Filed under: Uncategorized
It really is. Life is really, really hard. For everyone. I believe in “letting it out” and having a good bitch session about your problems… but there comes a time when you have to just suck it up and force happiness into your life in any way you can. And because I believe people can do this for themselves, and because I believe there are a lot of people out there who need just s tiny push of happiness to get them rolling… I’ve started another project. I have a lot of work to do before it gets up and running completely, and I have a lot to say about it. But for right now, let me introduce you to me new pet:
George. The third, the final, the little boy who will be forever stuck being my baby despite his eventual age. When George was born a whole cluster of things came full circle and found resolution. The last 8 months have felt, in many ways, like a new kind of life for me.. a new life that began when George came along and closed the previous chapters.
I know that some women have practically mystical experiences giving birth… the instant love, the pain that was worth it, everything gone to plan, and a quick happy recovery with a new little person they love. But that just isn’t how it worked for me. In fact, the idea of those glamourous, “perfect” births made dealing with my own violent, disruptive, complicated, painful births even harder to deal with… because I felt like there was something wrong with me. Where was my glowing halo of love? Why wasn’t I smiling all the time? Why didn’t I love my baby immediately? Was I a bad mother because I thought “wow, that whole experience totally sucked”?
I had to grieve the loss of an idea… the loss of that blissful experience I had been expecting ever since I was old enough to know I wanted babies. Philip’s birth was traumatic, painful, complicated… and resulted in a long, disgusting fight with my medical community. I had to have reconstructive surgery after the birth, and was in pain for years afterwards. The pain I was in contributed to not being able to bond properly in the beginning, and the whole things left me feeling like a big fat failure. I know in hindsight that thats rubbish… but when I was going through it nothing felt truer.
And so, I wanted my 2nd birth experience to erase the first. I wanted a good memory to erase that bad one, I wanted to experience a happy birth and to feel less alien in that experience. That, of course, didn’t happen. Henry’s birth put Philip’s to shame in the “awful” category, yet I was able to bond quicker with him so I felt calmer and saner through it because of that.
When I was pregnant with George, I knew what could happen and I expected the worst. Prepare for the worst but hope for the best… I think that is pretty good advice generally. And that is what I did. But my pregnancy with George felt so different from the beginning. So much healthier, happier… I actually caught myself enjoying being pregnant which had not happened with the other pregnancies. I received fantastic medical care throughout… and had a planned c-section 2 weeks before my due date with exactly ZERO complications through my entire pregnancy. A miracle indeed.
By someone else’s standards, George’s birth might not have looked ideal. I had a c-section that took quite a long time to perform due to adhesions and scarring from previous surgical adventures in that area. I reacted poorly to the anesthesia, and was ill throughout the procedure. I was in a lot of pain afterwards because they had to do so much more creative maneuvering due to those adhesions and scars.
But for me, it was absolute bliss. Throughout my whole pregnancy I never truly believe I’d get a real live baby at the end of it… too much experience with loss to full grasp that hope I suppose… but when I first heard him cry… oh God that was the sweetest, sweetest sound. I burst into tears, my husband kissed me, and a few surgical stitches later the 7 year long portion of my life dedicated to family planning was over. That long, long, arduous, complicated, painful journey to achieve the family that we wanted was finished. And not just finished… it was finished beautifully with a happy birth memory to wrap it all up in a tidy bow.
While on my journey to become a mother, I missed my own mother the most. And how that I am finished with that chapter I can wash my hands of it and get on with the next bit… the Parenting of the Three. Having teeny tiny George in my arms didn’t make me miss my mother in the way I did when I held teeny tiny Henry in my arms… instead he helped me to FEEL her. She was there, I was there, the circle was complete, and my true healing finally began.
And with George… we were finally home. We were living in the country where we knew we belonged, in a village we loved, with family that was to be happily involved with us. And so the long journey of finding a home was over as well. Again, all wrapped up in a sweet little George shaped bow.
