The Constant State of Guilt and Uncertainty

How do women do this for months and months and even years and years? To live in this constant state of anxiety, doubt, concern, and hope/dread is torturous. And I’ve been doing it for one whole week.

Every single thing I do is now, ‘Am I or aren’t I?’ If I’m painting and headily breathing in the fumes, I worry. If I have two glasses of wine at a wedding reception, I’m panicked (but the pleasant buzz helps). When I lift something heavy, when I eat rare meat or fish or something with a blurry expiration date, I think, ‘What if?’ I know it’s like a million years too early for any of these things to possibly affect anything potentially growing inside me, but it’s that first step on a slippery slope of things to come, where around every corner lurks future guilt about something I didn’t do correctly at the beginning.