Meltdown

So things have been progressing quite nicely.  I'm a day shy of 23 weeks, feeling Baby Boy move every single day, and generally feeling pretty damn good most of the time.

But.

Sometimes the emotional overload of the past decade rears its ugly head.  Last night was one of those times.

I was texting my sister about today's upcoming ultrasound (we have a follow-up scheduled from our anatomy scan four weeks ago because they couldn't get enough pictures of the baby's heart).  I was telling her that I was nervous that they will find something wrong, that things can still fall apart and that there isn't much they can do at this point if they do.

And she said something about me being Miss Optimistic.  And I lost it.  I mean, sobbing in bed, fingers flying, as we continued texting back and forth.  How on earth can I be expected to be optimistic, even this far along?  Why does everyone but me believe that I'm actually going to have a baby in March?

Don't get me wrong.  I've finally bonded with Baby Boy in a way I was unable to do during the first trimester.  Feeling him move has changed things -- if something WAS to go wrong, I don't know how I would survive it.  I've always felt that there's a gradation (feel free to disagree with me, I know many will) when it comes to loss.  Yes,  ALL losses hurt like hell.  My first one rocked me to the core, at just six weeks along.  But all three of mine happened in the first trimester, long before I felt any of them moving around, or knew their gender, or gave them names.  They were still hopes and dreams at that point.  I've always felt that a second-trimester loss, or a stillbirth, would absolutely destroy me.  And now I know, having felt this baby move and given him a name, that losing him would be the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me.  He's not just a ghost-child, a maybe-baby that I'm pinning all my dreams of parenthood on.  He's real in a concrete way that my earlier losses just weren't.

Anyway, I digress.  The point is, I melted down over an insignificant comment yesterday.  It's something that hasn't happened in many months, and it brought all those terrifying feelings back into the forefront. All the pain of infertility and loss that has been hiding behind my happy-pregnant smile and my growing bump -- it's still there.  It may not come out to play as often, but it's still there.  I can't erase the past ten years, and I don't feel like a "regular" pregnant person.  I fought incredibly hard to get here, and while I enjoy it 90% of the time, the terror never really leaves.  I'm constantly on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Wondering if it's this appointment, this ultrasound, that's going to destroy the happy little bubble we've been living in for the past five and a half months.

I know that each day that passes, our chances of bringing Baby Boy home alive and healthy increase.  I know, logically and in my head, that we've passed all of our screening tests with flying colors.  I know that if the doctor was concerned about his heart, he would have said something at our anatomy scan.  I KNOW all of that.  But I can't shake the fear, I can't seem to silence the little "what if?" corner of my brain.

Infertility is more than just a physical disease.  It's an emotional virus, one that infects your core and never, ever, goes away completely.  Like a cancer, those cells may lie dormant for days, or months, or years -- but they often come back, raging like never before.  Being pregnant helps (oh god does it help!) to ease the pain, to make life manageable again.  But it isn't a cure.

In my heart, I am still, and always will be, infertile.  Which, I suppose, makes me as pessimistic as they come.