Pregnancy Fears and Phobias

If you ever have more than one child, you’ll hear it again and again: Every child is different. Every birth is different. Every pregnancy is different.

I wish I could write some big, profound post on how that’s not true (because I like to debunk the common advice). But the truth is: it’s true. Every word of it.

You will never meet two children who are the same. You will never know two children who are the same. You will never have two children that are the same. They may have similarities and you will certainly compare them, but they will never be exactly the same.

Every birth experience will surely be different. You can try to make guesses based on your history or family history but any woman who knows much about birth will tell you it’s a lost cause. Every birth experience will be unique to each baby. How it goes. How long it takes. Where it happens. When it happens. You just never know.

And every pregnancy, as weird as it may seem, it definitely different. How you feel. What you like. What you don’t like. How you act. How the baby acts (because, again, every child is different). You might think you know what to expect or how it’s going to go but you really never know and I can attest to the fact that every pregnancy is indeed different. I’ve had 4 very, very different experiences.

And each experience has shaped my expectations, my worries, my pregnancy fears and my phobias, which have all been very different as well.

As a first timer with Honeybun, my fears mostly focused on the delivery. The HOW was she going to get from belly to arms. I was afraid of her having a big giant head like her daddy. And I was most afraid of ending up with a c-section.

The second time around I knew I could birth naturally, that my body and my mind were capable. But I had an extreme fear of a breech presentation. It was really the only concern I had because I knew it would possibly mean a c-section (I always said the only way I was having my baby in Ireland was if she came early or was breech because at that time they would have allowed a vaginal birth even with breech presentation).

With my third, I really didn’t have any fears. Until the bleeding started. And everything changed. I found out I had a complete placenta previa and all of a sudden, my biggest fear through both of my other pregnancies (a c-section) was a very real possibility. I was lucky, though, that the previa resolved and I had a beautiful homebirth.

But that leaves me in an awkward situation now with baby #4 coming. While I haven’t had any bleeding this pregnancy, I know that a previa is much more likely since I’ve had one before. I know that if I do have it again, it may not resolve this time. I know that a previa could result in bleeding, premature delivery and other complications way beyond a c-section. And I won’t know if I need to worry or not for another two days when I go in for my anatomical ultrasound.

At the point when most people are excitedly waiting for their appointment to find out the gender of their child, I am nervously awaiting the news of whether or not everything is okay.

And I have the secondary fear this pregnancy of a reoccurrence of the Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (abbreviated SPD) which I suffered with during my last pregnancy causing debilitating hip and pelvic pain. Thinking of going back to that place where I couldn’t get out of bed, move my legs, roll over at night is quite frankly terrifying. And while I’ve been trying to take it easy in the dance studio, avoiding deep hip stretching that felt soooooo good last pregnancy, part of me knows it’s not going to matter. If the pain is going to return, it’s going to return and it’s just a matter of when.

So, I wait. I wait for my ultrasound to see what my future holds. I wait for the hip/pelvic pain to begin (and hope I can better manage/control it this time around). Meanwhile, this pregnancy draaaags on…

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