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I’ve spent years staring down infertility and navigating endless cycles of biochemical pregnancies, so believe me when I say I actually understand what fear feels like—and that hollow sense of hopelessness that comes with it. This is my first pregnancy that has actually made it this far.
It’s just a little easier to keep fighting, even when you're battling your own mind, if you can hold onto the idea that a positive outcome is waiting for you too, rather than feeling like a good result is some exclusive privilege reserved only for the lucky few.
Honestly, all those fears just end up paralyzing you. I spent a long time trying to conceive, and when we finally decided to go through IVF, I had this gut feeling from day one that everything would turn out fine.
Regardless of that intuition, I still found myself obsessing over statistics and reading all these tragic horror stories online and on forums; I didn't even dare trust my own instincts, instead waiting for those "guaranteed" weeks to pass before I’d allow myself to admit I was actually pregnant.
Looking back, it was pretty foolish. Later on, once I managed to settle my mind—and by the way, I ended up on bed rest during my second trimester and stayed there basically until my due date—it became much easier to handle things because I truly believed it would work out; I completely rewired my mindset. Sure, I read about terrible births, but I didn't view them as something destined for me; I saw them more as warnings to pick the right hospital, to make sure I didn't head to the maternity ward too early (because they'll rush you through, and I wasn't having that), and to ensure that, if possible, my partner—who was fully briefed on all the potential nightmares—was by my side every single second.
In the end, I had the kind of delivery I’d hoped for, bringing a big, healthy baby into the world just like I felt would happen, and the only real hurdle we faced was breastfeeding. My intuition during pregnancy kept whispering that things might get tricky there, so I was mentally braced for any obstacles. We’re hitting the three-week mark tomorrow, and we’ve had two days of exclusive nursing; we've already dropped the pregnancy weight, and it feels like the hardest part regarding that whole topic is behind us. It really helped that I educated myself beforehand on what could go wrong, because I knew we could pull through no matter how rough the start was. If I hadn't done that research, people around me probably would have tried to convince me to just use formula because they'd claim my milk wasn't good enough.
This week, I actually spent three days alone with my two-week-old. My mother-in-law was there to "help" during the first week, but she honestly caused more problems than if she had just stayed home. Since I don't have my own mom around, and my sister has two little kids of her own living halfway across the country, I eventually realized that nobody can help me quite the way I can help myself. It turns out the two of us can survive just fine whenever Dad has to go away on a business trip.
Try to take those scary stories as a guide for what to prepare for, rather than something that leaves you stuck in fear. Your babies need you to be strong, resilient, and authentically yourself—exactly who you are.
It isn't all sunshine and rainbows, obviously, but there is so much beauty in this that all the difficult parts become incredibly bearable.
I've definitely learned that as a mother, I have to listen to my own gut; in these three weeks, my intuition has proven itself right so many times, even when the "experts" around me were insisting otherwise. You simply have to learn how to trust yourself and your own body.
Sarah Morris57, I honestly didn't wrap my head around how it actually feels until I found myself pregnant, too. People just don't get it.
Right now, I’m on strict bed rest, yet I still get these calls asking if I can handle this or that little task."It won't hurt to stand up for just half an hour!" they say, or something along those lines. It's like the concept of pregnancy or the reality of being on doctor-ordered bed rest isn't even a piece of data that gets properly filed away in their brains.😁
But if you end up landing in the hospital because you weren't actually following that bed rest instruction🤣, well, you kind of brought it on yourself. I know because that's exactly what happened to one of the nurses I know.🤦
Sometimes it’s actually more irritating when people assume you’re somehow overqualified for what you're going through. 😬 It’s like there’s never any winning for those of us trying to conceive.
If I'm being completely honest, what gets under my skin the most is having to drag my life down to such a snail's pace; it feels like someone just went ahead and amputated a part of my identity without asking, and now I'm just left sitting here trying to figure out how to live with this missing piece.
I suppose I'm mostly just my own worst enemy at this point. 🤦