The 7 years of my life spent building my family taught me so, so much. I learned that no one ever actually gets to plan a pregnancy, they only get to be lucky or unlucky because there are much stronger forces at work in family planning that the simple will of a mother. I learned that grief is an ugly, ugly thing – but also a process that can, in time, feel like a comfortable part of you rather than the thing hanging around your neck and strangling you. I learned never to ask a woman if she is pregnant unless she is clearly, CLEARLY about to pop. I learned that suffering is a part of motherhood, and that it serves a purpose. I learned to let go of big, bold expectations of what I wanted my life to look like… and instead to loosen my grip, admit an absence of control, and to just cope with whatever life decided IT wanted to be. I learned that you never stop learning how to be a parent, because as soon as you have one part figured out you are thrown into the next river of unknown situations. Also, that just because I knew what to do with one kid did not by any stretch of the imagination mean that I knew what to do with the next one.
I learned SO much about myself, about my husband, about the highs and hells of grown-up love. I learned about the indescribable love for a child – both born and unborn. I learned that absolutely everyone has an opinion about your pregnancy and parenting… and that pretty much everyone is wrong except for you because as long as you are doing your best, then you are doing just fine. I inherited a sort of tribal, collective sympathy for women and the gains and losses they incur in this lifelong battle of womanhood.
I grew up. I met my boys. I found my home. I honestly… Honestly… wouldn’t change a thing. And now I look forward into the Next Big Stage in my life with three little dudes hanging off me and my one big dude holding my hand, and oh am I happy about it.
So, so happy.
Filed under: Birth Control, Family, Parenting, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Loss, Recurrent Miscarriage
I sent my husband a text message today, one that I think should receive some kind of award, saying simply “I signed consent forms to be sterilized today, hope you don’t mind.”
Trying for a third was always on my mind after Henry, and it led me through massive research binges on surrogacy, blood disorders, and adoption. I always wanted a third and final child… not permission to keep growing my family endlessly. Then once I got pregnant with George, I wondered if that would change. If I was lucky enough to have a healthy pregnancy, would I want to keep going?
No, no, and no. And no. With some NO on top.
The torture some of us go through to build a family is nonsensical. We should be able to “just” adopt. Or “just” be happy with what we have. Or “just” give up. But we don’t, because we are driven by unseen forces that are as strong as evolution, as inexplicable as faith. There is no switch to turn off some women’s desire for family building.
I’ve learned, however, that some of us are lucky enough to reach the point where that switch turns off on its own. It is heartbreaking to try to squish the desire for children out of you, and it is heartbreaking to never have the privilege of feeling like your family is complete, of never feeling that switch turn off.
I am a lucky, lucky girl. Because I do have that privilege finally. A privilege I never thought I’d have. The privilege of completion.
If the worst happens, and George dies, then I can’t say what I’d do. But I can say what I wouldn’t do… and that is get pregnant again. Perhaps we’d follow through with our adoption route. Perhaps we’d stop. I don’t know. But what I DO know is that my body is done, and it is SO done that it has had a little sit down with my brain and my heart and they’ve all come to a mutual agreement. That the factory is closing down.
I am 34 weeks pregnant with George right now, which is the exact point when Henry was born. I am feeling monumentally healthier. I have no signs of preeclampsia or placental abruption like last time, I look healthier and feel healthier, and I am infinitely less stressed out. We scheduled a c-section today for 38 weeks, and I’ve been letting real, pure, honest hope seep into myself that This Might Just Be Okay. And wouldn’t it be nice to end on a high note? Wouldn’t I think myself the luckiest girl in the world? And isn’t that a funny thing to be thinking now… when it is SO easy for me to remember having lost 3 babies in the course of 11 months and thinking I’d never, ever, EVER have the family I wanted?
I’ve talked to my husband about this of course, but I signed the forms on my own today. And instead of sadness, I felt relief. We began trying for our first child on July 5, 2003. George will be born on July 6, 2010. Seven years of family building… of trauma and crisis and blood and surgery and loss and grief and love and sleeplessness and joy and pain …. seven years is a long time. And much like the conviction I had when I knew I wanted babies, I’m now enjoying the conviction I feel in knowing this part is done.
