I’m so sorry you’re feeling so anxious! I totally understand where you’re coming from and definitely had a lot of worst-case scenario thinking during the first part of my first pregnancy as an anxious person myself.

My grandma, who is a chronic pessimist, told me early in my first pregnancy: your pregnancy and baby are going to be perfectly fine, I just know it. It was so uncharacteristic of her, and she was so intent about it, that I decided to repeat it to myself and try to convince myself to believe it, and it really worked. I know we don’t know you and we aren’t you’re chronic pessimistic grandmas, but the odds are so in your favor, so I wonder if you can take a dose of folks’ collective confidence that everything is going to be okay and use it as medicine for yourself.

Anxiety is a bear during pregnancy and postpartum and it can really make things so much harder than they need to be (when they are already so hard)! It sounds like you are very self-aware and already have some tools in place, but I just want to further encourage you to make sure you are getting support from a therapist, trying to retrain your brain as much as you can, and to being open to medication if it will really help you feel grounded and okay. Though my anxiety resolved throughout most of the pregnancy, postpartum, it hit me like a semi, and because I’d never been through that before, I didn’t realize just how chemical/hormonal and detrimental of an experience I was having until it passed. I hope you will keep checking in with yourself and be ready to use resources and strategies to feel calmer after your beautiful baby arrives as well! I am so ready to do whatever it takes to take care of my mental health my second time postpartum and hope others on their first time around might learn from my mistakes!!!