Welcome distractions (and cash)

As luck would have it I had a few pieces of work come in this morning. In what has been a pretty fallow period for someone who works as a freelance proposals writer, the necessity of work provided two main functions today: the chance to earn some money (always welcome), and; a distraction from the fact that I am booked in for a scan this afternoon. In fact, I’m leaving in less than half an hour. 

The internal shit-show 

Since getting this completely unexpected positive I have maintained external composure in ways that I wouldn’t before have thought possible. Thoughts of both possible outcomes have whispered through my head at times and most of the time I’ve managed not to react to them or give anything away. 

Internally, of course, it’s been a shit-show.  

I have indulged in some extensive and frantic Googling about chances of success given my age and my history. I have watched in my head how I think today will play out. I have believed that if we could defy the odds and bring home a healthy baby once, then surely we could do it again.  

I have catastrophrised silently and extensively, something I am prone to do on any given topic, but one that really is life and death offers the very real prospect of a catastrophe at the end of it. I have imagined the worst possible moment I could start bleeding; when I took my sister to the airport for her flight home to Sydney; this morning when I’m mentally preparing for the scan itself; in the car on our way there, or even as I sit in the waiting room awaiting the sound of my name.  

And of course, I fear being told today that despite no sign of it from my body, I will miscarry in due course. 

The possibility 

It’s hard to imagine a good outcome when more pregnancies have perished than bloomed within my body. And yet there have been moments when I have pondered the possibility that we three may in fact be four before much longer.  

Counting down the minutes

As I count down the minutes before I get in the car with my husband (12 to go), I feel a clawing sense of nausea. Not of the pregnancy kind; in fact, my complete lack of symptoms has played a considerable role in my inability to really buy-in to the possibility that this could be real. It’s more akin to falling. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something and have no choice but to jump without knowing how far the fall.  

Leaping into the abyss

Until now I have been turning away from the precipice, because there was no need to go towards it. But today there is no running from reality. In a couple of hours I will know whether I have been carrying the possibility of life with me these past few weeks, or if the bio-chemical reaction within me has already reached its conclusion. So for now, eyes screwed shut, I leap into the abyss.