The Ghost of Miscarriages Past

The more I step into the future, the closer I am to reliving the past. I've been avoiding writing at all for the past few weeks for fear that revealing my feelings and most importantly, my fears, will make them come to fruition. I realize now that I am no longer dealing in logic. Instead, this experience is becoming a practice in pure memory.

Tomorrow is another ultrasound to save my sanity and I am TERRIFIED. Yes, that deserved nothing less than all caps. The logic leaves when you realize that not only have I not experienced anything that would make me believe this pregnancy has come or is coming to an end, but that my symptoms are still in full swing for the most part. And no bleeding means good, right?

Wrong.

With my first pregnancy, I reached an ultrasound at 10 1/2 weeks wrapped in the false security that no bleed=awesome. Weeks upon weeks passed as I carried around my dead baby. I was cruelly allowed to get close enough to smell and almost touch that 12 week mark. And then one day, nothing. All gone. No warning. So, yes, I am simply terrified of the silence with which my last longed for child disappeared from my grasp happening again. And most importantly, I am terrified of what it would do to me and whether I would have the strength to re-experience it. I greatly underestimated how large of a shadow my first loss would cast on future pregnancies.

The stakes feel higher. I let myself believe this time, something I thought I might never do, potentially creating a farther distance to fall. I mean, so far, everything has been perfect-the levels, the growth, the heartbeats-a type of perfection and progress an infertile girl is simply not used to. Maybe is suspicious of. It feels too good to be true. I'm not used to things going right. I mean, am I really someone who could have my dream? Who deserves her dream? My beginnings and later, infertility and loss, assured me that I was not someone who would ever have her fairytale ending, so how could I possibly think that I could fool the universe now?

I have never experienced a panic attack, but if I came close, I can count two times this week it happened. Mr. S. seems to think it's pregnancy hormones, but part of it is the exhaustion of living in constant fear. I walk around waiting for the punch line, the imaginary voice once again saying, "ha! fooled you again sucka!" I'm tired, but still strangely enough, grateful. If I could endure the pain of infertility and treatment for a child, then I would gladly have a million panic attacks for them as well. So, if this is what I must experience, so be it. I just really hope and pray that all this worry is for nothing.