9 month checkup

Christine,

It’s funny because my 2.5 year old was actually quite a difficult baby- she was clingy, never happy entertaining herself, and cried a lot. So during my pregnancy everyone kept telling me that Hailey would be my easy baby (ha!!) so I guess that’s what I was expecting.

I wouldn’t say that anyone is prone to anxiety in my family, but neither my husband nor myself really are fond of change. That being said, my pregnancy with Hailey was so difficult that I did have some episodes that I thought were almost anxiety attacks. When I was 7 weeks I had a subchorionic bleed and they told me that I could lose the pregnancy (50-50 chance either way) up until 12 weeks. Then when I was 3 months pregnant we had to put my 21 year old cat to sleep, then 1 week later my grandfather died. This all took it’s toll on me. My older daughter was sick a lot, and so I was getting everything in the book as well on top of all the regular pregnancy stuff (severe nausea, migraines, back pain etc). Then just when I thought I was already exhausted, my older daughter started having constant fevers (for over a month) and having seizures that we couldn’t control well. She was having them every other week, and we just couldn’t figure out why. They were not sure if she had epilepsy or if she had a more serious immune condition. We had to keep her at home away from others for almost a month and monitor her temperatures hourly in a log for the doctor and to make sure that she wouldn’t seize. It was awful, she wouldn’t take her medicine (much like Hailey) and we had to restrain her to get it in. Every time I’d take her temperature and it was over 101 degrees I’d feel like I was having a panic attack, because that was her seizure threshold. That’s when I started having serious anxiety. I felt so overwhelmed by things and scared like I was going to be sick. And eventually I did get sick. I picked up a GI bug in the hospital where I work, and had such severe intestinal problems that I could barely eat or move from the couch for months and almost had to be hospitalized. Finally after the doctors agreed to scope me, they found out what was wrong. But they didn’t know how to treat me safely because of the pregnancy, and told me that I had to choose between taking a medicine that might harm Hailey or potentially permanently harming myself. I chose not to take the meds, and to try a safer by less effective medicine. Then after trying to research things myself, I found an herbal medicine that was my miracle cure- I went from months of suffering to spontaneous recovery the day before my due date.

Anyhow, I’m not sure why I’m telling you this (It’s not really interesting and I know that people have been through much worse). But I guess my point is that in retrospect, I’m not really surprised that Hailey came out like a stress case- because that’s exactly how I felt when i was pregnant with her. And even the GI problems are not a total surprise when I think back on things- she must have gotten it from me b/c I was so sick.

I only hope that this is something that she will outgrow (the reflux I mean, since you have given me hope that the stressed out stuff will pass). Thank you for your support. I means a lot to me.