Coping with a High Risk Pregnancy

I didn't know whether I was going to have 2, 1 or 0 babies in my future so it was hard to know whether to be happy, anxious, sad or....just feel nothing. A baby shower sounds like a trivial thing but I didn't know whether I should have one. Celebrating their impending birth when their chances or survival weren't great was a little odd.

I made a decision to try to be optimistic and ignore the horrible statistics. My babies were healthy according to the scans and I'm healthy so there's no use worrying! I hated people telling me to not get my hopes up and telling me not to buy baby furniture until after they were born. I wanted to pretend there were no risks - that's how I coped. My OB would tell me all the risks at every appointment leading up to viability which depressed me every time. Once I reached 26 weeks he became more optimistic and told me he was confident I would make it to magic 32 weeks. At 32 weeks the risk of long term problems reduces dramatically.

However, reality would set it, especially when we went for scans. I had 10 high resolution scans that took 1-2 hours each. I had a panic attack at every scan. The first one was the worst - I had to take 6 breaks in one hour. From then on I closed my eyes for the majority of the time and I distracted myself by eating and drinking. Even after the sonographer assured me she had found 2 heartbeats I would still be very anxious. Seeing them was extremely emotional and overwhelming. All of the scans came back with excellent results. The flow of blood from the placenta to the babies was always good which reassured us that any knots weren't restricting the flow of nutrients.

However, good scan results didn't guarantee that we were going to take home two babies. Simon and I had a few awful but necessary conversations about what we wanted to do if one or both didn't make it. We had a plan in place and we had even picked out special names. Not that we didn't want to use "Phoebe" and "Sophia" but we wanted special names with meanings that were appropriate for the situation.