What I'll Be Worrying About

No matter how long this pregnancy lasts, I will spend every single day worrying.

I began to feel the slightest of movements, as I have passed fifteen weeks and now, the fifth time that I have passed this point, seasoned in what I am experiencing. Or am I? At the appointment where Nelle’s heartbeat could not be found, I was asked if I had felt her move and I had responded “yes.” Either in denial or less adept at distinguishing movements than I thought. I don’t even want to answer that question when I am asked at future appointments. I might just say “I don’t want to answer that question until you see a heartbeat.”

Feeling movement brings on a new layer of daily worry. Hours of feeling nothing, though normal, only induce a surge of panic. More than a surge: a full-on attack of flashbacks, devastation, and questions of “why did I put myself through this again?” Right now, I feel nothing. It is a feeling of un-pregnancy. How many days until the next appointment? I have started looking at it as “how many days until I am told it is over?” At least it is an appointment that will begin with an ultrasound, not a Doppler.

If I do make it further, I only imagine it will be worse as I’ll be expected to monitor the movements carefully. And irregularity will likely send me into a tailspin or have me running to the hospital.

I feel everything else. Still the occasional headache. Pains and itching in my abdomen from my daily injections. A new pain in my shoulder. It seems I can never go through pregnancy, with it’s stretching ligaments, without pulling my shoulder and needing to suffer through with limited means of treatment.

I’m nauseous. Not the type of normal nausea caused by pregnancy, but the type of nausea that I felt right before giving birth to Nelle – a severe reaction to the experience. Grief-induced nausea. My body’s physical manifestation of overwhelming emotions.

To give myself a distraction in the evenings where I do nothing except lie in bed and watch mindless tv, I have now buckled down to focus on a writing project I wanted to do. Printed out on over a hundred pages, my own words surround me as I enter “edit” mode. I need that distraction. Between editing and reading books as a form of “research” that I want to do, maybe I can keep myself sane for the next few weeks and months. Maybe.

I didn’t want to write this. I didn’t want to share it. But, when I was pregnant with Iris, fear prevented me from writing. I don’t want to do that a second time. My heart throbs with anxiety and I cannot calm down.

At this moment, I feel nothing. And I fear that I will soon look back on this writing and find that I was right, again.