Worries

I may be the most paranoid expectant mother alive. I hate the damn cramping. No one tells you about the cramping ahead of time. Well, here's a heads up, when you first get pregnant, you could swear you're about to have your period. All the books say it’s fine and normal. But it totally doesn’t feel fine or normal.

I worry that something is wrong and I’ll miss it and somehow it will lead to losing the baby.

I worry every time I cough or sneeze and being pregnant in January isn’t really conducive to not coughing or sneezing. I worry that I’ll twist wrong, stop suddenly at a stop light, or put my beagle on the bed and lose the baby. I keep telling myself that women used to have no idea that they were pregnant at this point and went about their day and everything was fine. I remind myself that women used to do (and still do) heavy labor up to the birth of the baby and everything was fine. I remind myself that the whole process must work a little better than I’m giving it credit for or we would never manage to have babies.

I worry that it was too easy for me to get pregnant. I talked to my mom and it turns out I come from quite fertile stock. There are “accidents” on both sides of my family through the last 2 generations. And, as far as she knows, there haven’t been any miscarriages. At the same time, it seems that pregnancy makes me superstitious. It was just too easy thus I must be extra vigilant.

My obstetrician is a very nice man who was happy to order tests for my thyroid and do a serum pregnancy test since I was convinced I must have done something wrong with the 2 (!) positive pregnancy tests and I had just somehow missed the occurrence of my period and the weeping and hunger and thirst were just coincidental. It turns out my thyroid levels were a little off so he modified my medication and plans to retest at my 1st appointment. At the same time, this “see me in 4 ½ weeks” has me worried as well. It is a concrete way of knowing that until then there is very little medical science can offer to help me keep this baby healthy. I know that his desire to see me at 8 ½ weeks is directly linked to the fact that he can then get a good ultrasound and idea of how far, exactly, I am along and not to do with what he can or can’t do to help the baby. But there is still this underlying idea that it’s all up to God and fate and which way the wind blows for this first few weeks.