Figgered you might be, whether you know what the abbreviation means or not. At least I was. Out of curiosity recently, I clicked on a “TTC Vlog” that came up in my YouTube feed. I soon learned, as some of you are about to learn (unless I was the last ignorant one), that “TTC” stands for “Trying to Conceive.”
Anyone out there feel a bit surprised? embarrased? uncomfortable about the notion of the TTC vlog? I did. My initial thought was: wow people, we are dying for community! Why else would anyone be willing to put out there for the entire world to see, analyze, maybe even laugh about, every detail of their personal uncertain attempt at conception?
Aside from my embarrassed surprise, this is a subject that brings up a heavy load of emotions. So I decided, perhaps against general caution, to address the topic on this blog.
No, this is not my TTC blog. I’m not telling, one way or another, so don’t get any ideas or start any speculative rumors! But I know that for many who are trying, TTC can be a source of almost unbearable heartache--because I’ve experienced it.
I must qualify that we did not try very long for lily-girl. I know many have tried much longer without the blessing we received, comparatively quickly. For those of you who cry out for a child that never comes, for those who have experienced a miscarriage, maybe multiple miscarriages, I cannot hope to say anything here that will ease your burden. But I believe the very least I can do is acknowledge it. Detailing my experience, brief and easy as it was compared to yours, may shed some light on the depth of your pain.
My story involves less waiting and less grief than many, but waiting and grief nonetheless. It involves a suspected--never confirmed--miscarriage, and years of mourning before the comfort of a pregnancy. Once we decided to try for a pregnancy, I cannot describe my waiting each month as impatient; it was rather more like desperate. Several months in a row I experienced pregnancy symptoms like breast tenderness, fatigue and nausea, and missing my normally clockwork period by a week and a half or more. Once when my period started nearly two weeks late, I was so convinced that I was pregnant that I went to the emergency room thinking I was having a miscarriage. I was beyond embarrassed when the doctor walked in and said, “So, you aren’t actually pregnant…”. I later learned these could have been symptoms of phantom pregnancy, or pseudocyesis. Yup, it’s a thing. Sometimes it lasts a few weeks. Rarely, the symptoms of pregnancy continue and progress a full 9 months, occasionally years, without a baby being present. Christie knew a woman who grew a belly, went into labor, and came back from the hospital without a baby, because there never had been one.
I felt like my body had turned traitor. It was teasing me, raising my hopes to dash them the harder. I felt like I went through the wringer every month. I felt like I grieved the loss of a baby every month.
Some of you may think my reaction melodramatic. I rather agree! I felt humiliated that I was so naive as to let my own body keep fooling me, embarrassed by my sheer desperation to have a child. But no matter how much I tried to teach my heart to feel differently, it remained unteachable, at least for the time. And all of the ache and desperation I’ve just described explains a lot about how I later experienced pregnancy, how on edge I was, how febrile, how anxious to get it just right.
I think we need to recognize that pregnancy and childbearing are fraught with emotion from before the very beginning. Waiting, more waiting, expectation, disappointment. Hoping and trying not to hope. It’s no wonder perinatal mental illnesses are so common. We’re raw and tender from the wringer.
When I was a teenager and young adult, my mom used to tell me, “Your reactions are valid. Your feelings are just as right as anyone else’s”. I never believed her. Generally, my own gut reflexes caused me either embarrassment or anger. Here was more evidence of my reflex-incompetence: this preposterous desperation and grief over trying to conceive. There was no good reason to feel so miserable, just as there was no reason for my body to feel and act pregnant.
When I later discovered that someone had given the experience a name (pseudocyesis/ phantom pregnancy), that someone else’s brain and body had joined forces to humiliate her, the realization that I was not alone loosened the grip at my gut.
The mental illnesses common in pregnancy range beyond postpartum depression, but we don’t hear about them. For example, you may be surprised to hear that anxiety disorders are actually more common than depression in the perinatal period, and mood disorders of all kinds are about as common during pregnancy as during the postpartum period. In particular, PTSD affects about 3 percent of pregnant women, and about 20 percent of women with OCD say their symptoms began in pregnancy (I got these stats from a wonderful resource called The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook, by Wiegartz and Gyoerkoe, pp. 114 and 150). Because no one talks about them, pseudocyesis, OCD, PTSD and panic disorders ambush us, and at a time in our lives when we are most vulnerable. This is one of the main reasons for this blog. If we start talking more about perinatal mood disorders, if mental illness in general is no longer shrouded in secrecy and confusion, then we can hope to take out some of the shock and sting of shame. More women will have the courage to seek treatment. Fewer will believe they are alone. Above all dear readers, I want you to know that should you find your gut going through a wringer-washer of pain and guilt and shame, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Understanding my vulnerability helped disprove my original mortified assumption that no other brain had ever reacted as melodramatically as mine. And then at least I was fighting a better-known giant. At least I knew the giant had been fought and beaten before. And now hopefully, so do you.