I know I’ll be sad, especially when I’ve got a 2 or 3 year old George and my “baby” is growing up, but sadness over an infant turning into a child is not a reason to have another one. Nor is the inevitable hormone rushes that I’ll feel. And the truth is, yes I’ll be sad. And yes I’ll get over it. Because I’ll have so much else to be happy about.
So 4 weeks from now I fully expect to welcome a big fat baby George into the world, and to simultaneously shut the factory down and simply enjoy my baby, my youngest who will always be my baby no matter how old he is.
And in these 4 weeks, I’ll be happy. And wish that I could go back in time to the woman I was 4 and 5 years ago to say that it really WILL be okay. That the pain isn’t over yet – by far – but that peace is eventual. It won’t look like what you’re expecting, but it will be peace. And you will be happy, even though that is the furthest thing from your experience right now.
That the end will surprise you, but it will be an end. And you’ll be happy with it and adjust to it just in time for everything to change again.
Filed under: Conceiving After Loss, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Recurrent Miscarriage
Let me begin with saying a really big thank you to those who have dropped by to send warm thoughts to me, they made a difference in my mood and I appreciated every one of them.
Let me also begin by saying that, so far, Small Fry is growing. I am only 4.5 weeks along so I hardly think I’m in the clear here, and in one second I’m hopeful, in the other second I’m terrified. Compared to the hcg and progesterone levels of the 4 pregnancies I have that information for… (as with my first pregnancy I was blissfully unaware such things even existed)… the numbers look good. I lost 2 of my babies early on, and SO FAR it seems as if I may have dodged the “5 week loss” bullet. However, I lost my first baby after we had already seen a heartbeat. And so I’m reserving announcements and plans until after we see the heartbeat on a scan.
I am, of course, not so naive that I think things will run smoothly after that, or that I won’t have a later miscarriage. But at some point I have to cross over that line between silence and sharing. And at some point I have to just throw my hands in the air and say “Right, let’s go” and make plans… then deal with consequences later if they come about.
In the meantime, in the times that I am hopeful, it hurts. My hope is dampened by reality. When the back of your mind knows all the evil secrets a uterus can hide, and when the back of your mind remembers the pain of the past regardless of how positive the present might be, then Hope is really just a fancy word for Cautious Anticipation.
I thought about this a lot while mom was dying. That the “hope” we had for her recovery was never really hope at all, it was a cautious anticipation and optimism that things wouldn’t suck 100%, and that maybe they’d only suck 80%. When you’ve gone through 7 years of cancer, you know better that to think the end will be rosy butterflies. Reality has settled in your heart, you don’t get to be naive. So you “hope” for the best, you might even imagine remissions or more eyars together… but really? You know better. And even if things go perfect and they never get cancer again and Voila magic happens…. you only arrived at that hope through the reality of hell. You come out scarred. And every hope in the future has a shadow of hell to it.
The same applies here. I will hope and hope and hope, but in the end hoping is just about as useful as worrying. In that neither is useful whatsoever. Cautious optimism is a good thing. Reasoned Approaches to a Beneficial Outcome are good.
But the word HOPE seems to unfettered, to idealistic, to blossomy and fruitful, too perfect, too sweet, too naive, too fluffy, too blind, too unicorny, too positive in the face of an ugly reality.
I hate the word. I’ve hoped for too many things and been kicked in the face. I’m a really genuinely optimistic person however, and so I guess the moral of this story is that I like to nitpick at words and I’m a hypocrite. I dont mind that, I could be a lot worse things. 
So for now I choose Cautious Optimism, until a set of bloodwork on Friday and/or a scan 2 weeks from now tells me otherwise.
Filed under: Conceiving After Loss, Family, Grief, HELLP syndrome, January, Miscarriage, Mom, Preeclampsia, Preemies, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Loss, Recurrent Miscarriage, TTC
Part of the bitter pile of pills you have to swallow when your path to parenthood gets ugly… whether that is because of infertility, pregnancy loss, infant loss, disability, or whatever… is that you lose the JOY of it all.
