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Nothing feels safe outside of our home. Not the grocery store, not the gym, and definitely not this parking lot. Picking up my pace, I walk as fast as I possibly can while this fucking pregnant. I may be out of breath, but at least I feel more secure inside the building for my OBGYN's office.
The doctor’s office waiting room is fairly busy today. There's a small line-up just to speak with the reception desk and most of the seats are taken. Normally when I come, there's maybe three to four other patients, today it has to be close to twenty.
After checking in, I sit down in one of the few open seats and pull out my phone to scroll while I wait. This room, in all its various shades of brown and pictures of babies and paintings of flowers on the walls, has always made me slightly uncomfortable. Today, that feeling is amped up with the excess of extra people and the feelings of anxiousness that won't go away.
My eyes drift back to my phone to try to push the uncomfortable feelings away. The guys have all sent texts to make sure I made it to the appointment okay and sent their apologies for not being able to make it. With all three of them working recently, it’s been more complicated for one of them to get time off to join me. I don't mind that much, it's the joys of being an adult and I honestly can handle most of the doctor’s appointments by myself. They’ve made sure that someone can be at the main ones, like when we found out the genders of the twins and the first ultrasound.
I prefer having them here, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. They’re good for checking on me while I'm here and I also make sure to update them as things happen. The OB is, thankfully, not as much of a trigger as it used to be for me. Dr. Balanger has been pretty great at keeping me calm and informed during all of my visits.
I send them back reassurances that everything is fine and I made it here okay. Rhys and Adam respond back immediately. With Hudson having a more physically hands-on job, I always expect his response to come later when I send anything in the group chat during the earlier parts of the day.
Rhys:Keep us updated, baby. I love you!
Adam:And let us know if you need anything. I’ll be in a meeting for the next hour, but I can step out if there’s an emergency. P.S. I love you more than the others do. Just saying…
Adam ends his text with a bunch of winking faces, making me chuckle under my breath. Rhys just sends a GIF of Iron Man rolling his eyes. I’m sure Hudson will stake his claim and flip off Adam when he gets a chance to check the chat. They never stop bickering over me like the favourite toy in the sandbox.
These men of mine, if they aren’t bickering, they’re being overprotective assholes. They at least keep things interesting with their teasing each other, as long as it stays light-hearted and fun. Hudson’s face the other night when Adam and him took things too far pops into my head. We’re all trying so hard to put on brave faces and hide away the fear, anger, and anxiety, but in the end, it’s going to come out. That’s the problem with emotions, they can’t stay hidden forever.
The bar getting trashed kind of pushed all of us over that proverbial edge that we’ve been sitting on since the phone call from Kevin over a month and a half ago. I know I went through a million emotions that day, from anger to anguish to anxiety and back. The guys were no different, each of them wearing their emotions clear as day on their sleeves.
We all handled that day in our own way. I threw myself into work with Ashe, figuring out how much this would set me back and how we could work on getting the bar back on track. Hudson, aside from a brief stop in at the bar, disappeared for hours and didn’t come home until extremely late that night. Rhys worked until almost dawn the next day trying to find the best way to secure the location and keep us safe when there.
Adam was the one that surprised me with his reaction to the news. He was calm and collected. There was no jumping into a frenzy for him, he was a fucking rock for all of us on that day. Adam held me through most of the day, helping me navigate what to do and how to push through. He gave Rhys tips and advice on what he could see as potential problems. Most of all, I heard him and Riggs when Riggs got back at night, talking in the kitchen. Hudson needed that hand reached out to him more than any of us and Adam did it with no questions asked.
Right now, emotions are at an all time high, with fear, anger, and worry at the forefront for all of us. I’m not going to lie, I live for the light-hearted quips and teasing jokes that are sprouting up again between them all. Alongside the sweet, loving moments with my men, it’s all that’s keeping me from breaking down under the weight of this renewed threat.
I jump in my chair as a few names are called by a nurse in purple scrubs to go into the back exam rooms. My hands get clammy and my heart races as the waiting room starts moving. All of the familiar signs are popping up for my c-PTSD, the recent Kevin attack making it impossible for me to feel any sort of comfort in this office. For the health of myself and my pregnancy, though, I have to push myself to get through it. It’s not like you can realistically skip prenatal care, trauma or not.
