Still Quiet, Also Still Deranged

I am thrilled to report that everything seems to have settled down for a few days. No bleeding, lots of fetal movement, and even I can tell that my bump is getting bigger. I am continuing to have Braxton-Hicks contractions (more on that later) but what's worrying me the most right now is something completely unrelated.

On Monday, everyone in my office got the news that a coworker had given birth to her first child, a healthy baby girl. Of course I responded to her husband's email with a hearty congratulations, but I moped around for the rest of the day feeling alternately sad and angry. Everyone kept discussing the little we knew about her labor and delivery (long-ish) and how cute the baby was (very) and how much she looked like both of her parents (eh, sure), and I just - it's hard to explain, but overhearing their conversations just made my skin crawl. I had a long talk with Harry about it when I came home and we reached the following conclusions:

- It's hard to hear people discuss fertility, pregnancy, and babies without any real acknowledgement of how difficult and precarious the whole process can be. Most of the coworkers who wanted to talk about the baby were women, and many of them have healthy living children. Of course you never know for sure, but I would guess that most of them had uneventful conceptions and pregnancies and were assuming that this new mother had the same experience. I got a few comments about being "next in line!" and I just wanted to staple things to their foreheads. I have given them no reason to suspect otherwise, but they have no clue how close I have already come to delivering and how grateful I am to still be pregnant. The blithe assumption that I, too, will reach 40 weeks and be complaining about swollen ankles and tight clothes is tough.

- The speculation about her body, her labor experience, and her delivery was really ick. I am absolutely horrified that I know - I know - they will do the same thing to me regardless of when this baby comes out. I actually think I have a pretty awesome body, and I'm in awe of what it is doing in creating this new life. I have gotten a few stray comments about my changing figure, but I've brushed them off - I could care less if my colleagues are sitting around discussing my hips or whatever. I am much more sensitive about my actual health issues and I'll be furious if I find out that they're discussing my C-section or my perineal tear or my future conception plans or whatever. The obvious solution here is not to give them any of that information, but neither did my coworker, and it didn't stop the gossip.

- I am (deep breath, Charlotte) scared that these people - who are nice, and who I see every day, but who are really just acquaintances - are more excited about my baby's eventual arrival than I am. I'm excited... right? Sure I am. A moderate amount. An amount that still protects my emotional health in a precarious situation. An amount that sometimes, on good days, counteracts the absolute dread I feel about having to make it through the weeks and months and years ahead - dread about waking up one morning in a puddle of blood, about labor and delivery itself, about leaving the hospital with an infant who will be dependent on me for literally all of his needs even in a best-case situation, about still having to deal with endometriosis and infertility when this pregnancy ends. And my coworkers will inevitably boil this unbelievably complex situation down to: baby! Hooray!

So, basically, I took something that was not at all about me and freaked out when I started projecting it onto myself and my experience. And I should say that I'm truly, genuinely happy for the new parents on so many levels. If it were just about them, and I had heard their news in a different environment, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I was unsettled by this experience because it seems like a dress rehearsal for my own future, which I see as very cloudy. I wish them the best.