Meeting Dr. FeelGood

I had my first appointment with the therapist yesterday; I like her. More importantly, I trust her and think I will be well served. When Dr. Fantabulous gave me her name at the 12 week appointment, I didn't ask a thing about her, not what languages she spoke or how long she's been in practice or how Dr. Fantabulous knows of her or anything. I figured a referral from him was all I needed to know; the only other referral Dr. Fantabulous has ever made for me was Dr. L and we all know how well that worked out (oh, he recommended our pediatrician, too, now that I'm thinking about it). But the low-down is: she speaks German and English and believes it's important for the client to be able to speak their mother tongue whenever possible, so we're doing the appointments in English; she's been in practice for over 20 years; for the past ten years she has trained midwives to recognize post-partum depresssion and given them strategies for bringing it up with their patients; she lectures at hospitals and parenting classes (she works with Dr. Fantabulous in this arena); and is in the classical analytical tradition. In the past - when I sought therapy after my mom died - I worked with behavioralists and I like the behavioralist tradition of giving their patients tools to use to change thought patterns and behaviors, but in this case I think straight talk-therapy is going to be fine. She and I are in agreement that a lot of this comes down to my own status as the unwanted second child - or, at least, the second child that my mother couldn't cope with. I couldn't begin to guess if "unwanted" is a fair thing to say.

The appointment went well, except for the fact that due to serious construction at the Bahnhof (train station) all the main tram lines are torn up and it's public transportation chaos around here and I barely made it there in time. It was nice to just be able to voice my fears outloud - after all that we went through for this hard-won pregnancy it's very hard for me to admit that I sometimes have doubts and misgivings, that I'm afraid of the ways this will change our little family. I feel like I'm supposed to feel unrelenting joy all the time and the fact is I'm scared, too: scared of things changing, scared of having to balance Small Boy and a new baby, scared of having to figure it all out again just when I've really hit my stride; and a part of me is mourning the coming loss of the profound intimacy one can have with a single child. And I think all of that is probably normal, but it feels ungrateful for an IVF parent to have any ambivalence. I think having a safe and non-judgemental place to say these things out loud, to lay it all out on the table and accept it, will do me a lot of good*. And I think it's fair for me to be able to mourn what we're going to lose as well as celebrate what we're going to gain. And I think pretending that I wasn't mourning losses was weighing much too heavily on me.

I'm curious, those of you who have more than one child (particularly whose children came sequentially, since I imagine parents of multiples face a different set of gains and losses and experience them in a different way) - does any of this sound familiar? Did doubt sometimes sit next to your joy? Did you worry about how your relationship with your first-born would change? And did you feel as though an expecting parent - naturally fertile or otherwise - was expected to feel only constant perfect happiness? And where was your safe place to tell the truth if there was a truth that needed to be told?

* None of this is a secret to R but I do think a purely neutral outsider is a valuable thing to have sometimes.