I am thirty-three weeks along in my pregnancy and everything has been textbook perfect. I have had no morning sickness ever and aside from feeling exhausted I am otherwise feeling really great. So great in fact, I would love to just keep my little baby boy right here inside me. I know that his day will come when he is ready to be born and I welcome that opportunity to meet him but this is my first pregnancy and I am terrified of delivery.

Watching TLC’s A Baby Story does not help my anxiety, instead it makes me even more nervous. By watching all of those mommies go through it one would think I could become more mentally prepared to deal with the inevitable. I watch the show every time I see that it is on despite my husbands groans and I think I may be addicted to all of their heart warming tales. But every time they go to have their baby and start squealing with pain and grimacing I get chills thinking about how I will have my turn in the stirrups soon enough.

I have reviewed the various pain med options one can get during delivery and I think an epidural is the way I am going to go. This option is the most widely used, according to a survey I saw 50 percent of all delivering mothers in the US use an epidural, 20 percent use no pain meds at all, and the rest use a variety of other options like IV pain relief. It seems like the epidural will give the most long lasting effect—taking the mother-to-be all the way through pushing while an IV can only be administered until you are seven centimeters dilated which means you are pushing out your baby and getting your episiotomy with no pain relief. Yikes!

Most first time mothers need an episiotomy and most have an average labor of eleven to twenty-four hours. So I am scared that I will be an average first timer and will have up to a whole day worth of labor to go through. The episiotomy scares me too. I know that it is routine and way better then them just letting your baby tear their way through. I know they give you an extra numbing shot before the cut and mixed with the epidural my brain tells me that I probably won’t feel a darn thing when they do it, (if they have to do it), so why am I so afraid? I hate being such a scaredy-cat over this because women have babies everyday and make it through the pain just fine. I am a very rational person and have had an appendectomy due to an appendicitis, so I have definitely known serious pain before. I guess this feels different because it is an anticipated pain that can be expected to happen right around my due date not like my appendicitis that popped up out of no where. 

I know it will all be worth going through once I get to hold my little guy. His dad, my husband, is super excited to meet his son as well as the grandparents and other family members and friends. So I feel selfish about wanting to keep him all to myself when so many others want to get to know him too.

I wonder how other mothers have had the nerves to get through their third trimester without all of this anxiety about delivering. Maybe they are just as scared as me but are able to refrain from telling everybody about it.