Week 9: A good week for crackers, a bad week for Newf digestion

Friday. I feel my whole body breathing a sigh of relief. My partner will be home in just over 12 hours.

Looking back on this week and I see a blur of tears (mine), diahorrea (Newf's), sickness (both of us), exhaustion (mine, Newf sleeps approximately 70% of the day so its difficult to tell whether she is in any way affected by her inner turmoil), loneliness (mine) and wonderful support (family, extended family and exquisite friends, partner).

Throughout all of my dark moments, my loneliness, my exhaustion and my coping strategies crumbling around me (as they usually involve eating and exercise and I have failed to do either with any success), I have felt like there are these invisible hands, from people 20 minutes away to those hundreds of miles away, holding me up, helping me, telling me everything is going to be alright.

As we tell more people, I am beginning to feel less introverted, more supported, more secure. Every time I tell someone I feel some inner strength hold me up, announcing that no, I'm not nuts and miserable and generally about as fun to be around as a really un fun thing (at least well I am, but I have good reason to be).

But there is a dark side of me, a shadow that follows me, haunts me, magnifies every twinge, amplifies aches and discomforts until they overshadow my consciousness and become all I can think of. With every person I tell, it is in my head that there is one more person to tell if and when things go wrong.

The worry, I have noticed, has begun to subside, or at least be eclipsed by time advancing towards the holy grail, that 12 week mark when the chances of miscarriage are supposed to dramatically reduce (some say 16 weeks, but one step at a time). But then often, occasionally but with fierce determination, it forces its way through my conscious and presents itself at the forefront of my brain, proud, assertive, strong. And with every person I tell it is there, knowingly, a smug older sibling elated with experience I can only be humbled by, riddled with statistics to present to me and my newly informed friend.

I cannot live my life through worry. But all the same if I am to forget, I am reminded, complacency will make a fall harder than I could ever knew.

But after nine weeks of carrying a growing life form, I can't imagine how anyone could ever cope with loss and it terrifies me more than I could ever know. I understand a little now about the bond between parent and child. That you would do anything, anything, to see your child healthy and happy, no matter the cost to you.

Sometimes I forget that, constantly to be honest, when my sickness overwhelms me and I beg it to stop. For my sickness to stop now it would mean a loss I can comprehend.