Let the Hoping Begin

I just found out I'm pregnant.

We started trying to conceive exactly 2 weeks ago.  So you'd think I would be ecstatic. And, don't get me wrong, I am super duper excited. But I'm also feeling a sense of caution. "Don't get too happy just yet" says my mind-chatter.

This is not a normal reaction for me.

I have been pregnant once before. And it didn't go so well. I mean, I do have an awesome nearly 3 year old, and time has given me distance from what happened. But my body pretty much failed me, and I almost died from this terrible thing called HELLP Syndrome, which is a rare and severe variant of preeclampsia.

I am starting this blog as my companion along this pregnancy journey. I hope that writing will help other women who have had HELLP and who are pregnant again, or who are still making that gut-wrenching decision to try again or not. As well as helping me cope with the long months of anxiety and a tightly packed schedule of "high risk" OB appointments.

It was two weeks ago when my husband and I were having one of our never-ending discussions about getting pregnant again (since getting "clearance" 2 years ago from our perinatologist).  We realized that if we got pregnant in August, it would mean a May baby, which in the ideal world (that we'd like to pretend to live in) would mean we'd time the birth perfectly to coincide with our beloved Chicago summertime. (Versus the winter hell we went through last time around with a traumatic birth, 2 hospital stays and a generally grumpy newborn followed by nothing but months of frigid gray days.) 

That was it. That was the moment I turned off my fears and let myself listen to the voice deep down in my heart that's been patiently waiting for the chance to exclaim, "I really want another baby!"

So my period was a few days late this week  , but I didn't have any of the pregnancy symptoms I had last time. I'd taken at least 3 pregnancy tests which all came back negative. But still no period. I was so sure that I wasn't pregnant that I had a beer at dinner last night. Then today, on a somewhat anxious whim, I took a 4th test while my son slept and my husband was at a BBQ. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw the faintest ever line on the pregnancy test. I set it aside, took a shower, and then checked it again. Definitely a faint line.

I had a subdued sense of excitement, followed by a brief crying spell, and then racing thoughts about how we haven't yet decided on a new OB, or bought a new house. Then I took a deep breath, and let myself just feel the feeling of finding out there is a new life just beginning to take shape inside of me. I had so forgotten that feeling after all that I'd been through the last time around.

You know what that feeling was? It was hope. It still is hope. I can feel hope growing in my belly. I am trying to be very mindful already of not projecting too much of my own stuff onto this pregnancy or this baby. But I'd be lying if I said this pregnancy wasn't, in part, fulfilling a dream to have a healthy full-term pregnancy, ending in a natural delivery, on my own terms. But that is getting 9.5 months ahead of myself.

So back to today. I want to write this blog to be my day-to-day companion on this pregnancy journey. To help me through the trying times, the fear, the anxiety, the sad parts of me that still hold feelings about my son's birth. But always coming back to a sense of hope. I invite you to come along, or to bounce in and out along the way.

I'm going to do an inner smile meditation and go to bed early. And the hoping begins....