The Journey, part 2: Facing the Fear

As many regular readers already know by now, we have entered the next phase of this crazy little journey- we're doing it all over again with baby number two, a little sibling for Sophie.

We're extremely excited and very happy, none more than Sophie herself, who is beside herself with excitement and full of big ideas about the kinds of things you can do with a little brother or sister.


But it's here that we have to face the second wave of damage that has come from Sophie's birth- the fear factor. We've been gearing ourselves up for that since the day Sophie was born, really. I've seen psychologists and counsellors, and mentally I'm prepared to tackle the emotional issues I know will arise from having another baby. In some funny ways, I see this particular trial- getting through a whole pregnancy, birth and new baby stage- as being the final conclusion to everything that happened with Sophie; the thing we have to do before we can take a deep breath and say it's really finished.

But as with anything I haven't experienced before, there have already been aspects of this that have taken me by surprise.

For starters, I didn't expect to feel quite so terrified about the first trimester as I have. At the moment, I'm not particularly afraid that the same thing will happen at the end as did with Sophie- her cord entanglement was a freak accident that is highly unlikely to be repeated, especially with the additional high risk monitoring we'll be having. So instead, my fear has been very focussed at the front-end of things- I've almost been afraid that something will go wrong before I can even begin to face the fears that the rest of the pregnancy will bring. In the back of my mind, there's a small amount of doom festering away that all comes from what happened with Sophie- for me, that sense of "bad things don't happen to good people" is forever broken, and it's been replaced with the alternative- bad things do happen, and they happen to me.

This existing feeling wasn't helped by me coming down at 5 weeks with a virus called pityriasis rosea that may carry an increased risk of miscarriage. There's no treatment for it, and it just has to sort itself out, which took five weeks, during which time I had to see the patches of rash every day, all the while wondering what was going to happen next.

Fortunately, we've made it through the first trimester and we have a healthy baby growing away in there in all the right ways.

And now comes the second trimester, which I find carries new, different, and previously unimagined worries. Sophie is so excited to have a baby brother or sister, especially now that my belly has "popped" and she can actually see that something is going on. She pats it, talks to it, reads it books, tells me stories about how she'll cuddle the baby and give it a bath when it comes out. And suddenly, the creeping doom taps me on the shoulder and points out that she'd be very sad if something did go wrong, wouldn't she? Insidious.

Then there are the movements, which with Sophie started very early for me, right on 14 weeks. We were talking this morning about how she used to go crazy when I ate banana or strawberry, and wondering if this little one would do the same (no doubt- it's already a squirmer based on the ultrasounds). Last pregnancy I loved that. It used to make me laugh out loud. And then, at the end, it came very close indeed to killing my baby, who squirmed so much that she wrapped herself up in a death grip. This time, I don't know if I can feel those kicks and squirms and be quite as delighted- or at least, not without fear walking hand-in-hand with my happiness.

And lastly, there's the reality of all this. Until this week when I could actually see and feel my growing belly, the whole thing seemed utterly surreal. Seeing this baby kicking and wriggling on the ultrasound screen was amazing all over again, but I'm afraid now that I'm going to struggle to connect before it arrives. With Sophie, I felt an immediate connection from the day of our first ultrasound. I would talk to her in my head all day, rub my belly and think about the future. We had so many dreams for her, and thank goodness, they've all come true. They haven't for so many others, and for such a long time it looked like they wouldn't for us, either.

But this time, again, dreaming brings fear. The crushing pain of thinking it's all been ripped away is just too much. How can I let myself dream when I don't know what's going to happen? How can I set myself up for that again, just in case?

And if I don't dream, and we do get our greatest wish, and a healthy baby is ours in six months time- how guilty am I going to feel that I wasn't brave enough to love so early this time? I don't give guilt much truck- I strongly believe in accepting that you do the best you can in every situation, and let everything else be what it will be- but it's hard to avoid it completely sometimes, especially when you're all hormonal.

Fortunately the lovely hospital we've signed up with this time has an amazing array of antenatal services, including a special ante- and post-natal psychology clinic. I asked my obstetrician for a referral last week to start working on this stuff as early as I can, and they called me back within an hour. I'm looking forward to getting on top of all of this as early as possible, and like last time, I'll be taking medication if I have to. I hope to avoid it for as long as I can, but it's not healthy for anyone to have me be a total basket case for the next few months.

The third trimester is still a long way away, but the raft of fears that will come with that are already looming on the horizon, and they're pretty ugly. Not only are there the inevitable fears that the baby might get tangled up, just like Sophie, but there are fears about my own safety having a second caesarean, and after that there are very ordinary parenting fears, like worrying about how we'll handle becoming a two-child family.

It's exhausting having so much on one little plate! But then again, that's life as a parent of a baby who had HIE- I'm just incredibly lucky that I don't have things like physical therapy and developmental delays to worry about anymore.

So, my mission from here onward is to keep thinking positive, and for now, to use a psychological technique that works remarkably well- the delay tactic. Don't worry about it until you have to, which in most cases means you end up not worrying at all. Sounds stupidly simple, but it works.

It's going to be good to get some additional techniques from the psychologists, and I know that at the end of this pregnancy, I'm going to feel like I've conquered another whopping great mountain, just like the one I had to climb after Sophie was born. When I think of everything I've gained from what happened with Sophie, I know it's all going to be worth it.

I have my fingers crossed that there's a happy ending waiting for us this time- but in the meantime, as ever, we'll take it as it comes.


(A small PS- if one more person tells me to "keep calm" for the sake of the baby, my eye is gonna start twitching- just a heads up on that one. I assure you I am not running around the back yard, shrieking and flailing my arms. I'm quite calm, worries notwithstanding- if I wasn't worried, then you'd probably be justified in wondering what was the matter with me.)