I haven’t written much lately, although I have tried to keep up with reading and commenting on blogs. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the emotions I have swimming in my soul. The truth is that I am all at once overjoyed and terrified. My hopes soar and then they are dragged down by the weight of my fears. I daydream of holding my sweet little girls next to my skin, kissing their heads and fingers and bellies and toes…then the worry and doubt, like nightmares, start to consume me.
It has all become so much worse since sometime in week 20. I think it is because of a many reasons. The main one is that I can feel my grrl monsters pushing and kicking and wiggling many times throughout the day. Gone are the little flutters that I question are real. MrBeep has even been able to feel them kick when his hand is on my belly. Feeling these little beings gives me such great elation and hope. They are so much more real to me now than they had ever been before. Not just images on a screen or results of a test or fantasies of children to be. Now I feel their presence, they are tangible in a new way that my heart cannot describe. The thought of losing it all fills me with dread.
I know I should “just relax” and that most women will end up having healthy babies. I know that my weekly checkups have been encouraging. The babies are growing well, the stitch seems to be doing it’s job. I begin to breathe. I begin to let hope ease my worried mind. Then I read from the LFCA, or other wonderful bloggers who ask for words of support and sympathy for others who lose their little ones. All at once I crash back to the land of nightmares and I don’t know how to escape. I know many of you have/had these fears, how do/did you cope?
Yesterday I think I overdid it a bit. Sat in a chair for too long, did a few extra chores and by the evening I was feeling a new kind of achiness in my lower abdomen. Just before bedtime I had the smallest tinge of pink on the TP. I was so afraid as I went to sleep that something was wrong and all would be lost. I have now had a very full night’s sleep. I have put myself back on strict bedrest, just laying on the couch or in bed with only bathroom breaks. I have had no other achy feelings or pink since last night. I have felt each little grrl monster wiggle and thrash and kick. My achiness could have just been ligament pains, it could have been from the previa moving (it has been moving and may clear completely). I just don’t know. I actually feel fine…and sometimes that’s a problem too. Every time I had complications, there was no warning. Feeling fine and then all at once, the big bleed or the cervix almost fails. My problems seem to come out of the blue and that deals a lot of anxiety that fuels these overwhelming fears…and I don’t know how to conquer them. Only time can help, but it drags and lags and taunts me.
Today I am 22w1d. At 22 weeks if something terrible goes wrong, my baby girls will not be saved. It is too early for any hope. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and lay in the dark. I watch the clock, my mind racing. I feel I am so close but so far away. 2 weeks to viability, 8 weeks to likely survival, 16 weeks to “full term” and these are indeed markers to celebrate. The numbers as weeks look so small, but as hours in the dark of night they stretch to what feels like infinity – 312, 1,344, 2,688 hours. I have been so fearful and sad today. I have cried so much. I feel defective. I feel weak because of my worry. MrBeep has been an incredible comfort, he soothes my soul. I am lucky to know and love him. I know that I will come out of this eventually, I will build myself back again…but in the meantime…my friends, can you help? Any advice?
UPDATE: OK my friends, I have just read mekate’s post and am again overwhelmed. I won’t give anything away, but please please go read and send her love.
