48 hours until I officially become a mother
Sitting With the Deep-Rooted Fear of Not Being in Control
The fear never leaves. We just learn how to walk with it.
Two more days until my scheduled c-section.
And unlike my friends and family, I’m terrified instead of excited.
Perhaps I’m a pessimist by nature. While other moms-to-be are browsing adorable starfish outfits and imagining their baby in them, the only thing in my mind is a list of questions. What if she has some developmental disease? What if she gets sick after she’s out? How is she going to change my husband’s and my life? Do I still have a life after she’s out?
There’s just so much unknown — and it only compounds from Day 1.
I still remember the anxiety that plagued my mind every time I sat in the clinic, waiting to be tested. And there are a lot of tests for pregnant women. The blood test, the preeclampsia test, the non-invasive prenatal test, the glucose challenge test, the group B Strep test, and so on. Just like with any other test I’ve had in my life, I wanted to ace it. The problem is — these aren’t tests you can study for. I can’t memorize a book and watch my preeclampsia risk drop from high to low. And my dad is diabetic, so the odds aren’t exactly in my favor either.
But one by one, despite my smoker past and my diabetic genes, I “aced” them. The anxiety never cleared, though. When it was quiet at night, I’d wonder if she was still alive and well, until I felt a kick or a hiccup. Then the line of questioning would start again the next day.
Fast forward to now. Two more days until I meet her. You’d think the anxiety should be lowering, since the uncertainty is almost over. It’s not. It’s getting worse — because now it’s time to face the unknowns that even the comprehensive screening tests couldn’t cover. I won’t know if she has a developmental disease until much later. And even if she arrives healthy, what’s she going to catch as she grows? What if it’s deadly? What if it’s not deadly but it changes her life?
And then it dawns on me. This line of questioning is never going to stop. Adulthood won’t end it — it’ll just change the questions. Can she take care of herself, mentally and financially? Will there even be jobs in twenty years, the way people are talking about AI?
So yeah, I’m terrified.
But — however paralyzing and tormenting it is, I am aware that I have no choice but to make peace with this fear. And if I think about it, this is not a newfound anxiety unique to pregnancy. This anxiousness over uncertainty is just a reflection of our inability to control our lives, and it permeates every aspect of it. The friend who did everything right in their career and still got laid off. The couple who loved each other and still ended the marriage. The person who took every supplement, ran every morning, and still got the diagnosis. You can create the best conditions, pour your heart and soul into something, and still not get the outcome you wanted — because the result depends on far too many factors that, for the sake of simplicity, we call “luck.”
This certainly doesn’t sit well with us. Humans have been trying to engineer certainty since the dawn of time. We may have started with reading entrails, but over time, the methods got better — oracles became science, prayer became medicine, hoping became optimization. We’ve gotten to a point where we can terraform earth, manipulate weather, and to a certain extent, put a stop to death. It almost seems like we can control anything we want as long as we put our mind to it — that there’s no such thing as vague and elusive as “luck” anymore.
But that’s not true, even though we really want it to be. There is a hard limit to the extent of our control. For example, we can’t control how the environment changes — earthquakes still happen, viruses still mutate, droughts still come. We can’t control how the people around us behave — if we could, there would be no bullies whatsoever. We can’t even control how our own body changes over time — we still age, and our functions still decline, despite our wishes and our technology.
It’s about time we accept this. Just because we wish to guarantee the best outcome for ourselves doesn’t mean we can — there’s just so much that is beyond our control.
Ugh, I know this is very hard to stomach. And this is why we have a lot of “anaesthesia“ along the way. For starters, we have religions to tell us “God has a plan” or “the universe has a plan.” You’re an atheist? No problem — hear it from philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, who encourages us to embrace adversity because it helps us grow. Too heavy? Perhaps you can turn to pop culture, just like how Kelly Clarkson puts it — “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” There are countless forms of “anaesthesia”, all created to help us sit with the fear of having no control.
Of course, if they don’t resonate, you can always buy different types of products and services that “claim” to put the odds in your favor. It doesn’t matter if the science is shaky — it’s not the science we’re after, it’s the consolation, the act of doing something to mitigate against the odds. This is what the multi-billion-dollar industries such as supplements and fortune telling are about, isn’t it?
I understand the need and the urge to seek comfort, to suppress or resolve our fear. But the problem is, each one of these consolations smuggles control back in through the side door. If everything happens for a reason, then “someone” is choosing the reasons, and assuming that “someone” is benevolent, the comfort is that this is just a temporary setback in a larger plan. If adversity makes you stronger, then the bad thing wasn’t really bad, it was just a lesson, and lessons are tolerable in a way that pointless suffering isn’t because eventually you will be able to wrestle control back once you’ve gained strength.
But in reality, none of this is quite true. Bad things can just happen with no particular purpose. You get sick because you catch a virus out of nowhere. You don’t get a decent salary increment despite your hard work because of a lack of budget. Your loved one leaves because they have a change of heart. To tell us there’s a plan or a lesson behind all of it seems to flip the logic the other way around. First of all, we aren’t the center of the universe - things don’t happen for us, they just do. And secondly, our growth isn’t why we suffered — it’s just what we managed to salvage from a bad outcome.
So going back to the pregnancy. Yes, I’m terrified, but I also know there’s nothing I can do except to sit with this fear. And instead of letting it paralyze me, I’ve decided that a better angle is to use this fear and this realization to keep me cautious and humble. I don’t know what viruses she’s going to catch, but I will try my best to pass on my immunity to her through breastfeeding and hope that offers her enough protection. I don’t know if she’s going to live a good and stable life, but I will do my best to offer her the resources to develop her skills. She may not choose to walk the easiest path, but I can share with her my experiences and let her make her own judgment — perhaps build her a safety net to fall back on, if that’s permissible.
So the lesson isn’t really to make the fear go away. It’s to make use of the fear to prepare and to mitigate, without going paranoid and trying to cover all the bases — because you simply can’t. Don’t let the fear paralyze you or drive you into a frenzy. But don’t try to numb yourself either, or lie to yourself about how powerless we can sometimes be.
Two more days. I’m still terrified. But I’m also packing a bag, I’ve prepared her bed, and I’ve read more about newborn care than I probably needed to. The fear didn’t go anywhere. It just got useful.