At about one o'clock in the morning, that statement pounded through my head, "YOU ARE ALONE." I instantly associated it with my pregnancy, as in, I am alone in my body now. Had the baby died? Impossible to tell. Ultrasound on Tuesday morning at 10:15am.
The sheer terror that dominates every day is sometimes too difficult to withstand. Although I haven't calculated exactly, and Dr. W's measurements have been inconsistent (he says it's because it's tough to consistently measure an embryo this small), I think I'm at about seven weeks, with at least two weeks of this hell of uncertaintly.
I find solace in not telling people. Everyone is on a need-to-know basis, and the more I forget that I'm pregnant, the happier I am. But then again, I'm in a constant state of checking myself for symptoms -- the emergence or subsidence thereof. And although the bleeding has abated, I still check several times a day, just to make sure.
The vexing thing is that with my last pregnancy, I had nausea, a heartbeat at seven weeks, all of the symptoms, no indication of anything, then it died at 8.5 weeks, only to be discovered at 10.5 weeks. It was this mysterious event that happened within my body and was completely out of my control, and escaped my notice entirely, as I continued vomiting throughout the time after the baby died.
So of course I'm extremely paranoid. And a voice like that in the middle of the night is enough to send me into spasms of fear. I didn't sleep for most of the night, wondering, wondering, did it die? Do I need to have another D&C?
And the oddest thing is that I'm comfortable here. This land of fear, dread, and a terrible certainty that my newest baby has died -- is familiar. And it's safe. It's much safer to live in a land of unfettered skepticism and to be shocked by good news, rather than allow a kind of effervescent optimism, which forever threatens to bring me up into the highly dangerous land of hope, to take over.
If I can just make it to Tuesday morning, skittering along in my pessimistic state, dulling my senses and ignoring my own body as much as possible, then maybe I'll be OK. As for the baby, well, perhaps I am "alone" now, which would really make me sad.
