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The 5 Letter Word

2011 August 2
by WWGD

Forget four letter words, it’s a five letter word that is really fucking with me: W-O-R-R-Y.

I said it to skater hubs just the other night…if I had really truly known how much worry came along with motherhood, I may have passed. Of course I was joking, I wouldn’t give up my little monsters for anything in the world, but seriously, the new level of neurotic that has taken over my life since I peed on that first stick more than four years ago is (almost) laughable.

First, I worried about being able to get pregnant. That passed quickly.

Then I worried about ectopic pregnancies, which my OB actually laughed at me for. Both times.

I panicked about all the genetic testing, screening, poking and prodding.

Fretted a little about giving birth. Then I got the drugs, and we were all good.

But then the real fears kicked in.

The first year, I basically worried every night that they would stop breathing in their sleep. Kai is only seven months old, so still in the throes of that with him.

I lived in fear of choking, but clearly not enough to get all my CPR stuff up to date.

I panic endlessly about abduction and give strangers who look at my kids dirty looks on the regular. My mind doesn’t even fully rest when they are safely tucked into their beds at night (the kids, not the strangers.) Note to self: stop watching Dateline.

Little D had a febrile seizure when she was two, so add “any sign of a fever” to my list of reasons to have a panic attack.

Every bump, bruise and belly ache sends me straight to WebMD where I have self-diagnosed our kids with leukemia, appendicitis, measles, epilepsy and more, much to my pediatrician’s delight.

And, of course, while skater hubs tolerated all this torment and continuously told me I was overreacting, these things are one in a million, etc. etc., I worried incessantly during my pregnancy with Kai about whooping cough, all the babies who were dying from it, making everyone around me get vaccinated. And what happened? My worries came true.

So now I can get worried about….worrying. And making bad things happen.

What the fuck am I going to do when they learn to drive?

One Response
  1. August 2, 2011

    I love you for this. I’m so right there. And then, of course I worry that all my worrying is going to rub off on them & make my boys train wrecks (which is, ironically, my current blog post in draft after a swimming incident where my panic scared the crap out of my 2 yo…totally unnecessarily). Now I’m obsessively pouring over Amazon reviews to figure out which book I should get about raising boys (so they don’t grow up to be paranoid train wrecks because their mom is always afraid of jumping, running, swimming, breathing, public places, etc etc etc).

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