Any tips for coping with anxiety during high risk pregnancy?

I read them in a book called 'Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts'. It's really aimed at people with perinatal anxiety and depression so many of us would not necessarily have a background like yours where fears are based on real life experiences... so I wonder would you find that a bit alienating?

I had perinatal OCD which just basically meant I sort of had the anxiety that you might expect from someone who had experienced loss like yours but without that experience. Yet all my fears were fairly realistic, fearing the potential of harm coming to my baby in ways that reflect the reality of loss that happen to so so many people. In some way this made it hard for me to identify with some of what I read as sometimes people with OCD have very low probability fears, like that they might get a very rare disease or put their baby into the microwave or purposefully drown them. I was just afraid of very normal stuff... mainly stillbirth, because several people in my family had this experience and I had a number of friends who had second trimester losses. This can be tough with some of the techniques because CBT takes the view that obsessive fear = overestimating the probability and/or awfulness of a feared event. Yet of course, does it matter that infant loss is low probability in grand statistical terms when you or people very close to you experience it? And is there anything more awful really than losing a precious baby? Once you know it can happen, you know it can happen... the innocence is gone whether or not you are likely to experience it in real terms. Even a one in a million chance is too high when you have even a taste of how horrendous it is to experience that loss and to a certain extent I think it's very tricky to say that fear in this situation is anything but normal and understandable. Even for me, without actually experiencing that loss personally, at my first son's christening five out of ten women there had experienced stillbirth. You can quote statistics forever that it's unlikely but I am not so naive as to think I have magical protection from pain. In the same way, I was told in CBT my fears were about 'tolerating uncertainty' or 'having difficulty tolerating adversity'. Again, helpful? Realistic? I'm no perfectionist control freak, this is not about my personality or thinking style... I just know it can happen and I can't u know that or feel unafraid.

So all you can do is find a way to bear it. To accept that fear is going to be part and parcel of your experience of pregnancy, to be self compassionate and realise there are good reasons for that and to get in touch with the observer part of yourself who can see your fear and have empathy with it without buying into it and what-iffing/monitoring every second of the day. Although I have to say I still do knicker watch and have several starts a day where even now at nine weeks, knowing rationally I shouldn't feel movement I think 'the baby's not moving'. I just don't pay too much heed to it... I think oh, there I go being terrified again and I feel openheartedly and non-judgementally compassionate about it and bring myself back to the present moment and whatever it is I am doing in my day.

You just have to be very kind to yourself. Books on acceptance and commitment therapy are good, the Reality Slap by Russ Harris is on Kindle Summer sale right now for just over a quid and its really about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Lots of helpful stuff about not struggling against reality in terms of 'it shouldn't be like this/why do other women get to enjoy pregnancy/why did this happen to me' and the suffering this adds to the understandable root causes of your pain. About living with the root causes... so feeling your grief for the babies you lost and allowing that or in my case feeling grief for the women in my life who lost their babies and myself for having had the sort of childhood characterised by neglect and abuse that leads me to fear the worst even in situations that should be joyous.

Does this make sense?

Op, SANDS have some pregnancy after loss support groups to provide support for mothers during their next pregnancy. If you are near London, I can pm you some details. Or google your local SANDS support group to see if they offer these groups.

I had four pregnancies after losing my eldest daughter at 25 weeks. My subsequent pregnancies were high risk, not at all fun.... I just got through it, I don't know how! I just took each day as it came and tried to keep busy.

Wishing you the best of luck....

Sorry for your losses too

The Six Steps:

1. Expect, allow and accept that fear will arise.
2. When fear comes, stop, wait and let it be.
3. Focus on and do manageable things in the present.
4. Label your level of fear from 0 to 10. Watch it go up and down.
5. Function with fear. Appreciate your achievements.
6. Expect, allow and accept fear reappearing.