Pins and Needles and Family Surprises

I intended to post earlier this week, but it has been a really busy week. That hasn't been a completely bad thing, though. You can probably guess that I'm pretty anxious for our second u/s tomorrow. I keep telling myself that it will more than likely be fine--no reason to think otherwise (well, other than our twin of course)--but my overactive imagination keeps exploring all the dark possibilities. No matter what, hopefully I will be alert enough to ask some of the questions we want to ask. I was as dumbfounded at our first u/s as I was at my first few monitoring appointments when I wasn't responding but couldn't think of my questions until later. And they don't volunteer information easily at my clinic; you usually have to ask and re-ask. I have to work late tonight due to a big migration, and I'm coming in a for a couple of hours tomorrow to make sure everything is working correctly, but after I leave for our appointment, I'm not returning for the day. Our appointment is at 10:20 and afterwards we will go to lunch with F.

I had some interesting, rather shocking news last week. I mentioned back in August or September that I found out my youngest cousin was starting down the IF path. Well, this cousin, L, called me last Wednesday to congratulate me on seeing the h/b at our first u/s. I thought it was really sweet of her and asked her how she was. She asked if I had talked to my mother and at that moment I knew: she is pregnant. And she is. She's about 4 weeks ahead of us. She had asked the family not to tell me until we knew what was going on with our situation. It was very sweet of her to be so considerate of me but somewhat annoying at the same time since no IFer wants to be the last to know and realize that everyone in her family has been conspiring to keep it from her. I talked to my mother, and it turns out that L has a thyroid condition that wasn't diagnosed until she was already pregnant and that she should have been on medication before she became pregnant. Apparently, there is a chance she could still miscarry.

I have a LOT of conflicting feelings about L's news. I'm happy for her truly. I hope her thyroid causes her no more trouble, and I'm glad she didn't have to venture down the IF path. But I'm kind of pissed at my family and at my mother. So my mother's sisters can keep their children's secrets but my mother can't keep mine? Granted, I never explicitly asked her to keep our news a secret at any point (mainly because I knew it would be futile), but it would have been nice. And it's rather infuriating that my mother can keep other peoples' secrets. Argh. However, in some twisted way, I think my mother's heart was in the right place (for once) and she was trying to be considerate of me (for once). She had no compunction about passing along other people's pregnancy news in the past.

I confess that I felt a huge knot in my stomach when L told me. You see, I have 3 cousins. Between now and next June, there is the possibility of 4 new babies in our family. That's wonderful, you might say. What a blessing! Except that I suddenly feel performance anxiety. Four! Can all 4 really happen? Who is the weak link in that chain? I feel like we are (because I always feel like I am the worst and lowest) though realistically one could argue it's my cousin L. Plus, the cousin who is due any day is on child #2. My other two cousins are siblings, so their mother will have two grandbabies. So that's 2 grandchildren for each aunt. And I just hope I can make my mother a grandmother of 1. I know it's not a competition and what will happen will happen. After my conversation with L, I felt like everything was doomed. Hopefully my thoughts are going to dark places for nothing.

I decided that I need to focus on the here and now. I look at our u/s pictures daily and send all the love I can to my wiggleworm. Hopefully we'll have beautiful pictures of an even bigger wiggleworm tomorrow.