It Never Ends

One of my girlfriends came over for dinner Friday night, and sweetly presented me with a pregnancy book that she thought I would like. The book was about two women who got (oops!) pregnant at the same time, and the book is a dialogue of emails that they sent back and forth to each other regarding their pregnancies.

Since the temperature has been hovering around 100 degrees as of late, there’s not much else for me to do lately but read. So, I picked up this book. Big mistake.

I should have known, right? The women both get pregnant on the first cycle, neither of them even knew they were pregnant til they were 8 weeks, neither had any bleeding, spotting, worry about miscarriage, fucked up AFP results, gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, placenta previa, or any of the other million things that could go wrong. Instead they talked about how their nurseries were decorated, how their husbands loved them more than ever, how they were going to do the whole natural child birth thing, blah blah blah. I wanted to kill myself reading it, so I finally did the humane thing by putting the book down and then promptly fixing myself a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

How I wish my pregnancy could be like the ones in that book. I always thought that once I got pregnant, I would be able to move forward, away from infertility and fear and towards a normal life. But this pregnancy hasn’t turned out to be anything like I thought it would be, and instead of moving away from fear I live in it.

We’re still having a terrible time dealing with the fact that our child might have inherited Cystic Fibrosis from us. I had a bit of a breakdown last night worrying about it, and thought about calling to schedule an amnio so I could know for sure. If I did that, and it came back negative, it would make things so much easier. We would be able to enjoy this pregnancy so much more. Right now, my husband and I can barely look at each other, we’re so paralyzed by fear. But, I’ve been talking myself out of the amnio by telling myself that I have to do what’s best for this baby and not what’s best for myself right now. If I miscarried, not only would I never forgive myself, but there’s also a good chance that I’d never get pregnant again with a child that my husband and I created. We’re both carriers…no one will allow us to do IVF again unless we use donor egg or sperm.

So, for now we’re struggling to power through. And I’ll just keep on suppressing my fears by concentrating on all the great things that are related to this pregnancy (of which there are many, thankfully). I don’t know if that’s the best remedy, but I do know one thing for sure…That book is going straight into the trashcan when I get home.