Freak Show

Ugh--I have been such a lunatic since the moment I saw that blue plus sign!! SO nervous and worried-and really for no good reason as I've been feeling great and have had no cramps or spotting. I just wanted (and still do, of course!) for things to go well so badly that it made me more scared for things to go wrong. Each Saturday marked a new week and a small bit of relief...but not enough to calm the nerves. I found myself being very superstitious and overly cautious. I didn't write my due date in my calendar and wrote my doctor's appointments only in pencil. I tried hard not to talk about ME being pregnant because I didn't want to jinx myself. I avoided baby sections of stores like the plague for fear of expectant mothers looking at me and wondering what an 'impostor' was doing there. I woke up every morning and practically felt myself up just to make sure my boobs still hurt...if they did I felt like I could breathe a little easier. I really put myself through the ringer. I don't know how I survived, let alone the baby.
I found myself waiting on pins and needles for the day when I would be 12 weeks...and even more for January 10th when we would be able to hear the heartbeat. I cried on the way to the doctor's office I was so nervous! Thankfully I have a sweetheart of a husband because I am certain he did NOT know what to do with me. Pregnant women should come with a manual.
Eventually we were able to hear the greatest sound in the world: our baby's heart beating fast. I relaxed a little bit that day and am working on being less of a freak show since then.
One piece of advice that I implore to you when you find yourself in this situation is...DO NOT start googling your questions. One day when I was eight weeks I searched "chances of miscarriage at eight weeks after seeing heartbeat". What was I thinking??? Pregnancy makes you do crazy things. Anyway, the first link I clicked on was very positive. A very nice lady said that once you hear the heartbeat the chances of miscarriage are only like 8%. This was a number I could work with! Then I made the horrible decision to keep going. I should have stopped at the good news...but noooooo. The rest of the links were all horror stories. I won't even go into them because they were so sad. When I finally turned off the computer I was more of a crazy person that I started with.
No doubt that the internet can be a fabulous tool...but I'll tell you this: most of the women who are commenting on posts about miscarriage and disasters of pregnancy are the women with sad tales to tell. These are the women with enough free time to warn the world of their scary experience. The people who's pregnancy is going along fine are too happy about being pregnant to get on the computer to document it (except me, of course...duh!).
Although I'm getting better, being a worry-wart is something I'm still struggling with. My mom tells me to get used to it because "that's what being a mommy is all about". And while I wholeheartedly agree with her...I'm trying hard to take a minute to celebrate this wonder that is inside me.