Congratulations on your pregnancy!
I dont have any anxiety condition so i don’t know if this helps…
Many mothers without anxiety conditions struggle with these concerns the first trimester. I personally hate the first trimester. It is the worst limbo to be in, waiting, hoping each week you are STILL pregnant and obsessing over every tiny symptom. And I was sooo jealous of women who had morning sickness. Crazy right? I had barely any pregnancy symptoms during any of my pregnancies and thus never felt pregnant for real until I had a nice big wiggly baby bump.
Miscarriages do happen, probably more often than you realise since not everyone talks about it. It wasn’t until our first and second pregnancies both ended in missed miscarriages that i was mentioning it, and suddenly, i had all these women around me sharing their own miscarriage experiences, that I saw how overwhelmingly common it is. It really is incredible how much has to go just right for a baby to be born healthy.
I would also advise that sometimes a pregnancy can stop developing and not begin miscarrying immediately, so perhaps for several weeks your body will continue to excrete pregnancy hormones in your urine and thus, a positive pregnancy test. The continued pregnancy testing is false comfort at this point.
I don’t write this to escalate your worries further, but instead to reassure you they are legitimate concerns and i don’t think people telling you to relax and that it will all be fine and to stop worrying would be helpful or comforting or reasonable in this situation. You obviously desperately love little baby sprout and nobody is able to promise you it will all be fine…of course you feel anxious!!
I think it is healthy to have that awareness that sometimes pregnancies dont progress past a certain point because something has messed up along the way and it was never going to result in a healthy baby. If you went into this thinking oh this won’t ever happen to me, and it does, it adds a whole other devastating layer to the grief.
Since you cant do anything about these kinds of miscarriages, i would instead focus on what you can do which is looking after your body. Eat well, get rest, take your prenatal vitamins, gentle exercise, spend time meditating and talking to baby sprout. You want to enjoy being pregnant (for however long or shot that ends up being) not feel stressed the whole time waiting for something to go wrong.
I would say to my babies, even if this doesn’t work out, i am so grateful i have had the opportunity to love you and be your mama this long and that i get to be pregnant with right now in this moment.
I know it is soooo hard to wait for that first scan and then you spend about a day feeling good and then you are counting down the days to the next one. It sounds very normal from peoplei have talked to. I can confirm it does get better when you can feel them move but then you have the worries of: are they moving and kicking enough ect. Congratulations and welcome to this club of parenthood…the worrying never really ends .
Something that might help would be to look at some broken down statistics of miscarriage risk week by week and follow along as it drops. This brought me lots of comfort to see each day i was pregnant, was a step towards a better chance of a positive outcome.
The chance at week 8 verses week 10 of healthy pregnancy might be X then it rapidly decreases down to Y. But if you tease apart that number, you have women under 30 verses over 30 in that figure. It includes women with a history of prior miscarriages, and ones with health conditions and ones who smoke and drink and play extreme sports. Your own risk is likely lower than the generalised figures.
Focus on the positives. A 5% chance of miscarriage at 7 weeks sounds scary but that can also be read as a 95% of everything being well.
If you are very impatient, Consider asking for a ‘dating scan’ which is an early scan usually done at 8 weeks. [name_u]Chance[/name_u] of miscarriage at 8 weeks is some figure, but the figures are lower with conformation of a healthy heartbeat seen on ultrasound. Keep in mind though that even if you could get a good ultrasound at 8 weeks , miscarriages could still occur between then and the next ultrasound at 12 weeks. And also, that an ultrasound too soon could cause unnecessary concern if it is too early and no heartbeat can be found at that appointment. Not that anything is wrong but hearing no heartbeat is scary any way you cut it even if it is reasonable when baby is that tiny.
Sounds like you know that things are likely to all be fine, however nothing i say will replace the reassurance of actually seeing that promising 12 week ultrasound. The first trimester is a whole third of your pregnancy but sometimes it feels much longer! I can understand everything you are feeling. Fingers crossed the weeks go quickly for you until you can find out and have piece of mind