I am currently 8 months pregnant. I know that people typically enjoy their pregnancy and there are parts of it I have enjoyed. It’s nice feeling so much love for someone I’ve not met yet and I feel a lot of gratefulness for him. But it has also felt like one of the longest experiences of my life. I had HG and was sick daily for almost 3 months before I finally got it under control with medication. I’m now struggling with insomnia, aches, mood swings, anxiety, etc. The past few days my moods have been super unregulated and volatile. 

Tonight my husband did a shift as a bouncer at a bar he used to work at about an hour away, where we used to live. I have worried myself sick since we found out he’d be working two weeks ago thinking about him getting drunk and driving, about other drunk drivers, about him falling asleep at the wheel, about him hitting a deer, about me going into early labor and being unable to reach him. I’m really working on my clingy and paranoid nature so I didn’t voice all of this and tried to let go a little bit and trust that everything would be fine. And it was. It’s 5:30AM now but he is home safely with a snack for me and more money than we had yesterday. 


But I have not slept all night long. It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve lay in bed for 7 hours and tried to wind down before by working on a crochet project. But no—constant worrying, fixating about what could go wrong and how I could end up being a single mother with a baby who never got to meet their father. I feel exhausted, and embarrassed of myself, and annoying (though I’ve not taken out my worry on my husband, which is another thing I’m working on, not being in control constantly), and irresponsible, and like a bad mom for not resting, and I’m just feeling really really down. I’m supposed to start an SSRI at week 37 of pregnancy to get a jump on my postpartum, and I’ve talked to a few different therapists while pregnant about my anxiety. I’m really trying but I still have so far to go. I’ve struggled with clinical anxiety and depression since elementary school, and I know that some days are worse than others, this one is particularly bad. I always feel the most helpless on the heels of a night of no sleep.