Pregnancy Doubts and Paranoia

I am halfway through my 30th week of pregnancy.

I have 6 weeks to go until I hit the time that Kieran was born at.

I have 7 weeks to go until I am able to have a homebirth (and earlier birth is considered pre-term or premature and is done in hospital in case baby needs extra attention).

I have 8 weeks to go until I feel really comfortable about going into labour.

I have 10 weeks to go until my estimated due date (EDD=July 9).

I have 12 weeks to go before an induction will be pushed on me and I will lose my oppourtunity to have my child born at home (again, for sake of fetal but also maternal health).

Around now is the time when most pregnancy worries go into overdrive. This is due in part to the fact that uteruses (or uterii?) are now pushing up in to most women's ribs, lungs and stomachs causing pain, shortness of breath and heartburn. The hips have loosened and now bear so much weight from the uterus, baby and mama that sometimes the act of walking is a major challenge - I feel like I've had to learn new ways of moving to deal with the pain and looseness of my hips and various pelvic bones.

Recently when discussing my vocation and my plans for homebirth, the woman I was speaking with said, "You must really trust your body." Yes, absolutely, that's exactly why I am planning a homebirth. It is what guides my prenatal (and post partum) health choices. It is also the foundational message I try to pass along to my clients:

Trust your body, trust your baby, trust your intuition. If you can trust them and you pay attention to them, they will rarely take you on the wrong journey.

But, I'm no different than most pregnant women. Doubts creep into my mind and body and I must face them.

If you've ever been pregnant, you know about pregnancy dreams. The hormones that make pregnant women seem overly emotional or sensitive (and by that I mean that their reactions are totally legit, but maybe more extreme than when they're not pregnant) also make their dreams very vivid. Since dreams are the subconsciouses way of working out problems, a lot of pregnancy dreams are inspired by women's fears about their competency as mothers and caretakers, about their body's ability to carry and birth and nurture a baby and about the health of their babies.

The first time I was pregnant, I had a dream, in my last trimester, about Kieran coming out of me at night. I can remember that I felt no pain, only utter terror and panic as his head pushed itself out of me while I sat up in bed. My reaction to this obviously premature birth was to push the baby back inside myself and to keep my legs tightly shut lest the baby slip out again. Throughout this entire process I was alone, in the dark. I made no noise and alerted noone.

Obviously, I was consciously concerned about carrying my baby to term. I was also concerned about being alone during a precipitous birth (a birth that happens incredibly fast, often before a mother can get to the hospital or have her birth attendants arrive to assist).

It's a really common fear.

The reality is that 90% of births are totally normal and take far longer than you expect them to take (and yet, last less longer than you think they last). Even though we hear stories in the media all the time about fathers delivering baby's on bathroom floors and the backseats of cars, it is truly rare for that to actually happen. I know this.

But, I still fear it. I had another dream the other night of a similar scenario. I was standing in the living room when I noticed Shrimpie kicking quite strong. "Hurry, Kieran, check it out, you can see the shape of Shrimpie's head sticking out of my belly!" And you could!

Not only could you see the shape of the head sticking up out of the top right side of my belly, and it keep pressing upward and outward, but you coul now see the outline of the nose and eyes and mouth as if the skin was stretched taught over Shrimpie's face. Suddenly I realised that pushing its head outward, while still inside my uterus could not reveal that kind of detail.

Shrimpie was not in my uterus any longer! The baby had somehow gotten out of the womb and was roaming around inside my abdominal cavity! Something was very wrong!

And, before I could do anything else, Shrimpie was magically in my hands, umbilical still inside me somewhere. The little white and pink baby was alive and moving just a little but quiet. There was fluid and blood and vernix and its skin and I was very conscious of wrapping the baby up lest it get cold from the cooling fluids. Unfortunately, the only baby blanket I could manage to find was the Javis Davis blanket I won during NABLOPOMO. I was definitely not going to be using that for a mucky baby's first blanket.

A moment later when I woke up, I thought to myself, "I should have grabbed one of those flannel receiving blankets we were using as a mattress cover when Kieran was potty training and napping without a diaper!" Then I realised how absurd it was that I was thinking up solutions to problems in my dreams, problems that will never happen in real life (knock on wood, but I really, really, really don't ever think my baby will somehow painlessly and without warning end up not only floating in my abdomen but birthing into my hands as I stand fully clothed in my living room and I definitely won't be walking around with my newborn baby in my hands having not yet birthed the placenta, looking for a suitable blanket to wrap the baby in - I can pretty much guarantee none of that shall come to pass).

So, I'm still worrying about being alone for a precipitous premature labour, apparently.

Actually, the premature part is probably the real core of the worry. At first, after I'd made the decision to forego the Gestational Diabetes testing, I kept worrying that even though everything looked good for me healthwise, I'd grow a monstrously large baby. (And Anonymous commenters on that issue, while I welcomed your disagreement with my choice, you alarmist tone just made be feel panicked and self-doubting instead of empowering me to make what you consider healtheier choices - thanks, all the worrying is doing me wonders!)

When we first measured my fundal height, which corresponds roughly to the number of weeks one is (number of cms from pelvic bone to top of the uterus = +/- the number of weeks pregnant a woman is), I was measuring 4cm over my weeks. A month later I measured 3cm over. Three weeks later I measured 2cm over. Yesterday, my grandmother, whom I see every 2-3 weeks, immediately remarked, as I entered her house, that I looked as if I'd dropped.

Mix all that up with my pregnancy hormones and suddenly I'm becoming very paranoid that this baby is either coming soon or is not growing much. All other factors in the pregnancy are normal and reassuring: no abnormal maternal weight gain or loss, regular appetite, no protein or glucose in my urine, a general feeling of health and well-being, perfect blood pressure readings, baby moving predictably and often... Odds are good that absolutely nothing is going on. Baby may have been laying transverse so that my fundal height looked really short, my loose pelvic basket may be allowing this pregnancy to sag more than a first time mom, my considerable height (I'm 5'10, so I have a lot of room between my pelvis and my ribs, unlike my shorter pregnant sisters) could just provide more height for baby to grow into...

I don't know. I don't know if there is a problem or if I'm really just being like every other tired and hormonal pregnant woman in the universe. I don't know if I'm over-analysing without complete information on hand. I do have another midwife appointment next week and I'll see if Shirin thinks anything weird is going on.

Maybe I just need to sleep more often.