Borrowed Time

This is what makes pregnancy challenging for me: As a control freak (for lack of a better word) I am forced to surrender any sort of timetable or agenda and let the cards fall where they may.

I should have learned this during the TTC journey, but alas, I didn’t. I had it all planned out: We would begin the process while I was still in graduate school and by graduation, I would be pregnant. I was certain conception would happen the first or second time. I was counting off months on calendars and weighing the merits of one month versus another for giving birth. I had this image of me, in a cap and gown, walking across that platform to accept my degree, with a little baby thriving inside of me. Oh, how that all makes me laugh now.

But the universe, in its infinite wisdom (or strange sense of humor) decided I would indeed graduate with not one but two babies inside of me. And not during my first Masters, but my second. In between, just to keep us humble I guess, we endured countless cycles and appointments and disappointments and m/c’s and an ectopic, reminder after reminder that I wasn’t the one calling the shots here.

Flash forward a couple of years, and I win the pregnancy lottery. And still, I have no control. I have no idea how much time I have left before these babies arrive or before I might be put on bed rest or before I just can’t move around at all (I’m getting close). It’s like I live on borrowed time. I repeat this like a broken record, but my friend Jen had a picture-perfect pregnancy till one of the babies kicked a hole in his sac at 31 weeks, and suddenly she was in the hospital till her babies were born just before the 35th week. And then there are countless blogs from twin mothers, like the story of a woman who goes in for a routine exam and discovered that her amniotic fluid is too low, which warrants hospital bed rest (see here). Or the woman who watched her cervix go from nice and long to way too short in a very short span of time (here). And the woman who discovered that she was having contractions but didn’t even feel it (here). Things happen, quickly, abruptly and out-of-the-blue.

I have an appointment today and I am nervous. I have been feeling different lately. Not really in a terrible or bad way, but different nonetheless. There is the whole disappearing energy thing, the joint pain and the problem with my hands. There is that constant urge to empty my bladder. I feel a heaviness around my cervix. Are the babies getting into position or dropping? Is my cervix getting shorter at all? These Braxton Hicks I keep getting, do I need to monitor them more? Should I be concerned? Is it normal to have them whenever I sit in an upright position?

The anxiety never quite disappears. I’m ashamed to admit that I still look at scary stories online about all of the terrible things that can happen. Even now, at eight months, with the big belly and the kicking babies and the almost-finished babies’ room, I know there are no guarantees. I still hold my breath when the doctor looks for the babies’ heartbeats. I still get nervous for the post-sonogram talk with the doctor. I won’t settle down until these babies are out of me safely and nestled in their cribs. And then the new worries begin.

Nicole rearranged her scheduled (or arranged it) and she is coming today too, which makes me feel better. I hope everything is ok.