What's wrong with me?

I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason I have really been struggling with negative thoughts, fears and anxiety all week. After the euphoria of last week and the big gender reveal ultrasound, I did have a blissful few days of feeling reassured that my baby really was ok and that maybe, just maybe this could all work out. Well, unfortunately those days are gone and my old familiar friend, anxiety, has taken their place.

I do think a big part of my fear is that at 20 weeks, 2 days pregnant, I still don't really feel this baby move much, if at all. The only times I maybe feel movement are at night, towards bedtime, and even then I'm never sure if it's just my stomach or intestines acting up. I don't feel him during the day, even when I'm just reading on the couch. This makes me worry constantly. Despite many friends telling me they didn't feel any movement until more like 22 or 23 weeks, I guess I still expected it to be earlier for me. After all, every book will tell you you should feel those first movements sometime between 16-20 weeks. If this is often not the case, why don't they extend the latter date to give us late bloomers some peace? Because for someone like me, knowing I'm OUTSIDE of that range at this point, and still not really feeling anything, just makes me worry that something is wrong.

All of this means I have been abusing our little rented doppler this week. Baby boy's heart rate is never hard to find (well, not since that dreaded day in the UP, at around 16 weeks pregnant when we ended up in the ER because we couldn't find it), and that always makes me smile and relax... for a few hours, anyway. Nothing can give me peace like hearing his little heart tones beating away in there. If I could, and there weren't any risks, I think I'd just strap that thing on my belly and walk around listening to him all day long. That wouldn't look weird or anything.

I guess I'm just having one of those days where I find it hard to believe this could ever work out for us. I wish I didn't expect my baby to die, but I can't shake what I know, and so far that's just all I know of pregnancy. I so hope that this pregnancy will prove me wrong, and that my outlook will change if we are ever lucky enough to be blessed with future babies. And don't get me wrong, some days are better than others. I don't ALWAYS worry like this, but lately it feels like it's a higher percentage of the time than I'm really comfortable with.

Of course there are plenty of other things going on right now that add to my anxiety, so I'm sure this panic I feel is not ONLY due to my worry for the baby (although that is by far the most important issue on deck). There's also my job for the fall, which is still up in the air. After they told me on the last day of school I would only be 1/2 time at my high school next year, I still have yet to hear where I will be placed the other 1/2 of the day, and what I will be teaching. For a Type-A planner like me, this does not sit well. Will I have to share a classroom with someone? Where will I make copies? How will traveling from one building to the next work, and will I have to lug all of my crap with me back and forth every day? As a pregnant lady with a history of miscarriage, let me tell you, I do NOT carry heavy loads while pregnant, so that won't work for me. I don't look forward to starting over in a new building, having to meet all new colleagues and build rapport with the kids from scratch once again. I don't look forward to attending meetings in two buildings every week. Will I have a lunch hour, or will that be my travel time? Why, oh why, did this bomb have to be dropped on me the year I am finally expecting to have a baby half-way through it? It feels super chaotic, and I am not a big fan of chaos, to say the least.

Add to that the fact that we are house-hunting, needing to find something relatively fast. We still own a house in the town where we lived before we moved up north this year, and before we can deal with getting rid of it via short-sale or foreclosure (our only options, given what the house is worth at this point), we were advised by a lawyer that we needed to buy a house here first. If we don't, it could be 10 years before our credit is good enough to think about buying again. Having already moved twice in the last year, the thought of doing it again, while pregnant (or with a newborn), is enough to give me a panic attack. But before all of that can even happen, we have to find a place we both like and can afford, which is proving to be a challenge.

Looking at this list, I realize none of these things are that big of a deal. These are not horrible issues to deal with: I have a job, we can afford a house, I AM pregnant, at least for now. I think my anxiety just gets the best of me at times, and I need to find better ways to deal with that. Writing helps. The doppler helps. Walks help. And staying busy helps. To that end, I guess I better go find something to do!