Ordinary Insanity

Jamie got pregnant immediately. She and her husband were delighted. “We didn’t think anything could go wrong.” Jamie pauses. “It”—the “it” being the possibility of a descent into all-consuming fear—“didn’t even register.”

What did register were the damaging effects of nitrates and the dangers of aspartame. Jamie poured all of her occupational and educational energies into the project of the uber-baby. “I was laser-focused on, like, I wasn’t going to destroy my baby by eating a turkey sandwich! I didn’t even think to worry about anything with me.”

It started somewhere in the second trimester. She began to notice herself engaging in strange behaviors, almost as if they were independent of her. She read an article about women who go in for an exam in late pregnancy only to discover that the baby’s heart is not beating, and then have to deliver the stillborn baby. Stillbirth became the terror at the center of her world. She fixated on her son’s kicks, and he never seemed to kick enough. The doctors would tell her he was fine, but she never believed them. My baby is going to be born strangled, with the cord around its neck, she thought. I’m going to give birth to a dead baby. She lay awake at night thinking this over and over, then running through the conversations she would have with doctors if and when it happened. She wondered how she would react. How she would get over it.

Jamie started going into her OB’s office several times a month, and then several times a week, just to listen to her son’s heartbeat. The office employees got to know her so well that a nurse would let her bypass the typical check-in and go straight to an exam room to listen. No one thought to pull her aside and mention anxiety as a potential problem. Nobody said, “This isn’t normal.” Sometimes they would roll their eyes, telling her, “You’re fine, sweetheart! “You have a healthy baby, a healthy pregnancy.” It was never enough. Eventually, Jamie bought herself a heartbeat monitor on Amazon in order to listen at home whenever she wanted.

At home, she was constantly collapsing in panic. She adhered to all the rules—not a drop of caffeine or a slice of lunchmeat—feeling like that should quell her anxiety. She thought if she just executed her pregnancy meticulously, perfectly, obeyed every command from the medical pantheon and every warning on