Kelly is a mother, runner, writer, designer and serial entrepreneur. She is also a reformed over-committer and believes that a busy life need not be a stressful life. She blogs about all this and more at A Life Less Frantic.
Here's some advice: Enjoy your pregnancy
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I’ve written a little bit about pregnancy here at iVillage. Early last month I shared how my husband and I were going to have ‘one last shot at the title’ after multiple miscarriages and just last week I talked about miscarriage itself.
So it is with great happiness that I can share that I am pregnant again – nearly 10 weeks which is nice as none of my last four pregnancies have made it this far (curiously my very first pregnancy was as textbook as you could get).
This latest pregnancy had a bit of bumpy start so I was expecting the worse when I went for a scan at 7 weeks. Amazingly the scan showed a tiny little foetus that was the right size, in the right place, with a heartbeat and everything. I just sobbed with disbelief and relief. I happily shared the news far and wide and the outpouring of love from friends online and off gave me confidence that if a pregnancy could survive on good vibes alone, this one was sure to go the distance.
I rode high on these good vibes for about a week before anxiety took over. ‘Don’t invest any emotions in this baby’ my mind whispered.
‘Best you protect yourself, why should this pregnancy be any different to the last four?’
After a week of this incessant internal chatter I had convinced myself the baby was going to die. Since then I have found it hard to muster an appropriate reaction to someone giving me an excited hug and saying ‘congratulations’. I look at them blankly and think ‘Congratulations for what? Are you talking about that new writing gig I got?’
Oh, you mean the pregnancy. The pregnancy that is just not going to make it.
I give them a wry smile and say ‘well, you know, there’s a long way to go yet.’ Talk about a killjoy. Note to self: don’t share amazing news if you can’t muster up the energy to be excited about it yourself.
Last week I confessed my utter lack of confidence to a good friend. I told her I figured it was a protective mechanism – one that would reduce the hurt when the inevitable happened. She looked me straight in the eye and said ‘Do you really think it will hurt less if you expect it?’
I looked back over my other miscarriages – some I saw coming, the most recent I did not. And I realised she was right. They all hurt a lot. And none hurt more or less for whether I expected them to happen.
She nodded and said ‘Why don’t you just enjoy the pregnancy Kel? Buy into it, expect it to go the distance. Doing that is going to be a lot easier on your mind than sitting around anxiously looking for signs that the baby has died.’
And you know what? Thus far she has been 100% right.
What’s the best piece of advice someone has ever given you?
