Gah! Anxiety in pregnancy

[CaptainKit]

I'm not usually an anxious person, but was prepared for pregnancy to be a timeline of worrying about the baby. What I hadn't banked on was becoming anxious about every damn thing.

I have spent this evening poking and prodding the cat to make sure she's still alive. She is 7 and I'm great health; no real reason to think she'd up and die on the sofa next to me. I did lose a smaller pet animal earlier this year due to a suspected heart failure, but she was a good age. I have two other small pets with life limiting conditions, but they are on mess which could keep them happily going for another couple of years.

I'm worried about sensible things too - money, everything being ok at my 20 week scan (in a fortnight), work, just general things with my mother (we're not seeing eye to eye on many things right now) and all in all I'm just feeling a bit weighed down with things.

It doesn't help that I'm on my own. I knew I would be and am confident in facing the physical side of things, but wasn't prepared to not have my mum and best friend beside me. I don't know what's causing these issues with mum, and my best friend is going through some really rough times at the moment so obviously needs to be focused on her own things.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a long whinge! Please tell me that pregnancy hormones elevate anxiety and that I just need to sleep and I'll get over it in time.

It's absolutely normal..in fact, it's probably, in some weird way, beneficial.

Think about it. That intrusive anxious thought you have that your baby has stopped breathing/toddler will get hit by a car/that rash is something lethal? They prompt you to confront a harmless, imaginary version of a bad scenario and how you would deal with it.

So the mother who goes to check on the baby/keeps a firm grasp on the toddler/takes the kid for a quick check up is more likely to succeed in raising them. It's a practice run. A bit like the theory that dreams are our way of sorting, collating and storing our experiences.

I think these thoughts are deeply ingrained in us. Anxiety is often not needed in modern life where we have doctors and things are very safe, but it's obviously kept us alive through the 'best not put this baby down where the wolves can get it' millennia.

So don't worry about that.

What's happening with your mum?

Hi Captain, I smiled when you said you'd been prodding your cat. I have become completely over the top about my cats - if they are out longer than usual I'm convinced they have been hit by a car, dying by the side of the road. One didn't come home one night and I almost passed out with worry! They are fine and since being pregnant I have become completely over-protective and a big worry-wort. Skipton is right, I think your mothering instincts can kick in early and it's no bad thing.

I hope things with your mum and best friend get better. They perhaps wont be there for you until you look pregnant if you know what I mean. It can be a bit abstract for people until they can see it for themselves.

Cat got her own back this morning, thoroughly alive and very much demanding attention before breakfast.

Thanks for being so reassuring. I do wish these maternal instincts could come with a warning that they're normal and a good sign. What with ligament pain and a sore hip, this pregnancy is going to make a hypochondriac out of me!

Best friend is super supportive; but she's having to cope with a colicky 3 month old at the moment, so I'm holding back the majority of my complaining because I know she has it worse than me at the moment - when she's less sleep deprived I might be able to lean on her more, but at the moment she needs to look after herself and her baby.

As for mum - it's just a lot of things stacking up, mostly that she seems to think I'm still 15 rather than 30 and that she has to 'fix' things for me. I know she means well, but her way usually means muscling in and taking over, whilst making me feel like I'm doing it wrong or not managing. She's also got a tendency of always putting her feelings first and playing the martyr any time we disagree about things; i.e. she took my puppy out for a walk when we had just talked about it the previous day and I'd asked her not to as he wasn't old enough to go on a long walk with her dogs. I tried to tell her why I was unhappy about it - because it's not good for his bones, and because I'd asked her not to, she then started crying and said it wasn't fair that she wasn't being trusted to make decisions, and that if I didn't trust her with the puppy how would I ever trust her with the baby, which ultimately ended with her being upset and me feeling like I was somehow the villain. That sort of disagreement - where I feel she's overstepped a mark, say so, and she insists I'm being horrid - happens a lot. More so since I've been pregnant; she told family members quite some time before I was happy for her to do so (she was my lift to the IVF clinic for my egg retrieval, so I had no chance of keeping it from her in the early days.) Then when I said that I would be asking to find out the baby's sex at the 20 week scan, but that I would probably keep it to myself so I have something that is just between me and the baby (and probably my best friend, but I wasn't about to tell Mum that) and apparently this is the most cruel thing I could do to her.

This will be her first grandchild, and I think her fear of missing out has put her into overdrive. The thing is that she's right - I do worry that the times she has the baby she's going to do things I don't want her to do. It's likely she will often see/have the baby as we live quite close, I will have to go back to work after 6 months, and she's expressed an interest (intention) to do some of the childcare - all of it if she gets her own way. I've not yet worked out how to tell her I don't want her to have the baby for a full 4 days a week - I know that conversation will not go well. I want her to have a good relationship with her grandchild, but I've thought a couple of times that I would probably be more comfortable with a stranger - childminder or nursery - looking after the baby because at least I would trust them a little more to respect my wishes.

Thanks for letting me sound off/ramble; think I needed to vent! I'm not expecting solutions, and I know I ought to stand up to my mother, but she has a way of doing too much for you until you feel like you almost owe it to her to just do what she wants you to do.