Rambling

I seem to have hit another low. One that being grateful and trying to take care of my health isn’t getting me out of. I’m still mostly functioning through it, but it’s taking a toll. I’m having a hard time eating right and I’m exhausted, but it’s harder to sleep.

I do know what triggered this. I read someone’s recurrent miscarriage story and they said they cling to the feeling they had when they got their first positive when things get rough. The happy feeling before they had the fear from loss. I don’t know that feeling. My first two pregnancies were over before I knew they were happening.

I’m just going to slide in that it’s tremendously traumatizing for your first glimpse into pregnancy to be a fetus in the toilet. That’s all I’m saying about it specifically.

Having that experience as my first as opposed to the moment of, “Oh my gosh, we’re going to be parents.” That’s why I am where I an right now. I’m jealous that my story begins where other people’s start to go sour. It’s a dumb thing to be jealous of because we’re all in the same boat. But I didn’t make a journey here, I just landed here. One day, I was a childless college student on birth control, trying not to move too fast with my now-husband. The next, I was a childless mother who was getting that stupid thing out of her arm ASAP because it clearly wasn’t working for any of the reasons it had been put in for. I didn’t even get to have the moment of trying to figure out how to work school around a pregnancy and baby.

I’m trying to organize my thoughts and feelings. I know it’s a jabbering mess. I have never known pregnancy without fear of loss, and I am jealous of those who have had that moment, however fleeting it was. I never had the “normal” feelings of seeing a positive pregnancy test at any stage of life. I’ve only known the panic of wondering if that little line would make it. Pregnancy has been almost entirely traumatizing for me. Even successful pregnancy has been filled with so much stress.

I’ve kind of been thinking recently that this current pregnancy was slid in by the universe/my husband’s gods because they knew I was done. I said I needed a break from pregnancy around a week or two before the positive came for this one. That idea of a break very quickly evolved into feelings of not being able to go through this again. I think, if this pregnancy hadn’t happened so quickly, it would never have happened. I’m not sure if my husband really understands that. It’s a melancholy feeling for me to acknowledge it.

It’s rough to acknowledge that I did not want this pregnancy. I wanted the two that happened in the few months before it. I tried hard for those two. I took medications to restart my period. I had blood tests to check for thyroid and autoimmune disorders.

I’m trying to organize so I can potentially move out of this low. I could have punched the nurse at my initial visit for this pregnancy. Trying to explain we were trying for those other two, and this one just happened when we talked about taking a break, so my file says “unplanned pregnancy.” True as those words are to how I feel, it’s like she just dismissed that we had been trying just a month before. It was only the timing that changed that first word, not our intentions.

I share stuff all the time now on my social media about miscarriage and mental health because it seems like people don’t fully get it. Postpartum depression and anxiety are NOT baby blues. Do not ever compare your sadness over this being your last child to my dread and panic over something possibly going wrong with my freaking miracle of a child. I can’t stand it when I tried to explain my depression and anxiety to people and that’s what they come back with. “Yeah, I think I had problems with that because I was a little sad after my last child that we probably weren’t going to have more.” Go crawl in a hole. Sad. I didn’t sleep. I only ate what was easy to grab because I couldn’t be in a different room for more than five minutes. I was miserable because I couldn’t get images of horrible accidents happening out of my head. Honestly, I still can’t. They just pop up less often now and I can let them pass faster.

I’m probably going to go through that misery again. Considering I probably never fully got out of my postpartum from my son, and then it dipped bad in March, and now I’m depressed while pregnant. It’s just like the perfect recipe of risk factors for postpartum depression.

Another guilty thought that has me feeling low: I would be so relieved if this baby was a premie in a facility with a high survival rate. I’d be stressed as all heck watching the little thing fight for life. But right now, I honestly have this gnawing fear that the baby’s chance of survival is higher in an incubator than in my womb. I’ve been having a few nights where Braxton Hicks get so bad that my husband considers taking me to the hospital, and so much of me really wouldn’t mind if it was preterm labor since we’ve made it past the viability milestone.

So many things I feel guilty over. And hurt and lonely. I don’t want time to go too quickly, but I can’t wait to have the baby so I can never be pregnant again.