Worrying is like a rocking chair...

...it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere (author unknown).

I have always been the queen of worry. Before Captain Destructo, I worried that I would never get a job, never get married, die a lonely old woman with dozens of cats, etc., etc. When we decided to start trying to get pregnant (and what a boat load of fun that was! I took so many ovulation/pregnancy tests I should have just peed on a hundred dollar bill), after a few months of trying I was convinced that I was barren and was googling adoption and IVF options.

Obviously, I did eventually get pregnant, which intensified the worrying about a million percent, especially in the first trimester. I was uber excited, so I told people I was pregnant as soon as the stick dried, then immediately realized that if something were to go wrong I'd have to tell everyone I knew. At my 8 week doctor's appointment my OB tried and failed to hear the heartbeat (and, having read about 6 months ahead in What to Expect While You're Expecting, I knew this was normal, however I hoped I would have a baby with a superhuman heart), I FREAKED out so badly that she scheduled an ultrasound (as a side note, a baby at 8 weeks gestation looks roughly like a tadpole with no legs, or a jellybean. I was like "should I act like I am emotionally touched by seeing this weird bloblike creature in my abdomen? Will the songrapher think I am heartless and call CPS pre-emptively?"). Thank God Captain Destructo was an active baby (fetus I guess). Whenever I didn't feel her move for a few hours (or seconds) I would jab around in my belly until I felt a body part, then press on that body part until it moved.

Since Captain Destructo has been born, I haven't worried so much about if she was dead or sleeping, mostly since she never slept long enough for me to have to wonder. But the littlest things freak me out-like just today I heard you're not supposed to put baby girls in a bubble bath because of the UTI risk. So I've been worrying about her poor hoo-ha all day long. And surely the child is destined for a life of ADD, since I recently heard that having the TV on "for background noise" as I did for oh, the first 3 months straight of her life, is just as bad as having your kid watch it (but she'll be a very worldly, well-dressed dummy as we mostly watched What Not to Wear). And every time we go to storytime at the library I feel like the other moms are more interactive with their kids than I am (I catch myself just sitting listening to the book), so hopefully those kids won't be in her kindergarten class. They'll be all into multiplication while Captain Destructo can't count past 5 because Mommy would only count with her during the commercials.

Come back and check on me in a few years because I'm sure I'll be writing about how worried I am about her making friends and having a prom date, and if anyone will make fun of her cankles in high school (hopefully she'll outgrow them). I think I'm going to go take a Mylanta.