Fear

I need to start this post with the confession that I am quite unable to give my babies cute nicknames, only wacky ones. Sorry, my little ones. My first baby got stick with the moniker 'Bighead' at the second ultrasound when I was utterly struck by how huge his head was compared to the rest of him. This new one- well read on.

This post is about all my darkest feelings. As I continue to feel more of this new pregnancy every day (nausea, heartburn, uterine cramps), there is a part of me that is happy and hopeful but there is this sick, dark place inside me waiting for the Sword of Damocles to drop again, for me to go to an ultrasound and find out its all over all over again.

A huge part of this fear is because I have no idea what went wrong. Often when babies are lost its a case of slow doubling or low betas, when chromosomal abnormalities are discovered or at least, strongly suspected. My last pregnancy was not like that. My first baby ( poor little Bighead) was a champion to start off with. His betas were off-the-charts, unbelievably good and they doubled perfectly. His chromosomes were beautifully normal.  You cannot ask for a better start to any pregnancy, and yet, he was dead probably at the 10 week mark. Everything suggests to him being fine, that it was something else that went wrong. How can you box at shadows?  I'm hopeful yes, but there also lives this horrible place inside of me which is just mentally steeling itself for the worst.  I cannot shake it off, no matter how I try. Its almost like a defense mechanism, that horrifying news will be better tolerated if its anticipated. That of course is a load of crock, nothing can soften the blow if it comes at you again.

All of this fear is made worse by the fact that they DID find something wrong with me. If its just thyroid, then that, I think can be easily dealt with.  But then there are also the anti-cardiolipin antibodies. I had my consult with the perinatologist, and the verdict (which I had also come to) is to retest for them. If the repeat value comes back even at the slightly elevated, neither-here-nor-there value,  they start me on aspirin. Now, all the studies suggest that aspirin by itself possibly is not enough in case there is a real clotting problem. But my levels are not high enough to justify heparin, and moreover, giving somebody heparin when they don't need it is inviting trouble, you can have a bleed beneath the placenta which can itself result in pregnancy loss or you could end up in a potentially dangerous situation yourself. I will give blood to test for TSH and the dreaded cardiolipin IgG value this week.

I just need to genuinely believe that this will work, that my new baby (named 'Turbulence' because of the fact that she is tiny but already causing quite a bit of it,) will be ok.  She, like her older brother, is a strong, healthy baby.  I NEED to believe that my body will allow her to make it..I just don't know how. The proof is in the pudding, and I haven't seen the darned thing yet!

So everybody, put your hands together and pray for 'Turbulence'!