The Scary Parts of Pregnancy

I am feeling a bit tired of hearing everyone talk about the joys of pregnancy.  About how I am carrying this precious gift and what a blessing it is.  I agree with all of this, but no one tells you about all of the things that can go wrong with your pregnancy too.
I have now been pricked with a needle on four separate occasions in the last 21 weeks.  The last time I "gave blood" was the day before Thanksgiving.  It was for a test that I didn't even know what it was for, but following the advice of Dr. S., I went to the lab to get another poke in the right arm.  A few days later, Dr. S.'s office called and told me that my results from the test (that I didn't know what it was for) came back slightly high.  "OK...so what does this mean?" I asked.  "Well, it just means that your results from your blood work are higher than normal."  "Yes, that part I understand," I told the lady as I am flying down the expressway.  I asked what this test was for and she said it was to determine if the baby's spinal cord was open or closed.  She also said that a genetic counselor would be contacting us about our baby having Spina Bifida.  I hung up the phone completely confused.  Did we want an open or closed spinal cord?  What is Spina Bifida?  I thought only drug users or patients with eating disorders had babies with Spina Bifida.  I immediately called Eric and burst into tears. "Something is wrong with the baby.  What do you know about Spina Bifida?"
After Googling "spina bifida", we found out that poor nutrition and genetic mutations can be the cause of Spina Bifida- neither of which I had.  Yet, for two weeks the only thing I could think about was having a child that had physical and mental disabilities.  How were we going to get a wheelchair up the stairs?  How did parents of children with Spina Bifida do it?  Could we be that strong?
The genetic counselor never contacted us, but we had to reach out to her at our ultrasound office.  "She is only in on Fridays and her last appointment is at 2:00."  Of course it is.  So instead of finishing the Polar Express movie with my 24 kindergartners on the last day before Christmas break, Eric and I braced ourselves for heartache and defeat of being terrible parents already.  Our 20 week ultrasound was included in this visit, something we should have been looking forward to, but our minds were definitely somewhere else.
We met with the genetic counselor first, who explained that our results for Spina Bifida were only slightly higher than normal and that this test usually appears as a false negative (promising), but we couldn't be sure until the ultrasound.  She then went through our family and genetic history, which all seemed very normal.  The next 20 minutes were an infomercial of trying to put fear into us and sell us on tests we neither wanted or needed.  We were done with testing.  If anything were to happen or not happen it would be in God's hands and there was nothing we could do or change.
During our ultrasound, we learned that our baby did not, in fact, have Spina Bifida or any other mutation of the spine.  Relived, elated and blessed were the feelings we were experiencing during the next 90 minutes of watching our baby roll, swim and perform a Bela Karolyi type of gymnastics.
We have decided that it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of something going wrong that is the scariest part of pregnancy.  This is our first child and we don't know what to expect.  No book, doctor or advice can prepare us for what will happen during pregnancy.  We know that we will continue to feel all the emotions of pregnancy, even the scary ones, until our little one is here.  We just want to enjoy it with a little less fear and a lot more of ignorant bliss.