I SUFFERED FROM PREGNANCY ANXIETY

YES! overall I was anxious to meet my baby boy, but more because I wanted him to matter to the world as much as he mattered to me.

When you're pregnant, you're constantly wondering "is my baby okay?" The first trimester you won't know unless you have an ultrasound done, and your first trimester prenatal visits seem like decades apart. 

I tried to do as much research as much as possible to give myself some reassurance that "yes! Baby is fine in your womb, these are what our bodies do! 

But you know the internet can also be a dangerous place too. 

I will often find myself in my doctors appointments asking questions that he would have to stop and ask me "shakaira where are you getting this stuff from. Stay off the internet!

"So if I poop, or fart my baby will be fine right?"

When I started to feel JoJo move in my belly it kind of gave me a little bit of comfort knowing that this would be an indication that he is okay, but when I didn't feel him move for a whole hour, oh boy! 

Back to the internet 

"Take a shot of apple juice and gargle it 3 times , baby should move" 

"Waaaaat this sounds ridiculous, but I'll try it" 😩

"It's not working, I'm starting to feel sick, something's got to be wrong! should I go to the emergency room?"

"So here I am In the ER. I've made it VERY clear that I'm pregnant and I haven't felt my baby move, why are they not putting some pep in their step? Does this not matter to them?"

One of the biggest arguments today is, "a fetus isn't considered alive until they're born" so it should be okay to abort a pregnancy at such a great gestational age because "the baby won't feel it and it's not considered murder" 

 My baby was very much alive to me while in the womb, and to just watch the leniency and attitude the doctors would have whenever I had a major concern would make my anxiety spike to 1000. I mean I know doctors would know a problem when they see one but damn can you be just as concerned as me (I'm only kidding)

The ultimate issue is, when your baby is at a certain gestational age, 1st- 2nd trimester, there's not really much doctors can do, their survival rate is like less then 30% which means their urge to try and do something would more then likely reflect that. 

Don't get me wrong! I know some doctors do as much as they can to the best of their ability but as a mother, it won't be enough for you! 

When JoJo started to grow and grow and I was able to feel him more, my anxiety started to lessen but then returned around my late trimester OB visits, that being because ultrasounds aren't really a consistent thing in the 3rd trimester unless there's a medical concern, and when I did get a peek at him, he looked like a stuffed baked potato (yummy) 😂 no but he really looked like he had zero room, I began to worry and feel concerned for him even though I know that this is what it is! This is all they know so they would be accustomed as for me, I haven't been balled up for 23-24 years, I don't remember it but I know how uncomfortable it is to be balled up now, not only that I'm claustrophobic. 

I began to learn the importance and how much of a priority our bodies and our health was to our fetus, as my pregnancy lengthened. So i was under the impression that if god forbid anything was to ever happen I would very much blame myself and try to figure out what I did or could of did differently.

Which is a bad way to look at things. I Look at it like this, you receive a package from a factory in a foreign country, (the factory is the male reproductive organ which pretty much has a system of its own - meaning they can't control how much sperm they produce) they forget to pack a very important part in the package or a defective part (abnormal chromosome) and this would hindure or even make the whole object not viable. Again! Something out of our total control.

I just was so ready to give birth because I wanted my son to have a greater chance at life and I wanted him to be considered Alive,  I wanted there to be an urgency to give him medical attention if he ever needed it, I wanted my son to matter to the word as much as he mattered to me.