In Which I Try To Use Worry As A Weapon To Fight Off A Bad Ultrasound Outcome…

Tags

20 week ultrasound, anxiety, baby, defects, fear, miscarriage, pregnancy, worries

My 20 week ultrasound is tomorrow, and I’m doing my Anxiety Girl thing.

Back when I was in my Generalized Anxiety CBT group, they talked about how pathological worriers will often suffer from the superstitious belief that  their worrying is actually productive.

Then I raised my hand and told them my own personal theory of worrying, which stunned them for a moment, and then the leader said,

“That is the most COMPLEX rationalization of anxiety I have EVER heard.”

Wanna hear it?

Of course you do.

Okay, as you may know, one of the many bizarre and perplexing things suggested by Quantum Mechanics is that we could very well exist as one universe in a vast multiverse – that there are alternate universes created on a quantum level for every possible outcome. There could be thousands of YOUs out there, all living similar but slightly different realities.

And yet we only experience it as one lifetime, right? My particular consciousness is separate from the consciousnesses of all the other Carols out there – thousands of things could happen to various Carols throughout the multiverse but I will only experience one of those.

Maybe in another universe, my last pregnancy didn’t end in a miscarriage.

Maybe in another universe, I stayed with my first boyfriend and never married PH.

Maybe in another universe, I didn’t contract that weird disease (I went back to the internist the other day, by the way. The rash keeps coming back, so I spend half my time scratching off my own skin, and lately I’ve been hearing wooshes in my ears…).

Anyway, here is my theory: if I concentrated hard enough, maybe I can CHOOSE which reality my consciousness stays in. Maybe by WORRYING that a certain bad thing will happen, I can consciously AVOID it happening to THIS PARTICULAR iteration of my consciousness. Of course bad things still happen, but aren’t they always different bad things from what we expect? Aren’t we always blindsided by the one thing that DIDN’T worry us?

My GAD group used that as proof that worrying doesn’t help. I suggested that maybe it means that our worrying needs a broader spectrum.

Of course, it’s crazy, and the CBT stuff helped me drop a LOT of that. I don’t worry nearly as much as I used to and look what happened! I had a silent miscarriage and walked around with a dead baby inside me for weeks.

So, this time of course I was terrified of a bad outcome and my 8 week ultrasound was clear. The baby is still alive – I can feel little kicks and twitches at night and sometimes around noon. But all kinds of bad things could happen at tomorrow’s ultrasound. The baby could be hideously malformed. It could have soft markers indicating Down’s Syndrome, or worse, another Trisomy that is seriously deadly. Heart defects, spinal defects…

So far I have googled Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, Anencephaly, and have read over 20 personal stories from people who had horrible news from their 20 week ultrasound and either ended up deciding to terminate or carrying to term and then taking photographs of their dead/deformed and dying baby. For some reason, ALL OF THESE people are deeply religious and use the word “sweet” and “angel” multiple times.

Not sure if seriously defective babies are some kind of Trojan that Jesus uses to infect people or if only religious people have the strength to document their experiences. Could be both.

I’m also wondering what we’re going to do with Owl if the news is bad. We haven’t out-and-out told him that I’m pregnant. He has noticed that my stomach is getting bigger and has asked several times if I have a baby in there. PH finally  told him that my body is TRYING to grow a baby but we don’t know if it has been successful yet. This prompted him to say loudly “You can’t be making a baby, Mommy! Daddy’s PENIS isn’t in you VAGINA!”

We were in Cost Co at the time. Several people looked around. Kids are great.

Anyway. We told him that tomorrow we will go see a special doctor who can look in my belly and tell us if there is a baby in there. In an ideal world we will be able to bring him in, tell him he is going to have a little brother/sister, and show him the baby on the screen.

But if it’s terrible news, how do we keep his infernal curiosity silent long enough to receive the bad news, discuss the options and digest it all? How do we explain to him that yes, there is a baby in there, but it may not be okay? What do we say to him when we’re told that it’s a boy/girl but it has a hole in the heart/no brain/appears to be an octopus?

 

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Now if you excuse me, I need to google more weird things that can be found on a 20 week ultrasound so I can ensure that our baby doesn’t have them.

A post that starts with a vacuum and ends with an alien. With Babby-training in between.

Tags

aliens, anxiety, bissel, carnivals, dogs, exposure, exposure therapy, fairs, fear, noise, photos, socialization, training, vacuums

We got a new vacuum the other day.

