Today’s guest post is from Darla by way of her blog, Ten Times As Long. In it, she reflects on fears surrounding her twin pregnancy when she knows she’ll only be taking one of her daughters home. This post contains themes of loss as well as ultrasound and pregnancy photos. Thank you Darla, for letting us share your post with our community.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Fearful

(Warning: this post may get a little heavy at times, but these are the realities we’re facing.)

With only about two months to go until D-Day, it’s really starting to sink in that we’re going to be having our baby girls soon. And that we will only be bringing one of them home with us.

And y’all, I am so scared.

Not just about labor, although I have enough mom friends to be more than a little freaked out about labor and all the postpartum goodness that goes on. I’m full of so many other fears. So in an effort to alleviate some of those fears, or at least ease my mind a bit, I’m going to spell them all out here. Fully recognizing how irrational many of them are.

• I have 8 weeks of pregnancy left, give or take. It took only about two hours for my entire world to fall apart when we found out about Cate, so 8 weeks is an eternity on that timeline, and I’m terrified that something will happen to Olivia during that eternity. My biggest fear, for whatever reason, is her getting tangled in her cord.
  

  Olivia

• I’m scared of being pregnant forever. Not literally, obviously, but longer than traditional “full term.” Not because I’m uncomfortable or TOBP (an acronym my doctor used: Tired of Being Pregnant). But because the longer I’m pregnant, the longer I’m literally carrying the weight of my dead child. Not only is there this mental weight that I’m carrying, but there’s a physical one, too, and it feels like it’s impossible to move through the grief while I’m still carrying that weight.

• I’m scared of not being pregnant long enough. I know right now that Olivia would be in relatively good shape no matter when she comes, and really my fear isn’t about pre-term labor. It’s about saying goodbye to Cate’s physical form. I’m terrified of the moment Peter and I have to say that we’re ready to say goodbye and that they can take her from us.

• Before we even get there, though, I’m really afraid of the what-ifs regarding Cate’s delivery in particular. Olivia’s will go as normally as a routine delivery can go. But Cate? No one can give me an answer. We don’t know how she’ll come out, no one can give us an answer on what she’ll look like. Will we even be able to hold her? Get her little hand and footprints? Will she even have hands or feet? What about her sweet face? I need something to remember her by, and while I’m sure every doctor we’ve talked to is sympathetic toward our wishes, they just can’t say for certain that we’ll get that. And it’s devastating.
  

  Cate.

• The fear of holding my baby girl is overwhelming sometimes. Which makes me feel terrible. But I have no idea how I’m going to feel, how she’s going to look, how I’m going to react to her. So many feels, and I’m so scared that I’m just going to fall apart right when my girls need me the most.

• Going home? With only one baby, when we were planning for two for so long? How am I going to handle this? I still walk into the nursery sometimes and think about how there should be TWO cribs in there, TWO names on the wall, TWO sets of clothes. And now we’ll have to take ONE baby out to the car in ONE carrier and put her into ONE crib that night.
  

  At 31 weeks.

• I’m afraid this is always going to hurt. And not in the time will make it less painful way, but in the full-on, can’t catch my breath, heart breaking because Peter just asked me “why us,” feel like I’m going to fall apart way. Because I don’t know why us, and I never will. And not knowing makes it that much harder to move through this and get to the other side of the gut-wrenching pain and into the dull ache because my heart is missing a piece.

• What if that hurt turns into full-blown PPD? I’m already at increased risk because of my general depression and anxiety. Losing part of a pregnancy only increases that risk. I’ve already requested that Peter and my mother be on close watch, as well as my therapist, but I’m so scared for myself, for Olivia, for my marriage, for everything.

• I’m terrified that people will forget Cate. Olivia is going to bring such joy to our family, and I know we’ll all be so focused on her and on loving her. But what about Cate? She needs love, too, even though she won’t be here on earth with us. I’m scared that, as time goes on, people will forget she ever existed, and I can’t stomach that. I need to remember her, I need everyone to remember her, because she was real and was here and will always be a part of our family.

I have so much anxiety going into these last two months that it’s almost stifling at times. I feel like I can’t catch my breath, and when I do catch it and I feel normal for half a second, I feel guilty for feeling normal when none of this is normal. Peter and I met with a hospital nurse in charge of “special deliveries” earlier this week, and every time I looked over at my husband, I thought to myself, “We’re just babies ourselves; we shouldn’t be discussing burying our baby.”

To those of you who have dealt with me during these times, thank you. Thank you for the distractions, thank you for the loving messages, thank you for talking about our girls and remembering that Peter and I are the parents of two beautiful little babies. Thank you for reassuring me. Thank you for letting me talk, vent, cry, talk about morbid things like funeral arrangements with you. You are all such wonderful people, and I know our girls can feel your love all around them.

Darla began her blog, Ten Times As Long, back in 2012 as a way to cope with the sudden surge of anxiety and depression that had plagued her since high school. She found that writing about her experiences and emotions in a way that is raw, unfiltered was her way of facing her problems head-on. The blog has followed her through unemployment, marriage, infertility, pregnancy, and now pregnancy loss. As Suzanne Collins wrote in the third installment of her Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, “It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.” This blog is Darla’s way of putting herself back together, piece by piece.