Realization

It dawned on me this morning that I'm not actually following any "normal" pregnancies as written about by "normal" bloggers, aside from one (which is about 10% or less of my blog following).  I've been keeping an eye on a high risk pregnancy, and one formerly routine-ish pregnancy that's now moved to a hospital and possible pre-term labor.  I've been anxiously awaiting hearing about IVF cycles and clomid cycles and all that jazz.

So this realization that the only normal pregnancy I'm hearing anything about is one on facebook from a fertile friend who I haven't kept very close ties to over the years.  I'd say about 90% of the time I just scoff and ignore her posts the first time around, then later read them obsessively because something is wrong with me.

AND I know what it is!  I'm just a nervous person about pregnancy now, and that will probably never ever go away.

Example: All year I've been planning to go to the ASHP Midyear meeting in Las Vegas this December.  It's a big deal national conference, and yes, I don't actually need to go for school, it's just for my personal entertainment and education and networking and... ya know.  All that jazz.  I'm not totally sold that I'd be happy working in a hospital but I figured I'd go to this conference and see what I thought.  I went to the AMCP national conference previously and was shocked by how much I enjoyed it.  Never in a million years would I have thought I was interested in anything managed care, but it turns out I am.

So now, when it's time to sign up and actually make real plans to go, I'm hesitant.  I've been pretending it's because I'd be enormous (true) and uncomfortable the whole time (also true) and it's too expensive, but really, it's because I'm scared.  I'm not sure I want to travel at all while pregnant, not even into the city to visit my sibling for Thanksgiving, and that's not more than an hour and a half in the car.  Let's be honest.  I will never ever find childcare for a baby and the kid for 3-5 days so we can go to a conference somewhere warm in the winter.  This is really the last shot at that level of freedom for several years.

I'd like to imagine that the anatomy scan scheduled for Monday will make me feel all warm and fuzzy and confident about this, but it totally won't.  I'll still be nervous.  I'll still wonder every other minute if this is even going to work out at all, and what it does to the kid if it doesn't (as if moving wasn't trying enough, poor thing), what the worst would do to me.  I'll just try to remember that living in fear does me no good at all, and there's lots of hope that things will be totally fine.