Telling

I am 18 weeks and 1 day pregnant today. Yay! I worry that I haven't felt movement yet, though a couple of times I wondered if I had. I feel so tired today. It's a gray day, but I am tired of being tired and behind on work. I wish I could just sleep until I felt rested, but that seems so elusive these days. I have my anatomy scan at MFM on Friday, and I'm both looking forward to it, because the last one was so amazing, and I'm nervous. What if something's wrong? What if we find out the baby has died?  Soon I'll be at the stage where I'll worry about cord accidents. I know that most likely, we will bring home a healthy baby. And it's weird to admit just how much that hope in my life changes everything. Any time I think about the future, this pregnancy brightens it. Makes me smile. Unlike the dark year and a half of miscarriages.

I called the midwife office and switched my next appointment to one who I'm pretty sure I'll feel comfortable around. It helped last week to just allow myself to say about the last midwife, who I'll call Sue, "it's okay if I don't like Sue." I don't like Sue. But there are several others, maybe I'll like them better. I get angry every time I'm on my bike, thinking about how Sue warned me that if I got into a wreck and the bike hit my abdomen, I could lose my baby. I have never in ten years of bike commuting a few days a week, gotten into a "wreck," or fallen off my bike in any way. This was quite the mixed message, since moments before that she told me to go on anxiety meds; then she told me I wasn't worried enough? I just don't like Sue, and that's ok. I realize though that I trust Sue more than I trust my Mom, who I haven't even told about the pregnancy because we are estranged. That's just a sad fact, and I think that always makes disappointment harder.

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Two days later. Today I have the scan, which could be an incredibly happy memory or a traumatic one, likely happy. I also realized that it's exactly one year today since I had a scan that confirmed what I'd known the night before, that I'd lost yet another pregnancy. What a sad memory. All the blood that night, me burning swaddle blankets in the rain, me trying to destroy myself because I just couldn't take this cruelty. Here's a story I don't often tell: my ex-therapist charged me, as was her policy, for the phone call, 10 or 15 minutes or so long, that I'd made that afternoon to her office just telling her that indeed, I'd had another miscarriage as I feared. Later that night I left an enraged message about this, amid the bleeding and cramping and going mad with grief, on her voicemail. I called again the next day, changing my mind about never wanting to see her again, but still pissed as hell, and mean. I'm not proud of how I acted; I apologized to her afterward. Yet later on she repeatedly cited that night and morning, when I was absolutely beside myself with grief and pain, and angry that she charges (as is her right, though I later realized not all therapists do) in all instances for phone calls, as proof that I don't take responsibility for my actions and that I am "abusive." She never mentioned the context later. I'm still so ashamed of that story, and the label she put on me because of it, even though it's so clear I should have fired her long before I did. I guess I'm thinking about it today because holy fuck was that a dark time. Before the traumatic D&c, before the months of failing to get pregnant again, before the desperate attempts to not lose my job while missing so much work around that time. Things got better after I saw Dr. Special, and fired that therapist, and of course, since I have had a healthy pregnancy.

I told people more widely at work yesterday that I'm pregnant, and they were so happy for me and kind it turned a hard day into a really good one. It felt really good to share that instead of hiding why I'm tired a lot, and to have them share in my happiness. I wanted to find out the sex today just to have another moment of "telling" before the baby's born. But it's also scary--what if today I have to find out that I have to un-tell again? And sad--every time I tell someone I know I'm not telling my mom, and I miss her. Even though it's not healthy for me to be around her, though I feel bad about myself when I do, I miss her. And even more, I miss what I never had, a mom who I couldn't imagine not telling, like some people had.

I hope it's not a bad sign that I haven't definitively felt my baby move yet. Tiny "maybe that's it?" Here and there is all. I am going to bust my ass to be the kind of loving and attentive and secure-in-herself mother that my baby couldn't imagine not telling, and I've started trying for that since day one of this pregnancy.