Finally.

Our old vacuum, a Bissel specially designed for picking up pet hair, has been sitting unused for the greater part of a year. I have only dragged it out and switched it on when the cat litter spilled or when the fur levels on the carpet upstairs had reached our knees.

It was a great vacuum once upon a time. In our old apartment, which largely featured open space, it sucked things up great. However,

1. It was never really the same after PH decided to deal with the Spot Incident by soaking up vegetable oil with cornstarch and then vacuuming up the goopy mess
2. Our new house has about the same square footage of our old apartment, but split onto two floors, with stairs in between. There are no wide open spaces. Only corners. And crevices.

Suddenly big-and-heavy-and-filled-with-goop was no longer appropriate for our household.  PH knew we needed a new vacuum, but kept putting it off, because, well, we don’t have any money.

Last week we went out and picked up a Bissel EasyVac for 40- bucks, and it runs great. It’s small, lightweight, no-frills, but it gets in the corners and gets the fur off of the floor.

However, it doesn’t run as smoothly as our old massive vac. PH was holding Babby when I flipped it on for its inaugeral run, and Babby startled noticeably and started to fuss while clutching his father’s shirt.

This is really the first significant fear reaction we have ever seen in Babby. Sure, he startles to loud noises – he even did that in the womb – but he had always recovered quickly. The old vacuum never bothered him, on the rare occasions that we lugged it out and dragged it along the floor.

But he’s getting older, and this one clearly freaked him out.

Now, I’ve never had a baby before, but I know what to do when dogs are scared of something:

1. Acknowledge their feelings with moderate sensitivity. Scolding a fear reaction or totally ignoring it doesn’t help anyone feel validated.  Don’t coddle or get overly mushy, though, because if you’re like “oohh, poor Doggy, it’s scary isn’t it? Yes, let me pat you and take you away from that,” they’ll assume that it means that it really IS scary and their fears are totally justified. So instead you say, “oh, are you scared? It makes a big noise, doesn’t it?” in a sympathetic but cheery voice.
2. Smile to show them that you aren’t scared of it, and preferably demonstrate its harmlessness by approaching the fear object yourself and interacting with it.
3. Encourage – but do not force – the dog to approach the object. We often use treats tossed near the vacuum, for example, or just sitting by it and encouraging the dog to approach US.
4. Never remove the fear object or take the dog further away from it until the dog has managed at least a partial recovery. Otherwise the dog will learn that reacting fearfully makes the object go away, and they will also always remember the object as scary.

Perfect Husband has seen me deal with fear reactions in dogs before, not to mention helping me through my anxiety exposure therapy CBT, so we immediately began to treat Babby’s fear in the same way we treat mine/a dog’s. We didn’t even have to discuss it. We’re a well oiled machine. A well oiled fear-fighting machine.

He hugged Babby and said “Oh, is that big noise scaring you? It’s just a vacuum. Look! Wow!”

I smiled at Babby and moved the vacuum around and said “Oh, it makes a big noise, so you’re scared, but it won’t hurt you. See, it’s a vacuum! I’m using it! Wheee!”

As I went around the room talking to Babby happily, PH slowly approached closer and closer. He stopped if Babby acted too frightened, and then once Babby relaxed a bit, inched yet closer again.  By the time I turned off the vacuum, Babby was right next to the vacuum (still in the loving safety of Daddy’s arms) and starting to relax. You could tell he still wasn’t pleased, but at least he wasn’t trying to climb his father like a tree.

We have noticed several similar fear reactions to loud noises since. So we think it’s time to start socializing him. If we want to avoid his picking up on my anxiety, we need to raise him with the CBT skills that I had to be taught in adulthood:

• approach your anxieties, instead of running away.

So when we saw that the Midway had set up at the local mall, we decided to take Babby. Sure, he couldn’t go on any of the rides (they wouldn’t even let us get on the sedate choo-choo train that went around an oval track a 5 km an hour which the conductor could stop with his hand and that had a sign saying “everybody welcome!”) but we figured it was good socialization just to be around all the noise and bustle. We always used to take dogs to the fair for the same reason.

So we loaded Babby into my new rebozo and walked around.

"Where are you taking me?"

As we predicted, the noise freaked him out. He was clinging tightly to me. He especially disliked that one that goes up and spins and holds everyone to its sides by centripetal force. I told him I don’t like that ride either.

