Crazier Than Ever

Well, the good news is that I am nauseous less often and seemingly less severely, though this morning I'm not sure that's the case. I feel awful.

I often feel as if I've been run over by a steamroller. I'm so exhausted all the time. I literally find it difficult to do more than sit on the couch staring into space for hours at a time... of course, I am occasionally interrupted by Amelia insisting that I read her this or that book (for the umpteenth time). I need naps during the day, and if I don't sleep at night, I'm an utter wreck the next day.

Inside my brain, things have gotten... interesting.

I feel like a witch. I don't ever recall raising my voice so often and for so little reason. For whatever reason, I am getting "touched out" much more quickly than before. Sometimes when Amelia pounces on me (for the umpteenth time) I find myself leaping away like a yowling cat, exclaiming, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" And then I lock myself in the bathroom.

Maybe part of it is that I am, for whatever reason, quite sensitive to body heat right now. Our thermostat is down all the way, and I still require air blowing on me in the night to keep cool. And at times during the day, I have to pull out a frozen fruit bar to cool myself down from the inside. So, unfortunately for Amelia, cuddles are much less welcome right now.

And then there are the migraines... I can't figure out how to make them go away. And I also can't figure out what's triggering them. I thought maybe dehydration, or hunger, or heat, or fatigue, or all of the above was triggering it, but I am at least one of those things all the time, whether or not I have a headache... Migraines make me grumpy. Very much so.

Of course, that's not all. I am having way more panic attacks than I am used to. I sometimes feel completely irrational. I often find myself thinking, "Seriously? I'm seriously having a panic attack about this? This is so stupid!"

Take, for instance, the twins obsession. I know (or at my frontal cortex knows) that if I actually am pregnant with twins (that's unlikely, says my frontal cortex) that that's fine, all will be well. My frontal cortex also likes to remind me that I have no rational reason to be so convinced there's more than one in there. It also also likes to remind that my pregnant sister-in-law is also somewhat convinced she's got twins too, and she doesn't seem to be off her rocker. So, concludes my frontal cortex, I just need to stop feeling crazy, and that's that.

I had an ultrasound yesterday. Kind of.

The midwife agreed it'd be a good idea to peek inside so that I'd be less anxiety-ridden. But... well... maybe if I only knew as much as the layperson does about ultrasound, maybe the ultrasound actually would have convinced me there was only one.

But then again, not only did this particular woman seem to have very little expertise with ultrasound, but I'm almost certain she hasn't ever personally dealt with anxiety and panic attacks of this sort before. If she was trying to comfort me, she probably shouldn't have said "Well, I'm very bad at finding twins. And they like to hide at this age. Sometimes twins are obvious, but just as often, they're not."

And I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking two-dimensionally when we did get an image on the screen. She just took the transabdominal transducer and put it over my belly, turned on the machine, didn't move it once, and said, "Well, I only see one." She printed the image and then turned the machine off.

I wanted to shriek, "You didn't rule out twins! You didn't rule out ANYTHING!" (Well, maybe she ruled out monoamniotic twins, but that hardly counts.) I wanted to yank the transducer out of her hand and do the procedure myself. Either that or demand she pull out the transvaginal transducer, but I had a feeling she was even less skilled with that. (Invasive? Pshah. She just did a bimanual exam AND a Pap smear. And both of those suckers hurt. Transvaginal ultrasound would have been NOTHING!) She didn't scan across the uterus once. For all I know, there is another one hidden in there, and the edge of a second gestational sac was just slightly to the side of where we were looking.

But... I didn't shriek. Nor did I grab the transducer. Maybe I should have. Surely she has encountered absolutely insane pregnant women before, so surely she would have forgiven me that small misbehavior.

"So, feel better?"

... "No. I was sure I would, but..." And then I burst into tears. Fabulous.

While I got dressed, I examined my feelings and discovered, contrary to what I should logically be feeling (a small measure of relief), I was instead even more convinced that there are indeed two and I was angry. Furious with myself. I so badly want to feel like my normal, rational self. Instead, I seem to be growing more and more irrational by the day.

I got dressed and went home. I was tired. I'd been in the office for an hour and a half (wrangling a hyperactive toddler at the same time) and I just wanted a nap. I got a call when I got home and discovered that the midwife had meant to come talk to me some more, so then I felt even worse.

Ugh. I cried a lot yesterday evening because I felt so... unstable and irrational and just plain panicky and even a little bit actually crazy. I don't actually care about there being one or two babies right now; I just want to having my thinking brain back--the one that is actually pretty good at neutralizing irrational feelings like these ones I'm overwhelmed by.

I almost feel like I'm convinced the sky is falling, and I'm angry at the sky for not showing any evidence of doing so BECAUSE THE SKY IS FALLING, DANG IT. That's just crazy.

Mentally, I didn't feel anything like this when I was pregnant with Amelia. I mean, I suppose I wasn't so stressed back then. I did just move back to Oregon, when I didn't want to... at all. And there's no sunshine. And there's no family here. And etc., etc., etc.

In the meantime, I'm going to... try and convince myself there is only one kid in there. Maybe I'll feel more sane that way. After all, it is much, much, much more likely that there really is only one baby instead of two. Once I make it to the second trimester, I'll start calling Baby Delta by his or her dinosaur name: Microraptor.

Love and steamrollers,
Jenna and Baby Delta