Pregnancy Over-Achiever?

So in spite of the fact that I suddenly realized a couple of weeks ago that I couldn't fit my clothes the same way, I have been having doubts and anxieties about whether everything was progressing the way it should with the pregnancy--specifically, I have been worried about the baby growing. I think I have been responding to a combination of factors, here. My last doctor's appointment was not particularly satisfactory. I was not measured because the nurse midwife doubted her ability to measure me at 13 weeks. The heartbeat was faint and hard-to-find and, I realized today, was not actually the baby--rather, 9 times out of 10, they are listening to the placenta! I guess that's a good indicator, too, but it's a little disingenuous to tell the mother she's hearing the baby when it's actually the placenta that she's hearing! Also, the trend in doctor's offices that don't want to eat the insurance offset for testing is not to test the mother's urine at each visit--only the "later" visits. So I had very little to reassure me at the last visit.

Also, I've been influenced by all of the accounts of miscarriages and pregnancy complications that I have been reading all over the web. Some from those whom I know personally, others, first-hand accounts from bloggers I "know" and others' first hand accounts in response to others' experiences, and then third-hand or more accounts of someone who had this thing happen, usually in a pro-life, don't-abort-imperfect-babies context. So these have been preying on my mind.

In addition, there is this "rhetoric of suffering" in Catholicism. I think it depends on how susceptible one is to such things, but I have a very vivid imagination where pain is concerned--physical and emotional. It's like an enhanced empathy. It has its good points with connecting with people, but also its drawbacks, like when I can visualize the accounts of grizzly murders, etc., on the news and imagine myself as the victim. I've done this from a very young age. I still suffer from memories of reading about Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz when I was a pre-teen. So the Catholic "rhetoric of suffering" (as I'm calling it). . . It's mainly intended to stress that God is present during times of suffering, to comfort those who are experiencing or have experienced pain, and to teach that those in pain deserve the chance to live through their suffering because God manifests himself in a special way in the lives of those who suffer. There is this idea that these people have a special "cross to bear," and that they will or should "join their suffering to the cross." It can be a difficult thing to wrap one's mind around, and of course, the lives of the saints and of the faithful who have survived trials and emerged recognizing their own strength provide examples to help with the concept of this special kind of holiness. Well, with my imagination, I find myself, in a kind of odd thankfulness for my own situation, waiting for an unfortunate event--for "my turn," if you will. Now I know that different people have different trials in their lives, and I know I have some, but they seem increasingly small as compared to people I have read about. So a very small, fearful part of me dreads that I might be "joined to the cross" in such a manner. Perhaps I'm experiencing what some young Catholics feel in idealistic fervor when they wish that they were saints and/or martyrs. Only, I feel it more realistically, perhaps knowing what it would entail. So what better locus for anxiety (and time, given the hormones) than pregnancy?

So I have been worried. And last week, I made an appointment with a lay midwife (not the nurse midwife I saw last--this woman is not affiliated with a doctor's office), to get some peace of mind about my progress. Apart from confusion about the day of the appointment (she had written down next Wednesday), the visit went well. The heartbeat was very hard to find, but she did eventually find it. But first, the measurement--I'm at about 15 1/2 weeks. The midwife measured me, then she asked how many weeks along I am, then she asked if I had had an ultrasound, and whether my due date was "adjusted" or whether it confirmed the original estimate. Well, I adjusted the due date by 3 or so days myself because of NFP--I knew my ovulation date pretty certainly (after-the-fact, but that's a different subject!), but the ultrasound confirmed my own estimate. It seems I am currently measuring at 19 or so weeks--a good 4 weeks larger than where I should be!

With my son, who was 9 lbs. 6 1/2 oz. and born pretty much on the due date, I measured about 2 weeks larger than I was supposed to measure consistently. This is quite a bit larger than that! Now, I may have had a slight uterine "firming"--I hesitate to call it a contraction, because I get them all the time and they're harmless, and contractions at 15 weeks sounds bad--and I don't know if that affected things. But her thought was that if she were my midwife and I had not yet had an ultrasound, she would suggest having an ultrasound to check for twins. Now, I have had 2 ultrasounds, but at 7 and 9 weeks. I don't know if a twin could have been missed at that stage. Anyway, I guess I will see if I continue to measure large, and I have the "big," diagnostic ultrasound in June, so that will clear up the mystery. So I'm worried about being too small, and this is what I find out!! Talk about over-achiever.

As for the twins, I have twin aunts (my mother's sisters), twin great uncles (my maternal grandmother's brothers), and my great grandmother (the same who bore my twin great uncles), had at least one--possibly two--additional sets of twins who, due to early 20th Century medical care and her rural location, died in very early infancy (family lore doesn't say how early, but I suspect shortly after birth). Now, these were identical twins, which, the medical community says, are not hereditary. Fraternal twins, yes. Identical twins, no. And yet there was always this "lore" that twins "skip a generation" and that it did not skip my grandmother's generation in our case, but did skip my mother's. So the next round of twins does fall to my generation. I don't think it's likely for me at this point, since the two ultrasounds didn't reveal any multiples. But given family history, I did think it sort of, well, funny that it was mentioned.

But I'm feeling better about everything, and it seems I have a happy uterus, so that's good too.

A related question: Why are "uplifting stories" always so darned depressing? I can't bring myself to read this one right now for the above-mentioned reasons. I'm rather afraid of what new fears it might breed. But it does rather illustrate my point about what's in the blogs these days. . . And, if you're curious, try here and here, also. Here's a whole collection that Melanie posted over at Wine Dark Sea. Good stories, but emotionally draining. . .