I want to throw up.
Not the morning sickness induced nausea I’ve been batting for 10 weeks now. No, this is very different. This is a familiar pit-in-my-stomach-gut-punch brand of nausea…brought on by intense fear and anxiety about the baby growing in my belly.
I know it well. I spent 20 weeks wallowing in this feeling when I was pregnant with my first child. We’ve done all the genetic testing. We have every reason to believe Leyton’s heart defects were just a fluke. Something that spontaneously happened when his heart formed.
Does that stop me from worrying? Absolutely not. This is pregnancy after CHD. The chances are slightly higher to have another baby with heart defects (about 3-5% from what I remember) but even though we hope lightening won’t strike again. I can’t shake this feeling.
We just booked our fetal echocardiogram and anatomy scan, so it’s no wonder emotions are running high. The flashbacks from our previous anatomy scan cracked my heart wide open and left me vulnerable to the fear that was bubbling just under the surface since the moment I found out I was pregnant again.
These feelings are complicated though, because I desperately want to bury them. I want to be the glowing pregnant mom blissfully choosing paint swatches and folding baby clothes. I hate that it forces me to face the hard parts of my first pregnancy and postpartum experience. I tend to distance myself from those thoughts in an effort to distance Leyton from those thoughts. He’s everything to me and I wouldn’t change a thing because all of it gave me him. I already have so much love for this new little life and would never want him or her to feel like a “do-over” or a chance to right the wrongs from last time.
But I have to admit I’m terrified.
Utterly and completely terrified. I’m scared it could happen all over again or worse yet, we could receive another, more life threatening diagnosis with a detrimental outcome. I hate admitting that to myself or anyone else.
Admitting that feels a bit like CHD won. Like even after everything we’ve overcome as a family, the fear outweighs all else. Though I know that’s not the case.
The truth is that fear was winning. We kept pushing off our dreams of growing our family almost exclusively because of that fear. But this baby had other plans and decided they belonged with us. Now!
The more time passes and the longer I linger with that realization, I’m struck by gratitude and an assurance that it all worked out exactly as it was meant to. That fear had no business controlling our lives or our family planning.
Motherhood, especially medical motherhood, has given me a crash course in accepting the dualities of life. It’s not either/or…it’s both. I can love my son and hate CHD. I can long to grow our family and feel terrified to do so. I can pick paint colors all while knowing it could come crashing down at the drop of a hat. (Jk actually, we rent our house so painting walls in a no-go lol.)
Right now I’m honoring and holding the space for both. I’ve learned even when I reject an emotion or try to will it away, it eventually weasels its way in one way or another. We are thrilled to enter this next chapter and fold this baby into the chaos that is our life right now. It’s hard to imagine loving another child the way we love Leyton, but I know that’s just how it works. The thought of Leyton holding his baby sibling makes me want to burst into tears (though not an uncommon occurrence these days. Lookin’ at you, pregnancy hormones 🙂 )
Thank you for being here and sharing our excitement over this news. We welcome any and all tips about life with a toddler and a newborn. I’m sure we’re in for quite a wild ride. Buckle up, Weiss fam!