With the amount of fear surrounding the office and procedures today, I feel like I shouldn’t have toughed it out. I should have asked one of the guys to come with me. Hell, even Hayley, Jules, or Dot were options. Anyone I trust would have been a good choice to ask to sit here with me and help me through this. My only consolation right now is that I know when it’s finally all said and done, it’s going to bring with it a certain level of calm because I have the knowledge that myself and the twins are healthy. My fear of having a flashback or a panic attack is nothing compared to my fear of losing either of the twins or dying, myself.
It really, really doesn’t help that I have a few concerns today which are upping the fear factor. At least they’re also strengthening my resolve to stay here and fight through the triggering feelings at the same time. After actively feeling the babies now for a few weeks, I wanted to bring up with the doctor what frequency I should be expecting in movements. I’ve been nervous about whether or not my pregnancy is progressing the way it should be for twins.
For having twins, I feel like I’m not experiencing enough movement. I read that I should probably be feeling the babies move a lot more than I do at this stage in my pregnancy with two babies instead of one. It’s been a few weeks since my last ultrasound which came back completely normal, yet I can’t stop this incessant worrying that something is wrong.
Seeing as how I have trauma induced anxiety, my therapist said it makes sense that I would already feel anxious and worried about my pregnancy and the babies’ well being. All these online forums and blogs tell you totrust your gutand that you’ll know when something is truly wrong. That’s such bullshit. My anxiety, depression, and overactive fight or flight response will turn any normal worry into a gut feeling because that’s how mental illness works.
Trust your gut, my ass. My gut tells me I’m about to die at least ten times a day. I don’t trust that bitch as far as I can throw her, which is not at all because my gut is a part of me.
I’ve started to focus solely on medical articles and books to learn more about the ins and outs of pregnancy and parenthood so that I don’t fall into all theyou got this, mamablogs. It’s not that I don’t believe they have some good information, it’s just that I know myself and I know I need cold, hard facts without opinions to be able to sleep better at night.
A text from Juliette pops up, bringing a small smile to my face. She always knows how to ease my anxiety about these appointments. Considering they’re nothing new to her, Jules makes the perfect lighthearted jokes to help ease me into the realities of the appointment. With the extra stress of Kevin right now, I’m incredibly thankful to see her name pop up on my phone.
Today it’s a meme of a doctor asking how his pregnant patient is feeling and the second picture is a large, hairless cat with a very unimpressed face. Chuckling at my phone, I send back a couple laughing faces. That’s exactly how I feel looking into the mirror every morning.
The woman beside me glances over at me and I shift uncomfortably. She smiles then turns back to the book in her hands. I know she’s just being a normal, kind stranger, but I feel so on edge from the overwhelming feeling that I’m being watched all morning. Having her look over spikes the panicked feeling in my chest all over again.
Rubbing the skin at the base of my throat, I try to push the fluttery panic away. The last thing I need is a panic attack in the office. It’s getting extremely uncomfortable, fighting back the impending panic attack. My palms get sweaty and my legs start bouncing up and down with the anxiety filling my body.
“Alayna,” the nurse calls my name, breaking the attack enough for me to stand up numbly and follow the nurse back to a room.
I may need to let the doctor know that mentally, I’m not doing okay today. Any of the more invasive check up procedures will need to be rescheduled to a different day or I’m not sure I’ll get through this appointment in one piece.
“Just in here, Alayna.” The nurse gestures to the room on the left side of the hallway. “Have a seat and we’ll start getting your blood pressure reading.”
“Okay,” I breathe out, my heart still racing in my chest. “My anxiety is extremely high today due to some personal, um, issues. My blood pressure reading may be off.”
Living with anxiety, you get used to telling medical professionals when your anxiety is already high before a blood pressure test. After they force you to go through extra tests to have your blood pressure checked, you learn pretty fast to save yourself the money and be upfront about the panic invading your system.
