Dark nights

Just recently I've been crying. A lot. At night. I get scared and sad and I cry.

During the day I seem to be ok. I seem to be ok with my growing belly. I sometimes feel the baby moving now. Not much, but I've got an anterior placenta and I've got a few extra inches of fat as well. So I'm not too worried. During the day that is.

At night I worry. I remember my pregnancy with Freyja and I remember my pregnancy with Kees. I remember they were normal, healthy pregnancies. I remember there was nothing wrong there. But then I remember the outcome. I remember being at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne when they couldn't find Freyja's heartbeat. I remember they didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to tell me. I remember those feelings of utter panic and denial whilst waiting for my husband to join me. I remember having to tell him that our beautiful baby had died whilst inside me. I remember his howl.

Kees was much, much worse. He came home for 7 weeks. We got to love him and watch him and cuddle him ... and then he left us. After several traumatic days which are forever etched into my heart and mind. Although I keep most of those traumatic memories locked away because otherwise I'll lose myself completely.

At the end of last year I had a breakdown. It was a fairly complete breakdown - I turned into a bit of a gibbering idiot. I didn't finish sentences, I didn't remember anything, I just didn't. Everything was too much. And now I'm feeling like I'm on that slippery slide again. The fear and sadness I feel is threatening to overwhelm me again. The fear I have for this baby (and for us) is truly scary.

What if he doesn't live? What if he doesn't live??? After all, why would he live? His brother and sister didn't? Why would this little baby boy growing inside me be any different??

To be truthful, pregnancy scares the shit out of me. This is my third one, and I have never yet started or finished a pregnancy feeling happy or relaxed or satisfied. I've always been scared ... of what might happen. They say knowledge is power. But in my case, I know way too much. Way too much. How I envy those women who walk through their pregnancies in innocence. They don't know that one out of 140 pregnancies (after 20 weeks) ends with a dead baby. I wish I could be like that.

Even when Kees was born, I wasn't ready to relinquish my fear yet. Because babies die after birth too (SIDS, etc). But we followed all the safe sleeping guidelines, we had a thermometer in his bedroom to avoid overheating. He had a breathing monitor in his cot. Yet it still all went horribly wrong.

Is it any wonder that I have dark nights where all I seem to do is cry and fear everything?

I am 22 weeks today. Under Australian law, this little boy inside me is already a legal person and has been so for two weeks. I don't know if that's the same here in the Netherlands. Probably not. I fear so much that something else will go wrong. I know that so many things can go wrong. I know all too well the many things that could go wrong with me which could cause this baby to die. And all the things that could go wrong with the baby which could cause him to die. And what would I do then?

I felt fears when I was pregnant with Freyja. I had a friend who had lost her baby the year before. I knew of the risks involved with pregnancy. I made the mistake of voicing those fears aloud to my mum. She said that "those things don't happen in our family" and that I should stop worrying because "it will be bad for the baby". As if. As if my fears could harm my baby in any way. If that was the case, my fears would have determined this child's fate a long time ago.