Worry

For those of you who know me well, you know I'm a worrier. I come by that honestly. My dad's side of the family is full of them -- constant worriers. Throughout this pregnancy, I have worried -- a lot. During the 2ww (two week wait) I worried that it didn't work. Once we got the positive pregnancy test results -- I worried about not finding a heartbeat during our ultrasound at six weeks. Once we had our ultrasound and had heartbeats, I worried about the vanishing twin syndrome (where one twin just "vanishes" and dies off). During the first trimester, I worried about miscarriage. In the second, I worried about incompetent cervix (which ended up being a reality for me). Throughout the entire pregnancy, I have worried that one of the babies' hearts' would just stop beating and this, I still worry about to this moment... literally.

Now that I have reached the third trimester, you hear about keeping "kick counts" to ensure that you are experiencing an adequate amount of movement. The guideline is to monitor during an active time of the day when movement is most likely to occur, and keep track of how often the baby moves. The rule of thumb is to monitor a 2-hour period, and during this time you should feel 10 movements. I have started to do this in the last couple of days, and now of course, I get myself worried...

Baby B has always been my champion "mover" -- I feel her a lot. During my monitoring, I stopped counting her movements because I lost track, she moves so much. Baby A on the other hand, I don't feel as much -- and I never have. There are occasional times when they are both moving a lot, but that is usually at night when I'm trying to sleep -- of course. Then there are the mystery movements -- movements that I cannot pinpoint to one baby or the other. Those are primarily the movements I feel in my middle. Baby A is on my left, Baby B is on my right -- and the last time we had an ultrasound at 24 weeks, they were both head down, facing each other -- so I had a lot of leg action in the middle. So, it is hard to tell who is exactly kicking me in my middle.

I also admit to breaking down and renting a doppler. I survived the first trimester without a doppler, but once I was discharged from the hospital -- I needed it to reassure me that the babies were fine. While in the hospital, they monitored their heart rates three times a day -- so I always felt good knowing they were doing fine, even if I didn't feel their movements. So, at home, when I feel like I haven't felt movement in awhile, I rely on the doppler to give me the reassurance I need.

Today, since I wasn't feeling a lot of movement out of Baby A -- I broke out the doppler. It took me awhile to find her, she has always been low -- but I finally found her heart rate in my "underbelly" area. The thump, thump, thump of her heartbeat made be breathe a huge sigh of relief. Since Baby A has always been lower than Baby B -- and I found her so low on my left side, I knew it was her and not B.

I know all of this worrying doesn't help my mental health. All of my "FF's" (fertile friends) think it is crazy that I worry so much. I tell them that the amount of worry that I experience is no different from the amount of worry that any other woman who has 1) undergone multiple fertility treatments (with multiple disappointments) to finally become pregnant 2) lost a pregnancy after undergoing fertility treatments and 3) who has experienced a difficult pregnancy where they came very close to losing their baby(ies).

I have recently started reading some other blogs of women who are enduring the long road of infertility and/or pregnancy after infertility, and I see myself in their posts. Every worry, every emotion, every fear they endure and feeling they feel -- I have endured and felt. Nobody who has walked the long road of infertility fully accepts the pregnancy as safe and able to deliver a live baby -- until they actually hold a living baby in their arms. Yes, there are stages of acceptance as you move through the different milestones of pregnancy, but the fear and worry will be there throughout -- no matter how hard you try to stop it.