With my first full-term pregnancy the minutes stretched into languid hours and I ached with anticipation to be able to say ‘I’m 20 weeks’ or ‘I’m 7 months.’ I used to squeak a few extra days into it if I was asked how far along I was, wondering if I’d get caught for saying ‘I’m 21 weeks’ when I was really only 20 weeks and 3 days.
“It’ll be different in your second pregnancy. It’ll fly by.”
“What just happened there?” My psychiatrist said, watching the vast array of emotion flit across my face after she suggested I go back on Prozac during my pregnancy.
“So many women experience anxiety, depression, and PTSD during pregnancy . . . You’re not alone.”
I was back in familiar territory at Women’s College Hospital. I’d been part of their Reproductive Life Stages Program before, but this time, sitting in front of the psychiatrist, I felt twice as vulnerable.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has managed to carve some pretty intricate logic-loopholes as it’s etched its path through my life. A leftover relic from fertility issues, miscarriages and separation, it’s cut me deeply. Now that I’m finally pregnant and safely into my second trimester I want to feel unbridled joy, but sometimes I feel terror and paralytic trepidation instead.
“So, I’m going to need you to go ahead and give me a semen sample.”
Ok. No. That’s not right.
What about—
“So the thing is, if I’m going to go and get my reproductive situation assessed for the future… then… maybe we should talk about the future… and when that might start.”
Not bad. A little Jerry McGuire-ish, but still down to earth. Was it maybe a little too clinical?
