Jupiter!

I'm five months pregnant with my second child. I'm huge already--to the point that we've started calling my belly "Jupiter". My first child, who is seven, innocently says to me one day "Mummy, it looks like you have a baby in your belly AND one in your butt!" Ha ha.

It starts with a subtle expansion in my head and I become aware of falling asleep. I remind myself I am breathing. My throat tightens, heart pounds. Given permission, my body becomes wild eyed, shivering, gasping, pacing, claustrophobic, without reasoning. Usually, though, I am observing my body and talking to it: "you're fine, take a deep breath. You are relaxed and well, you are safe, keep breathing; one, two, three." Once in a great while, I resort to the self-hypnosis I learned when it was really bad.

For a while, I could count on the panic every night just as I drifted off. For a while, it worked to say "here it comes" and ride the wave of terror simply focused on the fact that it would end if I paid attention to it. It's sneaky if left to it's own devices. It overtakes the physical with force but then slides into the mental and emotional unseen, so that hours go by stuck in the hell of unfounded and ungrounded fear. The only way to tame it is to name it. "Hello, anxiety. You are grief...you are concern for someone you love, you are unmade plans, you are a need for exercise, you are a broken heart, you are the lie someone told me..." Often, I'm prompted to journal in an effort to empty my head. Then I can get back to the business of falling asleep. A whispered prayer, meditation and breath, let go, let go, let go.