By Amy Brown
Pregnancy was this really precious gift that I wanted desperately to protect after having walked a path paved with heartache and disappointment.
So I was really surprised when I wasn’t flooded with feelings of delirious happiness at the news.
That first trimester can feel incredibly lonely; especially after TTC. Yes, you’re pregnant but after the disappointments of the journey to get there, you’re won’t allow yourself the hope that this will actually work out. Hope has let you down too many times in the past.
You know that people would celebrate with you, and revel in your joy. You also know that those same people would draw alongside you if things didn’t work out, but there’s a vulnerability that comes with sharing your news. The people who have walked the journey with you are as invested and the burden of potentially having to carry your own heartache, as well as their’s, feels too heavy to have to bear. So instead, you hold your secret tightly close for fear that it doesn’t go according to plan.
And then you hit twelve weeks. Phew! You’re “out the woods” and you can ‘confidently’ share your news. It’s liberating! You’re met with an outpouring of love and support and you tentatively allow yourself the chance to imagine your life as a mom.
But now that people know, they keep asking after you and baby: a reminder of this precious gift, and the huge responsibility of pregnancy.
As an anxious person who yearns for control, pregnancy left me feeling incredibly helpless. You’re carrying a baby, but you have no way of knowing whether Baby is safe and healthy and developing as he should until your next scan. So I began living from scan to scan, struggling to find small joys in those moments between.
Add to that a global pandemic that put moms-to-be at higher risk and threatened the well-being of their baby, and I became an anxious wreck.
That became a real stumbling block for me. I had so much to be grateful for and longed to feel joy in this journey but instead I found myself feeling inexplicably low. I felt so guilty for feeling that way. And others couldn’t seem to understand it either, especially because my pregnancy was an answered prayer.
I was suddenly an enigma to others: no one was really sure how to act around me because I something of a ticking time-bomb. One well-intentioned gesture, or some well-meaning words, and I could implode.
But I knew myself, and I no longer only had myself to worry about so I reached out for help. And I’m so glad I did! My village rallied around me, and the silver-edged clouds began, finally, to reveal some of that sunshine of the promise of pregnancy.
I’m thankful for the support of my village because they navigated a mine-field with me, and thankful that a prescription gave me the freedom to step into the long awaited joy.
Ante-natal mental health is not talked about nearly enough because it’s supposed to be this incredibly special time and there’s a guilt that settles, making conversations difficult to initiate.
As a newly pregnant woman, the greatest gift of all would have been to hear more stories like my own; to feel less alone in my experience.
