35 weeks with no. 3 and consistent feeling of having made a mistake

[HeteronormativeHaybales]

(Very) old MNer, new NC.
I have a 10yo and a nearly 8yo and am rather miraculously 35 weeks pregnant with no. 3 after recurrent mc (6 in total, 3 consecutive, no definiive cause found despite testing). It's been an almost frighteningly textbook pregnancy. Am on heparin for clotting issues and had a couple of illnesses that took a while to shake in the early stages but otherwise have been fine - limited sickness/tiredness in the early stages, no issues or complaints. Have just returned from a week's holiday on my own with my dc, which has left me tired but which was very active and enjoyable. Baby seems absolutely fine from scans etc (didn't do testing). I live in a country with generous maternity pay for a year, have a good and interesting WFH job with minimal travel to go back to afterwards, dh has a good and currently secure job, we are fine for money and have more than enough saved to make up the shortfall while I am on mat leave and very manageable childcare costs when I go back. We are by no means rich but definitely comfortable and I currently have no reason to think we won't be OK. Dh, the dc and I are healthy, and dh more than pulls his weight at home and with the dc. I am mildly apprehensive about the logistics of things/managing the age gap but fairly confident we can continue to give the older two a good deal, even if it means us alternating doing stuff with them and the other one being with the little one iyswim - it's often already the case that one of us takes them out/away while the other one is here or busy and it works fine for us. The dc are hugely, hugely excited about the baby and so looking forward to it. I loved the baby stage with the other two and am not at all struggling with the idea of going back to it - I don't sleep well as it is so sleepless nights don't faze me much, and I'm not bothered about changing nappies. I couldn't be in a better situation.

But pretty much since the beginning I have had a feeling of doom about the whole thing. At first I wasn't really expecting the pregnancy to continue due to my track record of mc, although there was a small voice inside me telling me it was going to continue - which I suppressed. We had a cold and cloudy winter and I struggled with the temperatures and lack of light, which is very unusual for me. At this stage I phoned an abortion counselling centre but ended up not making an appointment. When I was around the 12-week mark dh was diagnosed with a heart defect which was at first made out to be a lot scarier than it actually is - it emerged weeks later that it is presumably congenital and may never give him a moment's trouble - and we had a minor car accident. I was extremely shaken up by both of these and told dh I was seriously considering termination. He told me he would support whatever decision I made - he had always wanted more than one child but was not desperate for a 3rd, although not dead against one - but he thought that if I did terminate I would always kick myself. I didn't terminate. But I never really felt consistently better about being pregnant. And the closer I get to the birth the more foreboding I feel, and tbh there is part of me that very much wishes I had terminated I know I will love the baby to bits when it comes, but I am really, really regretting having conceived it - a regret I never for a moment had with either of the others, even though our financial situation (for example) was quite a lot tougher back then. I don't think this is ante-natal depression - I do have phases of feeling what I suppose might be classified as 'depressed', and I have been in tough but very rewarding therapy for some years now for difficult events in childhood and adolescence, but it doesn't feel as if something has descended on me with the advent of pregnancy. We are living in a place we don't like much, having moved here for dh's work, and a number of things are quite tough about living here, but we are planning a move medium-term and have established a life and some connections in the community. There are stressors - there have also been some issues with dc2 and school not meeting his needs - but nothing that shouöd be completely overwhelming iyswim.

Anyway, I suppose I am asking two main things. First, WTF is going on with me? Why am I feeling like this? And second, can anyone relate? And what happened after the birth? I think I will rise to it when it comes but I am rather, if quietly, distressed about the way I am feeling.

Sorry for length, wanted to avoid drip feeding.

I didn't want to read and run. What you are experiencing sounds similar to what my DM experienced when she was pregnant with my youngest sibling. I was a teenager when my DSis was born and I remember my mom being really down and not getting out of bed much. My siblings and I cared for the baby because we were off school and she was a new plaything for us. But I remember it being weird because my DM was always the first one up and the last one to bed. Later, my DM explained that she realised that she wouldn't have the energy she had when raising the rest of us because she was that much older. She was also worried that she wouldn't be able to juggle our needs with the new baby. But really, I think it was postpartum depression that was building up throughout her pregnancy. My DSis is clever and mature 18 year old now who will start Uni in the autumn.

It sounds like the dread and regret in your case has a lot to do with the impending upheaval that all babies bring. It is really difficult to predict how your family will change with the new arrival, especially since you thought this was something you really wanted.

Have you spoken to your therapist about how you feel about this pregnancy?

Thank you for your reply :)
My therapist has his own theories as to why I am feeling like this - related to what we are working through - and they are very plausible and make absolute sense, but I can't quite identify with them to the extent of them helping me iyswim.
Yes, I agree that there is apprehension there with the way things will change (as they inevitably will) - I do think I am worried about being able to provide logistical and financial resources to my existing dc at the level we can now, but atm i don't really see anything that can't be worked round. And dc2 in particular will benefit vastly from no longer being the youngest, as he currently really feels his position (and sadly dc1 is not above a rather large bit of know-it-alliness towards him).

A couple of plans I had for my own development will have to be put off, but I don't feel resentful about that (at least I don't think I do).

There seems to be a conflict between this sense of dread and the rational part of your brain. All the possible difficulties associated with having a baby(how your dc will be affected/your financial situation/work etc.) you seems to realise they are not insurmountable. But you still feel the way you do. Is there something else that could be rumbling away in the background?

Sorry to not come back to this for a bit, life in way.

My therapist thinks it is connected to the impact of my upbringing, which would be too long and detailed to go into now. What he says makes sense but I can't subscribe to it on an emotional level iyswim. I spoke to my dh about it a bit yesterday and he says he thinks I struggle to enjoy things and believe they're actually mine/happening - it was a long road to this pregnancy and when I was repeatedly miscarrying I wanted nothing more. I'm just not sure whether that fits either. It's a bit of a mystery!

As someone who has faced repeat miscarriages myself, I can't help but wonder if part of your feeling is because you were trying to get pregnant to "prove" to yourself that you could sustain a third pregnancy after three consecutive miscarriages. Once your body proved it was capable, you were faced with the very real consequences of adding a third child to your family--and you hadn't necessarily confronted those emotional consequences before, because you kept thinking you'd lose the pregnancy and shouldn't get emotionally attached to a future with it.

I suspect part of you also still worries you will lose this pregnancy and is trying to give you a psychological "out" if something awful happens and you lose the baby this far along. Our minds can come up with horrifying defense mechanisms sometimes to protect us from the things we dread. "Even if I lose the baby, I didn't want it anyway" is a pretty big one.

I think both of those thoughts are very plausible, Womb - the second perhaps more so than the first. What is perhaps also relevant is that the gap between conceptions had been increasing and by the time this pregnancy came along there had been a year with nothing, which I thought of as moving into infertility territory and which was very different from my previous experience of getting pg very easily. So there was the seeming unlikelihood of even conceiving on top.

Although the baby is very, very 'there', there is a bit of me that is not quite able to get my head around the reality of being pregnant. I still look at other pg women and think 'gosh, lucky thing'