I had to go and double-check the list of published entries (repeatedly) because I cannot believe I am here writing Week 11.
LETTING TGHE CAT OUT OF THE BAG – Some women wait until they’re safely past the 11-week mark to tell ANYONE besides their partners, while others may tell friends and family but hold off on any workplace announcements. And then there’s me, who ended up spilling the beans to my boss around six weeks last time due to a sudden spike in sick days and half days and panicked green-faced dashes out of important meetings. And this time I’ve been so compulsively blabby I’m pretty sure even the mailman knows my due date already.
This weekend, however, I became thoroughly and utterly convinced that my baby had died. I know I’m not alone in this flavor of pregnancy paranoia and I KNOW this will probably not be the last time I assume the worst has happened, but oh my goodness, what a STATE I worked myself into. Tears and moping and obsessive web-searching (BACK AWAY FROM GOOGLE, CRAZY LADY) and pacing pacing pacing.
Why? Well, I bought a stupid fetal doppler. For fun. And reassurance that everything was all right. (You can rent them too, but please. Think long and hard before welcoming this instrument of insanity into your home.) My first-trimester symptoms have decreased dramatically over the past week and I decided that the doppler would help keep me calm until I could feel the baby move in a few weeks or so.
HA HA! I FORSEE MUCH FAIL!
Long story short: fading pregnancy symptoms combined with hours and hours of nothing but static and my own pulse on the doppler led to a self-diagnosis of Dead Baby and Much Woe. I thought about all the people I’d have to break the news to — all the people who I would probably run into in a few months who would stare at me in confusion — the millions of little repercussions that would now follow my incredible cockiness for assuming that IT wouldn’t happen to MEEEE — not to mention just what in sam hill I was going to do with a first-person PREGNANCY COLUMN now.
Ahem. The baby is fine. Heartbeat going strong at 165 beats per minute. Ultrasound and nuchal scan scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. And today’s pre-breakfast gagfest into the kitchen sink reminds me that I’m not quite out of the first trimester yet, so hold onto your butts, there’s plenty of crazy left for the next six months.
