14 Week Review

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, or follow me on Instagram, you already know that we’re expecting baby #2 this fall.  I’ve been pretty quiet about it, and it feels good to now be at a point where I’m comfortable enough to talk about it.  Emphasis on enough.  As of yesterday, we crossed the 14 week mark, and I want to catch you all up on these first few weeks.  I know the blog post title is a bit inaccurate.  It’s really a review of our first 11 weeks, since we found out we were expecting at 3+1.  Yeah, I know, that’s early, but if you know me at all, you know I am that kind of person.

I’ve surprised myself with how chill I’ve been through the first trimester.  My problems didn’t set in until the middle of the second trimester last time, so I imagine I’ll get more nervous as that time frame approaches.  That being said, I fully expected myself to be more nervous about everything this time.  I’ve met so many women who’ve lost children in so many ways, so it’s natural that I’d be concerned about all of those things, plus the thing that actually did us in the last time.

I realized early on that I would drive myself completely crazy if I worried about every single scenario playing out, and I want to try to enjoy this pregnancy as much as I can.  Pregnancy after loss is tough, and it takes hard work to keep myself somewhat mentally stable.  I’ve worked hard to dismiss troubling thoughts when they come into my mind.  I can’t prevent these thoughts from nudging their way in, but I can certainly control the way I respond to them, which is with a big ol’ “nope, not going there!”.  Like I said in my last post, worrying does nothing.

Any time I share our news, I naturally get a lot of questions, and for the most part, I don’t mind answering them.  Most often, we get asked what we’re doing differently this time.  For us, all I can do is take a baby aspirin and cross my fingers that I’m one of the 5% of women who are helped by this regime, or the other roughly 80% that are just ‘lucky’ and don’t get it again.

I’ve had plenty of cringe-worthy conversations too.  I know some of you read this blog specifically for these juicy tidbits, so I’ll share a couple of my favorites:

• I’ve had more than one person share that they had a ‘bad feeling’ about my pregnancy with Brady.  Why this seems like a good time to bring that up (when it never came up at the time) is beyond me, but people, please, just don’t say that.  I do not care what your gut feeling was about my first pregnancy and I definitely don’t put any stock in it.
• The implication that I did something wrong in my first pregnancy to cause Brady’s growth restriction or that caused me to get HELLP syndrome/Preeclampsia.  I’ve been accused of everything from not eating enough to having too much going on in my life.  Both of those things are scientifically proven… to have nothing to do with our issue.  The truth is, HELLP and Preeclampsia are caused by some flukey biological things.  I won’t go into the details, because it would be boring as hell for you to have to read through, but nutrition and stress have nothing to do with any of the actual causes.
• People who say everything will be okay this time.  I get that it’s well-intentioned, but please don’t make a promise you can’t keep, especially to someone who’s already lost one child.  I usually just respond with a “you don’t know that, but we are optimistic!”  And we are.  We wouldn’t have tried again if we didn’t think things could turn out better than they did last time.

None of these things hurt my feelings or anger me anymore, so don’t feel bad that I’ve been on the receiving end of some of these comments.  This last weekend was the first time I realized how much progress I’ve made in that area.  I used to be furious when people would say these things, but now it just kind of makes me laugh about how ill-informed people are.  (And how many people rely on things like gut feelings instead of, say, science.)

I’ll keep you all updated as we continue on this journey – both with how things are going, and how things are going emotionally.  I know we have a lot of people sending lots of good vibes are way, and we appreciate every one of them!  <3