You get mad at women who are lucky enough to be naive, to announce pregnancies in their 4th week, to assume the best because they don’t know any different. You get mad at women who say they “planned” it a certain way, when really they just got lucky that their plan worked. You had a plan too, you know. You get mad at women who complain about being pregnant, who don’t know the pain of a premature birth and hope for an early arrival to spare some discomfort.
You just get mad. A lot.And you lose the joy of naivete. The bliss of being unaware how ugly pregnancy and childbirth can get.
You also lose the joy of your own family “planning”. Sex becomes a chore, romance is a joke, and you are ruled by injections, hcg results, body temperatures, monitors, scans, worry, pain, fear, and anxiety. Pregnant women make you cry, and then even if you do get pregnant and have a successful birth, you feel guilty because now you know about the other side of things, now you know other women are looking at YOU and hating YOU now.
Joy is removed from decision making, particularly the decision to have another child after a bad experience. For the last 2.5 years I’ve been in the neck-bending roller coaster of DO WE DON’T WE, that limbo madness in which every woman I see is pregnant and every baby I see makes my abdomen vibrate. It is also a limbo filled with cold reality, with Head vs Heart, with medical information, with insane biological desires.
My 1st pregnancy was preeclamptic, though complications didn’t develop until I was on the delivery table and so, really, it wasn’t a big deal except that it made the next pregnancy a higher risk. But then I had 3 miscarriages. My 5th pregnancy, which resulted in my 2nd son, was preeclamptic as well… but ti developed into HELLP syndrome. I nearly died, Henry nearly died, and a lot of badness ensued. Then after many investigations we found that I had a rare clotting disorder. And then after even more investigations we found that oh wait… no I don’t.
So we are left wondering if our desire for a 3rd and final child is worth the risk, after HELLP. And we’ve decided that yes, yes it is.And here is the timeline of events that will help make this decision make more sense:
Thursday January 4th, we moved into a new home. No friends, no family nearby, and a brand new OB.
Friday, January 5th I meet the OB for the first time.
Saturday, January 6th I am called to say I have protein in my urine.
Sunday, January 8th I get the call that my mother is dying.
Monday, January 9th I get OB permission to travel to her deathbed.
Wednesday, January 10th I say my final goodbye at her side.
Thursday, January 11th she dies.
Tuesday, January 23 I finally return home after taking care of funeral and dad.
Wednesday, January 24 My husband leaves for a business trip, I have my 2nd OB appointment.
Thursday, January 25 I check myself into the hospital, with my 2 year old, due to bleeding. My husband & father arrive 8 hours later to take my 2 year old from me.
Friday, January 26 I develop HELLP and Henry is born 6 weeks early.
January is a painful, painful time for me. Aside from that, we are going on the assumption here that my preeclampsia may not have developed into HELLP had it not been for my mother dying when she did. Upon first learning about protein in my urine, I should have been resting and getting frequent checks. Instead I was traveling and screaming and grieving and on my feet all day. I never went to the doctor once. And by the time I returned home, I was already in preterm labor and not knowing it.
So here we are in the joyless decision to try for another one. Assuming, along with my hematologist and OB, that it is a manageable risk as far as my health is concerned. Assuming that if it ended in miscarriage that it wouldn’t destroy my soul.
And when I think of it happening, when I think of those 2 pink lines… I feel just as much fear as I do hope. We can be happy with our family as it is, but we are taking what sometimes feels like the greedy step towards Our Ideal, which is three. I learned very early into this enterprise that it isn’t fair to judge a woman by what she wants her family to look like. That just because you have a child already doesn’t mean you aren’t “allowed” to want more. And yet, that joyless feeling of selfishness tags along no matter how you shake it. Just another benefit of an ugly path to motherhood.
On it goes, on and on, and we shall see what tricks my body has up its sleeve this time. Hopefully, regardless of what happens, the joy will peek out enough to keep me sane. Hopefully the joy of parenthood eventually overshadows this ugliness of Family Planning gone strange.
Filed under: Grief, HELLP syndrome, Miscarriage, Preeclampsia, Preemies, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Loss, Recurrent Miscarriage
Tomorrow, October 15th, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Rembrance Day, and you can read more about it here: http://www.october15th.com/. So tonight I am remembering the three little babies I lost through miscarriage, and the journeys around them.
