Guilt by association (with my fetus)

As I approach the end of my first trimester (one more day!) I’ve started to feel an emotion that I have not previously experienced—guilt for our (accidental) success.  I have always been aware of the fact that I am very lucky to have one biological child.  I think I’ve expressed that feeling many times in this blog.  I have a number friends who were never able to have biological children, or who lost pregnancies that were very, very far along.  I am absolutely sensitive to the good fortune I have, whatever else I have been through.

But I’ve never felt guilty that I was able to have that child.  Lucky, absolutely.  Fortunate, you bet.  But never guilty.

With this new pregnancy, though, I have been feeling very guilty.  Partly I think it’s because it feels like a gift that was not earned.  (Maybe other women who find themselves accidentally pregnant but very excited about it feel the same way?)  And part of it stems from the fact that, for better or worse, I have become something of a fertility oracle (guru? know-it-all?) to a number of friends and family over the years.  It was painful for me to tell a family member—who has struggled with infertility (and chose not to pursue invasive procedures) and now, past 40, is very unlikely to have a biological child (or adoptive, as they may have waited too long to start the process)—that we were pregnant.  (I told her earlier than I would have preferred to make sure she did not hear it from someone else.)  During lunch the other day with a friend, she confided that she was not one and done by choice, and she felt sadness that her child would not have a sibling.  I felt sick telling her we found ourselves miraculously pregnant with number two.  At breakfast the other day, another friend told me how hard it was for her to send her youngest of two off to kindergarten this year and how she would love a third but her husband said no way.  I felt sick thinking about telling her that we sent our little one off to kindergarten but were probably going to get to experience it again.  Last week another friend called me and confided that his wife has had a series of miscarriages and they just found out that she has very low AMH.  He was asking advice about fertility doctors and procedures.  While I know they will be happy for us if things work out, I dread telling them while they are going through the process of fertility treatments.  It just feels so unfair.

Anyway, I have been feeling VERY guilty.  One way that guilt manifests itself is that I am having a hard time feeling joy.  Originally my joy was dampened by the fact that it seemed very unlikely to work out.  But at this point, while nothing is certain, the odds appear to be in our favor.  But I still cannot feel that joy, or, more accurately, I start to feel it and then feel really sad for the many close friends who don’t have what I have. 

We had a heart beat appointment on Monday.  160bpm—good.  And I’m 14 weeks on Thursday.  I keep telling my husband, we can talk about it like it’s real after that 20 week appointment.  Until then, I don’t want to talk about names, or make plans for childcare, or start re-acquiring things for a nursery.  But, it’s hard to entirely ignore what’s going on.  My belly is getting rounder (I am becoming an expert on dressing for work to conceal a pregnancy) and I’m spending time daydreaming about what life will be like if everything does work out.  I suppose this feeling of guilt is good in a way, it is a form of recognition of further luck and fortune, with a little bit of you-didn’t-earn-this-but-you-can-still-enjoy-it mixed in.  I hope it works out and I have the fortune of feeling guilty.