"Eeewww. It makes NOISE."

But I hugged him and told him that it was cool and pretty, rather than scary, and showed him that I wasn’t actually afraid of it (which is only partially true – I wouldn’t get on that thing if you paid me) and we walked all around and ate corn dogs and he began to relax.

"Not scary, huh? Hmm."

Then PH tried to win stuffed animals for me, as he usually does. He eventually gave up trying to win the GIGANTIC fluffy penguin toy, which would have taken up a quarter of Babby’s room but would have made me inexplicably happy, and eventually just won a stuffed alien that I liked, because it reminded me of my little Babby.

"Whadya mean, it looks like me?"

"Oh"

So, all in all, it was a productive day.

Holy Crapballs, Batman

Tags

anxiety, babies, change, fear, life, pregnancy

I don’t like change at all.

I live in a perpetual state of nostalgia for whatever used to be, always worrying that the now is never going to compare to what has passed, always fearing that I will never be as happy in the future.

I hated moving to Curacao, and I hated moving back to Canada. I didn’t want to leave my high school, and sobbed like a baby in my mother’s arms the night before I started university. I loved my university so much that I still miss it, so I sobbed and then suffered depression when I graduated from it. I even found it difficult to leave a job I hated when I got my dream job.

The only transitions I never found difficult involved being with Perfect Husband. Practically from the moment we agreed to date, we were talking about moving in together. He waited a year to propose, but that was more out of propriety than any kind of insecurity on his part. I was afraid of moving to BC, but I was so happy just to be with him that I piled my stuff into my car and drove across the country with him happily. I would change continents with him in a heart beat. I was so happy on my wedding day that I was shaking in nervousness, but not frightened.

But all the rest of change – terrifying.

Now I’m about to have my life get turned upside down. OUR life turned upside down. FOREVER.

And I’m freaking out.

Why on Earth did I ever allow myself to conceive a child? I mean, sure, I’ve been broody since I was 16 and fell in love with my baby-think-it-over. I loved caring for a baby robot, but so what? Sure, I’ve been mentally explaining things like boiling water and how brakes work to my imaginary future children for decades. Sure, the whole time PH and I were on our honeymoon we were thinking how much we wanted to bring our kids back there with us some day. Sure, I nearly cried when holding a coworker’s newborn baby last year.

But why did I think any of that meant I was ready for a baby?? I should have left well enough alone. Holy crap, what have I done??

Let it all hang out

Tags

anxiety, fear, GAD, worries, worrying

Every now and then you meet someone who had a problem and never really knew it. Like my ex boyfriend, who was born with a malformed knee and was all of five or six before he realized that other people didn’t experience pain when they walked. Or a girl I used to work with, who didn’t realize that she had inflammatory bowel problems until she was in her early teens and said something like “you know how, when you have to poop, it hurts so bad you feel like you’re going to pass out?” and got the response, “no…. maybe you should see a doctor…” Or a man I met who told me that he spent his whole childhood getting scolded for picking fewer strawberries than his siblings, for using such strange crayon colour choices and so on… until he tried to join the air force and was told that he was colour blind.

Now I have people like the psychologist from Fraser Mental Health, and my nurse practitioner, and caring people on the interwebs, asking me questions like “how often do you worry?” and “what sorts of things do you worry about?” and “what have you tried to stop your worry?” and… I don’t know how to answer these questions. Try asking a fish how much water it swims in daily, and how long it has been in the water, and whether it is has been feeling wetter lately, and you’ll probably get a similar empty stare. Mind you, that’s because fish have, like, three neurons total and never blink, but that’s not my point.

I have always considered myself a pretty introspective person. I am highly aware of all of my mental health processes. I know why I say the things I do, and I can analyze the way that I think and make extrapolations about my personality. However, asking me how I worry is a lot like asking a fish how wet it is. I have no word for the medium in which I swim. All of my thought processes, from introspection to planning to reflection to analysis, are worries. To me, to think is to worry. How can one think in a form which is not a worry?

While I never knew that my worrying could be considered bordering on pathological, as the psychologist and my doctor seem to think, I did know that people thought I worried too much. I learned that talking about certain kinds of thought processes tend to get you funny looks, and I learned not to talk about them, much the way that as children we learn not to talk in company about our bowel movements or touching ourselves.

So I’m here to give you the dope. Because I will never be able to catalogue what is normal and what is not normal, if people don’t know about it. I’ll just give you the run down of what I do know about myself and my anxiety.

