Lightbulb Moments

A man bursts through my front door with such force that it's ripped free of the hinges. He lunges forward, knocking me down & pinning me under his makeshift battering ram.

The combined weight of the intruder & the door squeezes what little air I have out of my chest, leaving nothing for me to warn Gerad with.

I feel the tiny life kick inside me, rolling away from the threat, my stomach tightening as they shift their weight deep into my pelvis.

I pray they make it.

But I know they won't.

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Pregnancy is weird.

I was warned of everything from leaky nipples to intense cravings, but no one warned me of the nightmares.

Prone to anxiety & depression before I conceived, the pregnancy hormones breath life into my deepest fears nearly every time I close my eyes.

It isn't always an intruder squeezing the life breath out of me & our unborn child. Sometimes it's a devastating fall down the stairs, a drowning, a mistakenly ingested forbidden food or drink.

Occasionally I have the baby & then quickly misplace them. Those ones are the worst for me. The dream tends to drag on as I search, tear-streaked & panicked for the little bundled potato all the while lamenting my ineptitude.

But whatever the dream, the result is always the same. I bolt upright out of a dead sleep, focus on breathing deeply & pop my clenched jaw back into alignment. I have a full clinic schedule ahead of me & I have to hop to it despite the vice grip around my heart.

I had a check up with our midwife last week. The conversation went something like this:

"At this point in the pregnancy we like to do a mental health check in. So tell me, how are you doing?"

"Oh, actually I think I'm adjusting well now that my energy...has...come--"

I burst into tears.

I didn't know how to explain what was going through my head. I have always needed time to process. At the time I just explained to her that I was experiencing COVID anxiety & the stress of the world was getting to me. I said I was worried about the type of world I would be welcoming our child into.

While it's true, this was just the answer immediately apparent to me. The quickest way to tell her I was not okay, but I was coping. Anyone who has gone through talk therapy can tell you there is a reason therapists tell you to sit with emotions:

They are complex & there's always layers.

So, on the surface: the world is scary.

In the depths: I don't know how to talk about my pregnancy.

You see, we are part of the infertility community. It seems strange to claim that title as a currently pregnant person. But, it took us 3 years, 2 losses and 1 hospitalization to get here. So, it was a community we became rather familiar with as we sought support & understanding.

Now that I've conceived, I am trying to find ways to talk about this amazing, miraculous, terrifying thing that is happening to me without alienating the friends we've made who have not yet been granted this opportunity.

Because I see them & I know them & I am them.

I am still them. I had this ill-conceived notion that being pregnant meant I graduate from the club.

It doesn't.

I'm reminded of this fact every time my midwife calls to discuss an odd blood work result. Or when I had 3 early scans to investigate the bleeding. When I scheduled the fetal echocardiogram. When we discussed the pros & cons of a placental doppler. When I put a timer on so I could hyperventilate for exactly 3 minutes before retrieving my next client from the waiting room at work.

When every twinge, cramp, test has me mentally preparing for the other shoe to drop it is a stark reminder that I'm still battling infertility, everyday.

I may be pregnant, but the terror, loss & unknowns are still carried deep within me. I fear they may never leave & so I have shifted my efforts from waiting for it to pass, to simply embracing that this reality will very likely always be a part of me. It will, at least in part, shape the experience I have moving forward.

To share these experiences with my fellow club members seems almost callous. For as kindhearted, compassionate, & patient these individuals are, we all have a voice that whispers "well, at least you got pregnant," every time a pregnant friend complains. We also all have the stab of guilt when jealousy rears its ugly head. The kindness & patience we have fostered through struggle is strong, but it is finite. Limits can be tested.

Sometimes it's tossing a negative pregnancy test, then spying another friggin' pregnancy announcement while scrolling Facebook. Other times it's just seeing a cute toddler in the park.

Both feel like a direct gut punch. But you put on the smile anyways, then call your doctor to report your day 1 (translation for the fertile: day 1 is the start of the period.)

The last thing I want to do is challenge someone's tenuous hold on their last straw.

But, I wouldn't be me if I didn't take this to the extreme to the detriment of my own well-being (sorry to my therapist).

I have not been talking about my pregnancy.

I know there are people more private than I, who do not engage in social media or like to write about their life's experiences. Since you're reading this, you can safely assume I am not this person. While I've been downplaying & diminishing my own experience, my belly has swollen bigger than the metaphorical elephant in the room. It's getting harder not to notice.

