Looking for trouble

Infertility is such a mindfuck.  Even when you start to think that you've kinda, sorta started to leave it behind you, you realize how badly it's messed you up.

Case in point: on Thursday M and I met our OB for the first time to have our nuchal translucency (NT) scan.  It had been a month since our last ultrasound, so I was nervous going in but I'd been having enough ongoing pregnancy symptoms that deep down I thought everything would probably be OK.  And it was.  Our OB very quickly told me that I could take a deep breath because everything looked great.

Seeing our baby wriggling around on the screen was nothing short of surreal.  Both of us sat there, pretty much in stunned silence, as our OB pointed out various features and took measurements.  Almost as amazing as seeing our baby was watching M's face, filled with wonderment as he looked at the screen.  This was his first time seeing an ultrasound image in person and, as he told me later, he could have sat there watching it for hours.  I can't even explain how much I loved seeing him like that.

The NT part of the scan went fine, with a normal NT measurement (our OB didn't tell us exactly what it was) and a nasal bone clearly visible.  Then, towards the end of the scan, she started looking at the umbilical cord.  She got quiet for a while, and explained that she was trying to make sure that "all three vessels" were there.  After more poking around, she nonchalantly said something like "well I can see two, so I'm sure there's a third" and then she moved on.  At the end of the scan she congratulated us and I headed to the lab to have my blood taken for the rest of the first trimester screening tests.

We left the hospital walking on air.  We stopped for lunch and called our respective moms and told them the great news.  Then, back at the office, out of curiosity I Googled to find out more about the umbilical cord and the "three vessels".

That was a mistake.

In a nutshell, the umbilical cord is supposed to have three blood vessels in it: a vein which carries oxygen and nutrients to the baby, and two arteries that take waste products away from it.  Sometimes, in about 1% of cases, there's only one artery.  Most of the time this isn't a big deal at all, but on occasion it can be a sign of chromosomal or other defects, ranging from the minor to the fatal.

Now, let's just stop for a second and realize that my OB seemed completely unconcerned  about this.  At no point did she actually say that there were only two vessels, just that she couldn't see the third, which I'm sure is completely normal at this early stage.  The rest of the NT scan was perfect.  But what do you think I ended up obsessing over for the rest of the day?

M could immediately tell something was up, and I told him what I'd found.  He told me to stop worrying, but I didn't.  I kept Googling and making things worse.  By that evening, all of the joy that I'd experienced that morning had been sucked away into a vortex of "what if".  And the worst part?  It had started to affect M as well.  The happy, excited dad-to-be of that morning was gone, replaced by a husband getting increasingly pissed off that his wife just couldn't be positive for a change.

Later that night, he called me out on it.  He said that it felt every time we got some much-needed good news, I found a way to undercut it.  It was like I couldn't just let us be happy; I needed to find some problem to worry about or some way to bring us down a bit.  And he was absolutely right.  I've been doing this from the start, turning our high beta into an imaginary molar pregnancy or a day with a lack of pregnancy symptoms into an impending miscarriage.  None of which has come to pass.

I'm trying really hard to figure out why I do this, and of course it all comes back to three years of infertility.  How many times have I read about bloggers not being able to accept that they'll have a healthy baby in their arms until so late in their pregnancies?  I would always offer words of solace, and tell them that unless their doctor told them they had something to worry about then they should start trying to be happy and enjoy their pregnancies.  And now here I am, needing to listen to my own advice.  Not only for my own sake, but for my husband's too.  He deserves to have a happy pregnancy every bit as much as I do.  And I'll be damned if I let my insecurities take that away from him again.