I can’t tell you or my doctor what makes me worry, because I don’t understand the question. When I ask my husband what I worry about, he says “Well… everything…” so clearly that is a dead end. Let’s just assume that it is like Internet Rule 34. We’ll call it If By Yes Rule 34: If it exists in her mind, Carol is worrying about it.

What I do know is that there are lots of things that I’m not afraid of:

I am not afraid of flying. Although of course when I’m on a plane I worry about crashing, or our bags getting lost, or accidentally flying off into space, or someone suddenly coming down with rabies and none of us can escape because we’re all trapped in a flying metal tube with a rabid person. Luckily I’m vaccinated for rabies so I’m not actually afraid per se. It’s just stuff you think about (yes, I’m exaggerating about the rabies worrying, but yes, I am vaccinated against rabies).

I’m not afraid of driving, either, even in Vancouver where death is imminent the minute you go near a road. Of course, when I’m driving I think about how I’d probably call my husband first, and work second, if I were in a car accident, and I wonder if the EMT people would be able to figure out my contact information and contact my husband if I were not conscious when they arrived. But I’m not afraid. Just planning ahead.

I’m not afraid of public speaking. I mean, it makes me nervous and my heart pounds but I don’t mind doing it, as such. I just try and practice a lot at home first and quadruple check my grammar before I read my speech. In fact, I try to memorize it so I’ll be able to make eye contact with people, and make it sound natural. I don’t want people talking about what an awful public speaker I am.

I’m not afraid of dying. My own death doesn’t scare me, but I do think about what I would do if I were diagnosed with cancer, and sometimes I worry that it would happen before I had a chance to have children, because that is something I really want to do in this life. Then sometimes I worry that I’m being selfish, and if I were going to die young of cancer I should do it before kids, so my kids don’t have to lose a mother.

Really, when it comes down to it, I’m not really afraid of your big, classic scary things. The only three things that scare the bejeebers out of me are:

• Falling (not heights, heights are fine, it’s when I suddenly decrease in my altitude that I freak out)
• Corpses (because corpses are terrifying, obviously, and people say that’s silly because they can’t hurt you, but I’m pretty sure every horror movie ever made begs to differ)
• Doing something wrong

But really as long as I stay off of carnival rides, and the wings stay on the planes I fly on, and I stay away from funerals, funeral homes, morgues, cemetaries, television shows about war or gruesome murders, and other places where I may stumble upon a corpse and have a complete freak-out, and as long as I always, always, always am very careful to do everything right all the time, these fears don’t really disrupt my life all that much.

And until recently, I thought that my worrying saved me from fear. In fact, I still can’t shake that belief, even though Anxiety BC tells me that this belief is commonly held, but incorrect. Still… by thinking about all the possible scenarios that could happen, and systematically devising a plan of action for each of them, I can be prepared. In fact, I might even be able to prevent the thing from happening in the first place.

Look at the Titanic: a classic example of a disaster brought about by people not worrying that the ship might sink.

Then again, if other people are correct, and I am wrong, and worrying about everything doesn’t hold the fabric of the universe in place, then I am wasting a whole helluva lot of emotional energy, not to mention time. But do you really want to take that chance?

Like, if it’s true that I needn’t worry about stepping on my cat while going down the stairs in the dark and accidentally giving him internal injuries, then I probably could have been saved some anxious dreams like that and can speed up my nighttime descent of staircases. Then again, what if I’M right and the moment I stop worrying about it, I’ll accidentally kill my annoying, but Inexplicably Loved kitteh? Or, if worrying about whether or not I’ll be a good mother won’t actually help me be a good mother, then I’m spending a lot of time reading books about having children that I may not need to spend. And, maybe it does take some time to painstakingly unplug all our Christmas lights on the windows before we go out anywhere, but isn’t it worth that so the house won’t catch fire?

It just seems like the risks outweigh the possible emotional benefit of NOT worrying.

I do admit that it would be nice not to arrive home near tears or shaking with anger because of an increasingly catastrophic scenario that I have been building in my head for the last ten minutes as I drove, in which someone says something to me and then I say something else and then they get mad, and then what if they don’t like me any more, maybe I should call them and beg forgiveness, and if only I had phrased that sentence more carefully… and it’ll take me a while to calm myself down and remind myself that none of that actually happened.

…YET.