Today is the day we reach viability. Today is the day that if something were to happen, our baby has a slightly better chance at surviving outside the womb. Of course we want Sprout to continue to grow and thus far there isn’t anything telling us that Sprout will be joining us on the outside any time soon.
So why the anxiety?
Today also marks 5.5 weeks until we reach the gestational age of our loss of Pixel. So even though we have reached viability, we are still anxious about whether we will bring Sprout home. It is rough, but Sprout is doing whatever possible to make us feel reassured. Sprout kicks and at all appointments, as soon as the doctor turns on the doppler, you can hear the heart beating loud and clear. When I feel myself starting to get anxious, I relax somewhere and just let myself try to feel Sprout. It doesn’t usually take very long before I can feel the rolls and kicks. Sunday morning was a different story and Sprout was quiet for a good chunk of the morning, so I started to get anxious, but I know that Sprout is more active at night, so I wanted to wait to see if I could feel anything that night before I got worried. Around lunch time the movement started and it dropped the anxiety a whole bunch.
I have been sitting around and not doing much at home because I am too scared to do anything for fear of losing this baby. It is a horrible position to be in. The doctors all tell me I need to take walks and get some low impact exercising in, but I am to scared that it will harm baby. My rational mind tells me that it won’t hurt baby, but the irrational half of my brain doesn’t believe it. My body failed my first born, why should I believe it will protect my second?
We have three weeks until our next appointment with a doctor. Three weeks until we get to hear Sprout’s heartbeat again. I am slightly worried about that, but I am grateful that at that point, we will have a doctors appointment once a week until we are past the gestational age of losing Pixel. It is helpful and I am glad that my doctors are understanding of my anxiety and don’t just blow me off.
So hopefully in 6 weeks I will have less anxiety and we can fully enjoy the rest of the pregnancy. I’m not saying we don’t enjoy it now, but it is different when you are just sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop.