Pregnancy #3 {Part 2}: Paralyzing Fear.

If interested, you can read  part 1 here.

The very moment we found out we were pregnant with another little one the fear set in. Every day I was a wreck. My fear was paralyzing me, almost quite literally (with the major exception of a super active boy) and the anxiety within me would ruin any hope that my heart wanted to have. Ted would come home from work or school to find me… and our home… a mess.

For a while I told myself and those around me that my reason for not doing much was because I was so sick and exhausted from pregnancy. Yes, that was partly true but I also knew that a lot of why I wasn’t moving, why I wasn’t doing things I love and brought me hope, why I wasn’t even doing things that I should be doing… was out of fear.

At 8 weeks I had to make the trip to Dr. Hill’s office to have the first checkup on the baby. I walked in his office feeling so nauseous, fearful and shaken up. They put me in the room to wait for him and I began to cry and shake. I couldn’t do this. The last time I had an ultrasound, I was a few days away from 7 months pregnant with Eisley (one week away from potentially delivering her) and they showed me the most devastating thing a mother could see. My baby girl’s heart had stopped beating. The memouries came flooding back and I almost couldn’t handle even being there. When Dr. Hill came in he did the ultrasound and I saw a tiny little baby the size of a bean, wriggling around and when he shared the heartbeat aloud. I cried the entire time.

Even after seeing his swift heartbeat, I allowed myself to sink so quickly into fearing for this baby. And even though I had heard and knew this would be “normal” for a momma who lost a child, it was worse than I’d ever imagined.

There was a part of me, of course, that wanted to hope and trust and believe with everything in me that this baby will be in my arms, healthy and breathing. Of course, I wanted to hope for that. However, with everything we’ve walked through, I feel it would be incredibly ignorant to not remember the reality. I can’t even forget that reality that we’re faced with everyday. I began to believe very fatalistically. I’d constantly dwell on the reality that any given moment I could begin bleeding, I could lose this baby, despite how “good” the heartbeat sounded just the week before, despite how everything was going thus far…

When people who knew we were pregnant would hang out with us or talk with me about this little one, I would say things like, “IF we get to November…” or things like “IF we can carry this baby full term…” I remember one night we had a whole group of friends over and afterwards Ted sat me down and had a serious talk with me. He was so sad and weary of hearing me speak so fatalistically. He wanted to see me hope again and believe that this could happen. He felt so strongly that this pregnancy would be just like it was with Chase.

Not long after our talk I had a major breakdown. I was almost 12 weeks pregnant and the fear was unbearable for my mind. I couldn’t move from the couch besides helping Chase or getting him out of trouble. I laid on my left side and drank a ton of water (both of which I did with Eisley because they were what could help her). I never even got Chase out of the house for most of my first bit of pregnancy.  Most days, I couldn’t even get myself to the shower. I was depressed, fearful, full of anxiety and worry. I didn’t believe in myself. I’d, once again, convinced myself that I was to blame for Eisley’s death and that maybe if I did everything “perfectly” with this pregnancy things would be different.

One huge struggle I have had with believing I had failed Eisley, that my body had failed her, was with this little one, not knowing what it was that I really could do differently. They never gave me a solid reason for why my placenta clotted and why it pulled away from the uterine wall. There wasn’t something they could pin point and say “Do this differently next time.” Nothing. So imagine my fear of doing anything.

The road to 13 weeks was incredibly daunting. At 13 weeks with my sweet Eisley-girl, I had begun bleeding. At 12 weeks with this little one, I had to see the specialist I saw weekly with Eisley. Talk about traumatic experiences… I’m still working through my times in her office when I was pregnant with Eisley.

The thought of returning to her office was more than I thought I could handle. Having rarely ever heard or seen our fetal medicine specialist speak positively or with hope, I only feared the worst…

Part 3 coming soon with how it was to walk back into the specialists, facing week 13 and how I felt in learning this little one’s gender.