Anxiety

A very close friend and I were texting back and forth this morning about worries we have.  What started the conversation was we had both read an extremely sad story of a 4 month old in a tragic accident.  She mentioned that she has had to stop reading some blogs because the stories of lost pregnancies and death of babies were just to overwhelming.  When I was pregnant. there were certain blogs Tim told me I could no longer read because I was getting too upset about it all.  When we first had Robby, I was paranoid that he would just stop breathing.  This wasn't just something that I worried about with Robby.  Every time I would babysit babies, even as a teenager, I would go in every 15 minutes or so as the baby was sleeping to make sure they were still breathing.  It is a paralyzing fear that I have.  With Robby, I was to the point where I would end up waking him up because I would rustle him if I couldn't hear him breathing.  So, Tim took over the "check on Robby to make sure he's breathing" ritual every night.  Now I don't worry about it quite so much.  Sometimes, if he has napped an extremely long time or is sleeping in pretty late during the morning, my mind will start to wander to the fear of something having happened to him.  But I'm doing better.  I used to lay awake at night and just worry that he wasn't breathing.  I finally just had to turn it over to the Lord.  I would fall asleep praying that God would keep my baby alive through the night.  I don't know if that's weird or not, but that's the only way I could find comfort.

At this point, I don't overly worry too much about Robby.  There are still times that my mind will go to those worst case scenarios, but the times that it happens are much fewer.  Unfortunately, now there is a new worry that I have.  Pretty much every night as we lay in bed, I tell Tim that I'm worried something might be wrong with this baby.  I have only felt the baby move maybe 3 times, and I thought I should be feeling it more at this point.  Also, we didn't actually hear the heartbeat at the last appointment.  We only saw it on the screen.  While that should have been enough, I feel that since I didn't actually hear it and the dr didn't give me a beats/minute, something might be wrong.  I worry because I was taking such high doses of ibuprofen, birth control, a muscle relaxer and sleeping pill, not to mention that I hadn't taken prenatal vitamins during almost the entire first trimester!  Tim looked up the medications I was taking and there is practically no harm in them, they just aren't recommended to take when pregnant because there are many unknowns.  I know that I am still relatively early on in the pregnancy and I won't really be able to experience predictable movements for a while, but I just can't shake that fear that I've been having.  I'm hoping that after my appointment in a few weeks and get to see this sweet baby again, hear the heartbeat, and learn that all the organs look good that I will feel better.  Until then, I will continue to fall asleep at night praying that both of my babies stay safe and healthy.