Baby Blues?

I guess I will just write about how I have been feeling lately. In a word - obsessed. I am obsessed with this pregnancy. Every time I feel a pain or movement or wave of nausea, I analyse it. I am doing my damnedest to stay positive here, I swear I am. But I just can't relax. Monday I went for an early scan (ultrasound). They call it a "reassurance scan" to appease women who have miscarried before - let them see the heartbeat, know that everything is fine and they don't have some horrible toothed creature where there womb should be that just devours little babies up and leaves you void of the chance of carrying to term forever. Because that is what it feels like when you lose a baby - like you are some freak that can't do the one thing that every other woman on the planet can do. Like your body is betraying you, fighting against you at every turn.

Anyway, we saw the baby (I am calling it the baby, not the embryo or fetus. This is part of my positivity - get over it). It was tiny. 4.6mm long, barely any shape at all that we could see, just a little round blob next to another round blob. The silence in the room petrified me, I held my breath as I waited for someone to tell me there was no heartbeat, that the pregnancy was not viable, that my baby was lost again. But then the midwife pointed to the first little blob, the little 4.6mm long dot. It was flashing, expanding and contracting. It's heart was beating. I wept. I couldn't stop weeping so they kept having to wait until I could see again to show me the screen properly. For the first time in two weeks - no, if I am honest, it was the first time in four months - I could breathe. Baby was ok. I was ok. Everything was going to be ok.

I walked around on a high, untouchable. There was nothing anyone could do or say that could possibly take away the joy that Max and I felt on Monday afternoon. We stared at our little scan picture for hours, refusing to put it down for more than five minutes in case it suddenly ceased to exist. We were going to be parents, really. Nothing was going to take that away from us this time. Monday and Tuesday nights were free from nightmares and panic attacks (the first of their kind in more than two weeks). I smiled to myself as I sat on the bathroom floor feeling like I was going to puke, because I knew that it would all be worth it now that I had a healthy baby with a healthy heartbeat.

Then this morning, as I went on to one of those silly little baby websites for expecting mums, I read a story of a woman who had a scan at 6 weeks - healthy, scan at 8 weeks - no heartbeat. I told myself it was one woman, and that one woman was not me. I listed all of the statistics back to myself - the vast majority of women who miscarry once have healthy second pregnancies, if you hear a heartbeat at 6 weeks you are 85% sure to carry the pregnancy to term. But then the other information sunk in. The family history - my Gram's string of miscarriages. My constant problems with my reproductive system since the age of 11. Some weird notion that I am just not meant to be happy or have the things in my life that I want - so why should this be any different?

What the hell is wrong with me? Can't I just be happy and relax? If I am going to carry this baby to term, I will do it regardless of statistics or family history or my bizarre obsession with failure. I will have this baby in spite of my tendency towards stress and panic, in spite of my absent-minded consumption of cream cheese three days ago or the fact that I got my hair coloured before I knew I was pregnant. And I will do it without having to worry every moment of every day about something going terribly wrong.

I'm just not sure how, yet.