Your mind is going through as much as your body, y’all.
Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m 25 weeks pregnant and have struggled with anxiety for my entire adult life.
My anxiety comes in the form of irrational thinking and fears—for example, I'll start to worry about something, go down a rabbit hole of the worst case scenario of what could go wrong, and then just freak the hell out until I find a way to calm down and get back to reality.
I've never taken medication for my anxiety, which is a totally personal choice. Instead, I've been fortunate that years of talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy have been enough for me to manage it.
Being pregnant has definitely brought out some of the worst of my anxiety because there are so many changes that you go through, both physically and emotionally. And don't get me started on the hormones!
Daniel Christensen
I also had a miscarriage last fall.
*Deep breath* yes, I miscarried my first pregnancy. We got pregnant on our very first try, easy-peasy. Then at 9 weeks, my husband and I went to the doctor for a regular appointment and ultrasound, and it was there we found out that I was having what's known as a “missed miscarriage,” which is when you have a miscarriage with no apparent symptoms.
My heart didn't just break, it turned to dust and disappeared. But when I started to talk to people about it, I started feeling a lot better.
After about a month, I wrote about it on Facebook. A bunch of friends, friends' parents, old classmates, and former coworkers reached out to me about their miscarriages, and whether they were 30 years ago or 6 months earlier, it was incredibly helpful and healing. And the overwhelming sentiment: It's super common (somewhere around 1 in 5 pregnancies) and SUCKS but also, it's even more common to get pregnant again soon and have a healthy baby.
I “quickly” got pregnant again a few months later (though that amount of time felt like eternity when it was happening), and I realized I literally didn't know what I would do if I miscarried again… but I had to figure it out.
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
Here are a few things that legit kept me from losing my mind while trying to conceive and throughout the first 24 weeks of my pregnancy.
Keep in mind that every person and every pregnancy is different. This list is not meant to be a substitute for medical advice (please call your doctor or therapist for that); rather, it's a list of things that worked for me, in case they may someday work for you, too.
Dami Lee / BuzzFeed
also known as “trying to get pregnant” or, if you've ever been on a message board about pregnancy, “TTC.”
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