My first pregnancy began in July of 2003 and resulted in my son Philip. The pregnancy was, in hindsight, pretty uncomplicated except for mild preeclampsia which presented itself partially in the last month, and not fully until delivery.
In June of 2005, over my birthday weekend, I miscarried my first child. We had named the baby Coffee Bean in utero, and Coffee Bean’s loss was a shock to me. Having already had a child, I guess most of my brain and heart figured I was good to go, not at risk, and it never really occurred to me that I could have a miscarriage. Coffee bean had a lovely little heart beat that I got to see one time before they started dying. I had a D&C a few weeks later because my body was not “letting go” and I wasn’t bleeding, so we went to the hospital to have Coffee Bean taken out. As long as I live I will never forget that “confirmation” ultrasound in the hospital. The lack of heartbeat, that silence in my womb, that utterly despairing lack of noise.
In October of 2005, four months later, I miscarried my second child. We had named the baby Noodle, and after another D&C – (done partially for my body’s refusal to bleed itself, partially because my husband was out of town and I wanted him to be with me for the event, and partially because I wanted testing done) -I found out that Noodle had been a boy. That news devastated me, as I already knew how wonderful boys were to raise.
At this point, we didn’t know what to do. I wanted a 2nd baby desperately, but out of 3 pregnancies I had only 1 child. I began researching secondary infertility, recurrent miscarriages, and everything else under the sun… but was still determined to try again.
However… on that day in October of 2005 when I had to call my mother to tell her I had lost another baby, she was using that same telephone conversation to tell me that her terminal cancer had returned. I needed to wait a little while to try for another baby, because losing another would feel like my heart’s permanent death.
Yet in April 2006, six month later, I was miscarrying my third child. We had named the baby Noodle. I had a third D&C with Noodle, for the exact same reasons. I put it off for a while, trying to get friends and family to stay with me so I had someone with me when I began bleeding out, but it never happened. And my husband was travelling 4-5 days a week, I didn’t want to do it by myself. So a third baby died, with a third surgery to boot.
At that point we were going to give up. The emotional toll of the losses was fracturing our marriage. We could not get along. My husband had no idea what to do with me, and I had no idea what to do with myself either. A millions feelings were felt simultaneously. Grief, depression, guilt for “wanting more”, confusion over being technically fertile but also unable to carry more children, hatred, pain, everything. I began researching adoption and surrogacy.
But then, in July of 2006, we got pregnant again. Not on purpose, but with the accidental aid of a lot of alcohol. And on July 4th, 2006 we took a positive pregnancy test and named the baby Rocket, since we found out on the 4th of July.
The pregnancy was fraught, including an MRI because my headaches were so horrendous. I was developing preeclampsia symptoms earlier this time. And, when I when 7 months pregnant my mom died. 2 weeks later I developed HELLP syndrome and Henry was born prematurely and miraculously. That time of my life, that worst January ever, I will talk about later.
Henry was a miracle many times over. And for a long time after his birth I believed I couldn’t have more children. After a battery of tests and consultations, we found out I can. I’d be high-risk, but we believe – for reasons I’ll talk about in a different post – that it would be manageable this time. And yet even still… I think of those miscarriages. Those lost babies. And I wonder if my heart could take the risk of another loss.
I still think about them, and carry the honor of being the only person in the world who really misses them and loves them. My husband cared for me, but his body wasn’t involved. It is so much different to be the carrier, to be the one carrying a dying child around, to be the faulty vessel. Their due dates were so fucking hard to get through. And I still write them down every year on my calendar. The sadness has faded, but the memory has not. I’ve honored Coffee bean by naming my shop after him/her.I have plans to honor all three of them with a jewelry design I’ve seen… but realistically I am waiting until I know for sure that I’m done having children before that. I don’t want a memorial… only to have to add to it later.
And so here we are, several years later, wondering if our hearts are strong enough now to take the risk on again. And, again, I suppose that is the subject of another post.
Coffee Bean, Carbon, and Noodle: I remember you. I loved you, and I still do. And I’m still so, so sorry.
