Tomorrow Susanne and I will go to her 24 week visit at our birthing center. (She has to go about every 4 weeks and as she gets closer to delivering she’ll have to go more frequently.) Susanne says she’s felt a bit of fear when we’ve gone to these appointments right before they listen to the baby’s heart. On some level she’s afraid they won’t hear anything. Now that the baby is moving she’s feeling a bit less worried about that possibility which is good--I wasn't even worried about that before, so I'm glad the baby is moving a ton now ;-)
This will also be our first visit since our less than pleasant experience having Su’s 20 week ultrasound. As regular readers might recall the lab technician was uncommunicative, the room was freezing and we both felt very let down that we didn’t get more of a “guided tour” of what we were seeing with each shot. The last thing that the doctor said to us after he’d come in and retaken a lot of the same shots that the technician had spent an hour taken was “everything looks pretty good, and I’ll send the report to your birthing center—they’ll call if they have anything to discuss with you.”
I have to tell you, this didn’t seem very reassuring to us. We are very glad to share that we did not get a call from our midwives which was a relief, but perhaps we do have a bit of anxiety going in tomorrow.
I think I’ve shared that I come from a family that has its share of anxiety (and depression.) I got the anxiety. I somehow learned early on that if I could imagine the very worst possible outcome of anything in life, no matter what happened, I could smugly feel “just fine” and say to myself, “see, this is nowhere near as bad as I imagined.” The only really, really bad thing about this technique is that when I do this, my mind and body, being so intertwined as they are, start freaking out. You know--fight or flight? Did you know that freezing is another amazing way the body copes? If you turned and accidentally started stepping into an abyss, before your conscious mine even realized what was happening, a deeper part of your brain would already have your body freezing in place? I find this all fascinating but I digress. Imagining catastrophic events is not healthy for me. If I can stop the negative thinking I feel 100 times better and ultimately can deal with things as they come.
In a nutshell I guess I’m saying that like all new parents we can’t help but worry that something could possibly be wrong with our baby even though statistically we know that the chances of that are small. We control for all the things we can, and the rest we have to leave in the hands of a much higher power.
I’ll write tomorrow when we come back from our 24 week appointment. -Monica
No comments:
Post a Comment