While in the beginning it was easy (and some would argue appropriate) to not share our news, now it just feels weird when I change the subject when someone asks how I'm feeling. Or if I have any cravings. Or why aren't there more belly pictures on my socials, surely I must have a cute bump by now!

My non-committal answers are not accurate. Changing the subject is disingenuous to my own experience, but it's what I have been doing every single time someone brings it up. I want to say I'm experiencing peri-natal anxiety. That I've been craving anything dairy. That I have only a handful of pictures of the belly because I didn't want to offend anyone by posting & I'm terrified of having to go through my camera roll & deleting them like last time.

This week was a landmark in the pregnancy. I made it to 20 weeks. That is halfway. I have never carried so long. My anatomy scan was clean. I can feel this child rolling & kicking in my abdomen. All of this should reassure me. But I spent hours researching miscarriage rates by week & although I know there is a roughly 99% chance that all should go well, my brain is screaming that we could be the 1%.

I think by not being honest with myself, with my family & friends, perhaps even to an extent the people I interact with on socials, I have not had an outlet to experience joy. Instead, I have kept myself isolated in my fearful, anxious worries. I have not allowed myself to open up with people who have had similar experiences & am therefore denied the solace I find in commonality, in community. I have always learned through experience and connection with those around me. It has been hard to be without.

Pregnancy has taught me a lot about myself. It has cracked me open & exposed me like a frayed nerve; everything is frizzled, sharp, acute. I did not realize that sharing my joy, giving it a voice, is so integral to how I solidify the experience into my tangible reality. Sharing it, musing over it with the people I love, is what makes this real to me.

By diminishing the happiness I feel, I pilfered the joy of experience.

I have a fellow pregnant-but-infertile acquaintance to thank for this belated realization. For confidentiality, their name & identifying characteristics have been withdrawn.

We were discussing how to navigate social media & pregnancy. When is the right time to make a pregnancy announcement? Is there a right time? I mentioned how I did decide to do a pregnancy announcement, but that I would be keeping any bump pictures or updates to a minimum.

"Why?" They asked, clearly curious but confused.

"Oh, I just don't want to offend anyone. I remember how badly it stung to see bump updates or announcements. I want to spare someone that sting."

They went really quiet for a minute & I began mentally kicking myself for once again, being callously opinionated. I didn't know this person! Maybe their whole feed was bump updates! I tried not to choke on the bitter taste of my foot in my mouth.

"Well, you make a really good point. But, I've decided to share this publicly, because it's what makes it feel real. Sharing the news and pictures are part of the overall experience for me. I've waited a long time for it."

It was my turn to go quiet. Not that I had much choice; the lightbulb they just clicked on over my head had momentarily rendered me speechless. It was in that moment, with this kindhearted, infertile-but-pregnant comrade that I realized just how much I had been denying myself.

They don't know it, but they gave me the permission I should've given myself to just enjoy & share.

Now, I'm not narcissistic enough to think every single person I encounter is going to have their day brightened by my bump. Quite the opposite. But this interaction has freed me of enough guilt (yes, I can now recognize a hefty portion of my reaction was fueled from misplaced feelings of guilt), to be able to at least answer honestly when asked, "how is your pregnancy going?"

I even shared a few bump pictures. Well, nothing formal, but I felt cute at the gym the other day & I posted a picture of my outfit--not just my face. It felt really good.

It felt honest.

I don't want to miss out anymore.

Forging ahead with the concept of honesty at the forefront has enabled me to see all I had been denying myself.

For example, the nursery--which currently sits dark blue & full of several years of storage--will now be visited by a junk company to get it cleaned out. After that, it will be painted yellow, a new dresser & crib built. I had ignored it up until this point. It wasn't that we were feeling too overwhelmed on how to start preparing, but rather we didn't feel we could start yet. It wasn't real. So why go through the trouble of redecorating?

As soon as we took that leap, I began researching strollers. Then baby carriers, bottles, car seats--now we have a full registry in the works. I've started asking people for suggestions on must-have items, or things that can wait. We've started reading parenting books, looking into perinatal yoga.

Afterall, it's real now & it’s passing quickly.

And I want to feel the joy before I miss it entirely.