The fears

These are/were my fears, in roughly chronological order:

 1. Infertility.

Well THAT’S no longer an issue 🙂 I did gain 7 kilos from the mere thought, all the same (handily, I’m so sick I’m losing weight faster than a crash diet. . . yay?)

2. Miscarriage.

Not a big issue – plus, again, the intense nausea is reassuring.

3. Annoying strangers approaching me to tell their labor horror stories. My plan for this goes as follows:

Random stranger: Are you pregnant?

Me: Yep! Fifth time lucky – well, fifth child. Third pregnancy.

Random stranger: You had. . . triplets?

Me: Yep. See you later.

I’ll let you know if it works.

I gathered horror stories from friends pre-pregnancy (some are truly horrific) as a kind of innoculation.

Wacky conversations so far:

One friend seemed to suggest that I should go on a raw-food diet. To which I say HAH!

Another friend told me she was throwing up so much all through her pregnancy that she lost three stone and was eventually induced. (Had a great birth, though.) At the time, I thought, “Well, *I* won’t be constantly throwing up.”

One person (who has a gift for giving terror-inducing reassurance) told me (the pregnant woman with the anxiety disorder), “The most important thing about labor is you MUST STAY CALM. Otherwise your body releases adrenalin, and it hurts SO much more. And don’t scrunch up your face at all, either – that tightens things “down there”, and completely screws up the whole process.”

4. Labor itself (just not thinking about it).

5. Some kind of deformity (see two weeks ago for the squid baby – which CJ and I would love JUST AS MUCH), particularly one that took away Mini-Me’s chance to become independent one day (for his/her sake and for mine).

6. I accidentally maim or kill the child (or, less scary, something or someone else accidentally maims or kills them).

7. Colic. CJ was, and my niece was too (but she was treatable). I’m not a huge fan of screaming – and I hate the thought of my baby being in pain for months on end.

8. Kid is rude/rotten/mean/in pain/grows to hate me. Bound to happen. All I can do is my best, and choose to accept that they’re an individual in their own right. They’re my responsibility (less so as they grow older), but not an extension of me. I am not just a mother – I am also a wife, writer, friend, and human being.

9. Mini-Me is mentally ill – like me, my mum, and her mum. (I think I’m the worst – but hopefully that’s because my biodad was somewhat useless, and left when I was tiny. Which is enormously encouraging, because CJ is brilliant – very much the same type of man as my second Dad, who did a fine job raising me.) There are some things we can do to ameliorate mental illness and/or reduce the chance of passing it on. I can teach resilience by modelling, by letting my child fall and learn to stand up, and by valuing contentment over being unusual/special/hyper-meaningful (in my opinion, writing/art/dancing/etc is very bad for mental health). Whatever happens, I made the choice long ago that if they ended up like me, they were still a worthwhile individual who deserved to exist.

10. Kid has ADD – like his father and grandfather. It’s not a big fear, and we can help it by not letting them near a TV or computer screen for the first two years. (Or at least, we can try.)

 

That WAS my list. You’ll notice nausea didn’t even make the top ten. So much for that.

Today I’m at 8 weeks, which means I’ve dealt with two weeks of nausea and I probably have four to go. Next week I’ll be halfway.

I’m sleeping about twelve hours a day, which certainly helps. Thanks to Maxolon, I’m able to eat or drink something three times a day.

In unrelated unpleasant news, our younger cat Ana has been missing since Saturday. I don’t have high hopes for her.

If you are in the Woden area or Northern Tuggeranong, please keep an eye out. She is tortoiseshell and white, semi-longhaired, with two large bells on a collar around her neck.