survival without long-term complications if labor started also helped. Reminding myself that the things that went wrong in the past really can't go wrong again, since we've taken steps to ensure that they don't happen, also helped.
But I think I also tend to be a very dogged optimist at the core of things, history notwithstanding, so I think my response might be different than someone else's.
Ultimately, if as time passes you're having a hard time coping, I totally think it's very appropriate to take these issues to a professional to unpack further.
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