Dealing with stress the Swissmiss way

I'm feeling better about Friday's appointment. I over-reacted to the news, especially about the placenta, which is really not a big deal. That's what I do: I over-react, though generally for a short period of time. It's my stress coping mechanism: take a piece of news that could perfectly well be harmless and instead embrace the worst case scenario. That way I get the major worry out of the way up front. Once I get out of worst-case scenario land (a visit of two or three days ususally does it) I find I can face the facts as they are much more reasonably. Skipping over the harmless and going straight to worry level DEF-CON 1 also seems to keep me from living for weeks with low levels of white noise worry in the background.

I seem to respond better (or at least less badly) to a whopping dose of stress for a short period of time than to longer exposure to reduced stress, probably because my number one physical response to stress is insomnia. I do badly after a few days of four-hour nights. I am without a doubt the most unpleasant person on earth after a week of them. (Seriously. Ask R. And Small Boy. They'll agree whole-heartedly.) I had a housemate once who could go for months and months on five hours of sleep a night; she was just one of those people. I would love to be one of those people. I could live a whole extra lifetime if I were one of those people but I'm not. I am textbook non-functional on a lack of proper sleep. Because stress equals insomnia and for me insomnia equals living death, it's best to just freak completely out and get it out of my system.

Which I seem to have done. Get the major worry out of my system, I mean. I do not have preeclampsia. I had one errant urine dip. Dr. Fantabulous would never have sent me on my way without an observation plan if he had any reason to believe I needed one. And sure, all sorts of things can spring up very fast in a pregnancy but I could also get hit by a bus this afternoon, couldn't I? And yet I manage to live my life believing I won't. It's the same faith I wrote about here; or perhaps it is not faith but a willful naivete. But it's how I get through the day. I think it's how most people get through the day. We know in our heads all the horrible lightning bolts that could strike us but most of us in our hearts don't really believe that they will. Of course preeclampsia could strike me, but I don't honestly believe that it will. Even though I know these things happen to ordinary people - people do get preeclampsia, after all, people do lose babies and pregnanices do go south - to people like me who probably, like me, never believed that particular lightning bolt would strike, I chose to believe it's not going to happen to me.

And if it does, I'll do what any good daughter of a US Marine would do: improvise, adapt and overcome. But until then I'm done borrowing trouble.