u/mrs___holmes

I’m tired of living this way. I had a baby last August and about a month after she was born, I latched onto Sanfilippo syndrome and convinced myself she looks like those kids. Literally NO ONE in my life sees it but me. My daughter’s neurologist (who we see for an actual diagnosed brain abnormality) told me he’s not worried about it. The chance is like 1 in 75-250,000. There are currently 30 kids in the entire US who have it and two of them are siblings. She has a few of the facial features, but so does my husband, who she’s a carbon copy of, so those are obviously genetic features. She sleeps great and doesn’t have chronic ear infections or GI issues, which are the common early medical issues these kids have. I have no reason to be so convinced, but I still can’t fully let it go.

It comes in waves. I’ll go weeks not thinking about it and then someone will say “oh, she has such great eyebrows!” and I’ll spiral because the best known feature of these kids is thick, dark eyebrows. Or I’ll see a video of one of the kids and panic. I block them as I see them and there’s so few that I think I have them all blocked, but sometimes one I didn’t know about pops up, which adds to the panic. I’m so tired of being on this spiral that I’m almost at the point of asking her neurologist to test her for it for my peace of mind, but 1. that‘s reassurance seeking behavior and not helpful for my progress and 2. I’m so terrified it’ll be positive.

I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been to therapy and done exposures, I upped my Zoloft recently, I practice my coping mechanisms. But my brain just won’t be normal. Last night I got on a spiral and my husband pulled up the Sanfilippo website and walked me through every symptom and facial feature step by step so he could show me that she either doesn’t have it or that the ones she does are ones he also has. He doesn't know how to help me and I don’t, either. I’m just tired.

Hi all. I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl in the world last August. She is incredibly happy, smiley, sweet, and the light of my life. I absolutely adore her and I love watching my husband be an amazing father to her. I’m so happy and lucky to have her here. It’s so bittersweet to watch her get older and meet milestones, and lately I’ve found myself thinking about having another baby because I would like to experience all these firsts again. The idea that this is the only time I’ll ever watch a little human grow, change and become their own person in front of my eyes makes me sad.

But pregnancy as a whole has been so traumatic for me. My first one ended in a missed miscarriage and D&C. My pregnancy with my daughter took a year and a half and the help of a fertility clinic. I spent the first almost 20 weeks terrified she would die, too. Then, when I was finally feeling more secure, our anatomy scan revealed a brain abnormality. At first, we weren’t sure if it was fatal or not, as it could be indicative of a few different syndromes. The week we waited for our NIPT testing to come back was hell. I’ve never been so sad or so terrified. Luckily, we found out her abnormality is isolated and has a pretty good prognosis for a typical (or close to it) life, but I still spent the rest of my pregnancy so anxious that she might fall on the more severely affected end of the spectrum. I also never really shook the fear of losing her. I frequently woke up in the middle of the night panicked that she hadn't moved in a while and begging my husband to take me to L&D (thank god he was able to talk me down or we’d be drowning in ER bills still). I cried in the OB’s office at my 37 week appointment because I was so terrified of stillbirth. My pregnancy was physically very easy, other than some pelvic girdle pain, but emotionally, it was 39 weeks of hell.

So I’m torn. I think I want one more baby, and my husband definitely does, but even the thought of going through pregnancy again immediately sends my body into fight or flight mode. I saw a reel about doing kick counts the other day and almost couldn’t breathe. I don’t know if I can handle that much anxiety for that long again, and I especially am worried about how I‘d react to another loss since I’d have a toddler to care for and still be a present mom to. My husband isn’t open to adopting and I honestly go back and forth on if I am, either. So I feel like I have no good options. I either never have another baby and probably regret it, or I decide to go for it and either get my heart shattered with another loss or spend another 38-40 weeks in anxiety hell. I don’t know what to do. My baby is only 9 months old, so I have time to decide as we won’t even consider trying until she’s 18 months or so, but I don’t like the uncertainty. I wish I could make a decision.

I’m on my millionth rewatch and it just occurred to me how ridiculous it is that Lorelai and Rory have no idea how much Chilton is going to cost before she applies. I can see it with Lorelai—she‘a chaotic and does things without thinking—but Rory? She’s a child in the beginning, but even then, she’s so anal and detail oriented. There’s no way she wouldn’t have known how much it was gonna be. I know the 90s weren’t the digital world we have now, but there’s no way that they went through an entire application process and probably an interview without cost being mentioned.

I know they needed a way to get Lorelai to Emily and Richard but it so easily could’ve been “man Rory starts Chilton in 5 days and I still haven’t figured out the money cause I’ve been trying to think of anything else.”

Please know that this isn’t me trying to brag—I know that my very easy baby has nothing to do with how I’ve parented and everything to do with us winning the lottery with her temperament. But I’m feeling a weird sense of imposter syndrome as Mother’s Day approaches.

All the language around the day is “moms work so hard, moms are so tired from being everything for their kids, moms are superheroes” and I just don’t feel like any of that applies to me. I don’t really find motherhood hard. My baby has slept through the night since she was about 2 months old. She was never colicky and has never been super fussy (although she is in a phase where she screams if you leave the room lol). She‘s only been sick twice in almost 9 months. I genuinely love every minute I spend with her because I work and don’t get nearly as much time with her as I wish I did.

She is my everything and I want to give her the world, and I do my best. I coordinate all her appointments and therapies (she has a brain abnormality, so we see multiple specialists) and try to make sure she’s getting enough play time, getting introduced to new foods, restocking diapers and formula when we’re low, etc. I stay up after she goes to bed embroidering personalized clothes for her. But I just feel like the “moms are superheroes” rhetoric doesn’t apply to me because I don’t feel like I sacrifice that much for her. I work. I stopped exclusively pumping at 8 weeks. I’m getting perfect sleep, except for the rare night that she wakes up looking for her pacifier. I still have the occasional girl’s nights with my friends and my mom always wants to babysit, so my husband and I still get to do fun things together. Other moms have it so much harder and here I am cruising. I’m glad I’ve had an easy motherhood experience so far, but it’s just making me feel weird about being celebrated.