A Novel For Your Saturday

This is a post I've been formulating in my head for awhile now. I've been debating just how much I want to share, because it is personal, and I know it would be easy to a)judge, or b) completely disbelieve what I'm saying and write me off as a mental case. However, as I find it getting worse during pregnancy, I think it's time I address it before it becomes more serious.

It's not a secret that I've experienced panic attacks, because I've mentioned it on here before. They began about six years ago, after the most intensely stressful period of my life. At first, I didn't see the connection, and I didn't know what was happening to me. The nausea and the shakes would hit. I was too antsy to sit down, but to weak to stand up. I would have chest pain, and my heart would race. The first time it happened to me, I thought I was having a heart attack. My parents even took me to the doctor to have all sorts of tests run on my heart. When nothing turned up there, I went to a general practicitioner, who spent a long time asking me questions, had me fill out a survey, and pronounced that I had Generalized Anxiety Disorder and wrote me a prescription for Xanax (which I never refilled after the first ten pills were gone).

The panic attacks didn't go away, but they definitely diminished as I figured out what worked for me. I was worried that I'd have one on my wedding day, but one of the things I've realized I need to do is not focus on the hugeness of the event. I gave myself a mental pep-talk much like Chandler got on Friends when he freaked out about his wedding: "This isn't a big deal. We're just going to get our hair done. That's not scary. Now we're going to go take some pictures. It's fine. All your friends are with you." (I ended up being just fine on our wedding day).

Even though I have a little "bag of tricks," the thing about anxiety is that sometimes you don't realize how much you've been stressing about something until one tiny thing happens to put you over the edge, and then you feel out of control. It's not about telling yourself to snap out of it, because that would be easy. It's about training your body not to respond to stress in such an extreme way, and regaining control as quickly as possible when it does.

With the extra pregnancy hormones, my panicky ways have reappered. I haven't had a full-blown episode yet, but I'd say that the urges are there approximately once every week to two weeks. Then, I grow more panicky because I think, "This is bad for the baby! My blood pressure is going up, my heart is racing, this is terrible!"....and I get more upset. I know a lot of women say that during pregnancy, everything irritates them, or everything makes them cry. Well, with me, everything stresses me out. So far, I've still found ways to cope with the anxiety and stress and manage it before it becomes full-blown chaos, but there's one thing I don't know if I can get through.

Delivery.

Being confined to a bed, surrounded mostly by unfeeling strangers, knowing that your reactions affect someone else's life? That's really terrifying. As much as I'd like to believe that I could block all of that out for the sake of the baby and a safe delivery, I really don't know that. It's not a matter of taking some deep breaths or praying, please believe me when I say that. I have tried all those things and more, because I would love to know how to never have this problem again. It's about keeping my body from going 0-60. And I DON'T want a bunch of medical interventions or drugs. That's not me. I've already cut my dose of Zofran to take only a quarter of what they prescribed me, because I'm not into taking pills, period. However, I can already tell you that "Just focusing on the baby at the end" is not going to get me through. Trust me--I've been hanging out with me for 25 years now. We're tight.

I want to arm myself with as many coping strategies as possible--even if they don't help in and of themselves, at least I can go in knowing, "I'm prepared. I don't NEED to worry about this because I've read, and I've practiced, and things are going to be okay."

In a few months, I'd love to revisit this post and say that I got through delivery just beautifully. That's my goal. In all of this, I'm doing my best to go in with eyes wide open, and I'm building my little "support team" around me. I'm making sure that they know my stress triggers and my wishes for delivery, so that they can speak for me if necessary.

I am absolutely determined that I am going to get through this with as few problems as possible. I'm not a head case, I'm not a mental patient, and I'm certainly capable of doing what millions of other women have done for thousands of years, many in much rougher conditions than I will have.

I'd just like to get through it with minimal bumps in the road.