18 Weeks and Waiting

I don't really feel pregnant at the moment.

My energy is well and truly back. My nausea, for the most part, is gone. The stretching pains in my uterus seem to have somewhat subsided. While my belly looks like it's growing on some days, on others it looks like it's shrinking. None of this is doing anything for my mental health because, even when I'd come straight from a scan, was exhausted and in bed at 7:30pm and was feeling like I needed to spew at midnight, I still had trouble convincing myself I was growing a healthy baby. So now, I'm really having trouble.

At my last checkup they told me that my placenta was sitting at the front of my uterus and essentially acting like a cushion between baby and me. I was told I could be 18 or even 20 weeks before I felt any movement. So now that I've crossed the 18 week mark, of course I'm convinced that I should have felt something by now and that there's something terribly wrong because I haven't. It also didn't help when a TV show told the story of a woman who at 18 weeks found out her baby wasn't going to make it.

Despite my fears, my belly does look bigger than it did a few weeks ago which means people want to talk baby things. I've been avoiding these conversations for so long but, now that they're coming so thick and fast, I'm finding myself leaning ever so slightly into the idea that we might, just maybe, end up with a healthy baby at the end of all of this. Heck, I even googled bassinets this week.

But, when the nerves come back with a vengeance, and I've crocheted one of two baby booties, I stall and vow to do nothing else baby related until I know things are ok.