The Overwhelming Fear that Comes with Motherhood

I’ve been afraid that my daughter would die since before she was even conceived. Every day I envision scenarios that turn from happy, fun playtime to panic and emergency. I sometimes upset myself because I imagine it too hard. Here are just a few of my fears.

Fear of Not Making It Through Pregnancy

You ask any pregnant woman what her number one fear is and she’ll tell you miscarriage. It’s a fear we all have. For some, like me, it’s was even more of a fear because so many family members had had miscarriages.

On my husband’s side of the family we talk about “the curse.” Everyone has lost at least one child, and it was usually the first. So naturally when I got pregnant with our first, we were terrified. We waited 13 weeks to announce the pregnancy on Facebook.

But those first 12 weeks were the scariest. I didn’t even have anything happen like a fall or car accident. I was just so scared of “the curse.” So scared that I was mentally preparing myself for the worst by assuming I would have a miscarriage.

Once I got into my second trimester, I was able to quell this fear by telling myself that I had probably had a miscarriage without even knowing it. A lot of women do. It happens in the first 2 to 3 weeks so you think you just got a heavy period. I’m pretty sure I had one about 6 months before I was pregnant with Toot. So I was able to count that in my mind as “the curse” being lifted and I then started to worry about other things.

Fear of Genetic or Congenital Problems

This was another big one for me. I had the genetic testing done at 13 weeks and cried while they were drawing my blood. Ok, I may have been crying also because I’ve had bad experiences with blood draws.

The genetic counselor assured me that Trisomy 18 was not hereditary. It was just a fluke of nature. My sister had Trisomy 18 and died at 5 days old in 1992. The counselor told me I had the same odds of having a Trisomy baby as my mom did, and it was unlikely that I would. I still was anxious to find out the results of the test and they came back negative for everything. I was so grateful.

Then on to other worries…

Fear of SIDS

Luckily this fear slowly fades throughout the first year as your baby gets older and is able to move around more. I had friends who lost their first son to SIDS. It was heartbreaking.

I made sure I looked at every recommendation. Nothing in the crib, no padded bumpers, room not too hot, everything I could find. Once she started sleeping through the night, I was still waking up every couple of hours to check on her. I got very good at being able to tell if she was breathing just from watching her on the monitor.

Now that she’s over a year old, my fear has subsided by the fact that she can freely move around her crib.

But now that she can move and walk…

Fear of Falling, Impaling, Choking, and Generally Hurting Herself

This is now my everyday life. If she’s walking around the living room, I’m constantly trying to look for what she could hurt herself on. What can she fall on? What can she hit her head on? Don’t go near that glass! Stay away from that! Don’t pull that down on top of yourself!

And my current biggest fear, choking. I think choking is my biggest fear because if she choked on something I fed her, I would blame myself forever. Then again, I’d blame myself for anything bad that happened to her. She cut her finger on my soda can and I felt terrible for a week. She tripped over my husband, fell, and bit her lip. It bled for a good 10 minutes. He wouldn’t put her down for the rest of the day, and I think he apologized to her about 5000 times.

She pulled her dresser down on top of herself at 2 and a half. It was the scariest thing she’s done so far. Thankfully, there were no broken bones, no serious injury. Just a scrape, a bruise, and a lot of tears. We didn’t think it would happen to us. She wasn’t a climber! We kept saying we needed to anchor her dresser and bookcases, but we kept putting it off. DON’T PUT IT OFF.

She seems to have forgotten all about the dresser. She didn’t even mention it the next day. I’m so glad she wasn’t hurt, but for weeks after it happened, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There’s a million more fears that moms have about their kids. What are some of yours and how do you overcome them?

Let me know in the comments below!

They say that kids will make you worry about everything, and it’s true! (At least for me it is)

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