A bit morose

I had another awesome hormonal crying jag last night. It was a pretty ordinary evening, but Mr. Ibis was stressing about money. It's going to be tight covering our bills this month, and though we managed to stick $400 into savings, he'd wanted to get $1000 in there. So, blah blah blah.

For some reason that was the straw that finally broke my back. I was already kind of on the verge of feeling depressed, but then it came rushing in on a hormonal tidal wave. I am so, so tired of this pregnancy being all about stress, anxiety, and worry. Aside from a week or two of the initial exhilaration of getting a positive pregnancy test, this whole experience has been about fear, anxiety and stress. I feel like we haven't experienced any real joy yet. And what makes that sting even more is that we did feel it with the first pregnancy, so I know all too keenly what we're missing.

Right from the beginning, when we announced the news to our family, that set the tone. It was like telling people I had cancer or something, instead of telling them we're having a baby. The first time, everyone literally cheered, clapped, laughed. This time, everyone said, "Oh, okay... we're pray for you" in hushed tones, like saying it out loud would shatter the baby. I know they meant well and everyone feels cautiously optimistic, but honestly I almost would have rather they pretend to be excited, for my sake. My mom was the only one who reacted as though we're going to have a baby and not a deadly disease.

And then all the positive milestones were also stripped of joy by what happened before... when we first saw the baby on the ultrasound, truly I just felt numb. I think Mr. Ibis did too. We barely talked about it, and although the photo is stuck to the fridge, the fact is I've barely looked at it after that first day. When we went in to hear the heartbeat, got to see the baby moving, got to hear that sound that should have felt so amazing and uplifting, all we could focus on was the frightening moment when we couldn't hear it. That's all we talked about with each other, afterward. There was no elation, no joy in that milestone either.

I bought journals for us to write to the baby like we always wanted to do. We haven't used them, haven't even looked at them since I brought them home. With the first pregnancy, we each wrote letters at 8 weeks, after my first appointment. Here we are approaching 11 weeks, we've seen the baby twice, and we have nothing to say to him. I'm still hoping that after our NT scan we will be moving to write, but maybe not.

All I wanted was to get out of the first trimester, and I'm almost there... but now realizing I've just been counting the days down and not enjoying any of this. I actually feel like we are out of the miscarriage woods by now, but instead of worrying about miscarriage, now I constantly worry about birth defects, trisomies, epoxy exposure, deformity... and when I'm not thinking about that, we are always talking about money, how can we afford this, what are we going to do, and on and on... it never ends.

I feel sad, and I feel a little angry too. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I wanted my pregnancy to be, for me, for my husband, for our baby. I don't want to usher our child into the world under a pall of death - and that's what it feels like so far. I know that everyone who has a loss experiences the infamous loss of innocence about pregnancy, but do we have to lose everything? All joy, all hope, all happiness, all delight in the experience?

So I said all this to Mr. Ibis last night, maybe not as overdramatically, although I was blubbering and snuffling through my speech. He said he didn't know what to say and then drifted off to sleep in that baffling way that men have of being able to doze off right after a big important conversation. In the morning he apologized for stressing me out, but I still feel sad and I'm sure I'm totally hormonal, but I just feel so blue today.