So sad, and no one to call. What's the news? The same thing is true that was true yesterday, and that has been true for the vast majority of my life. I'm not pregnant. The progesterone I started taking this month tricked me back into hoping--the side effects mimic the signs of pregnancy, right down to keeping my period at bay--even though I'd sworn off hope after I had my second miscarriage in six months last fall. I've been learning to accept and cherish my life as it is. My soft, sweet dog. My partner's kind eyes and smile. Our shared laughter over coffee; dancing, when we have the heart too. I think of the other couples we've met on this journey--different kinds of pregnancy losses, all heartbreaking--and I know we are not alone. It helps me feel less resentful when I know I'm not alone in finding the sight of a small, wiggling child in tow behind a parent simultaneously devastating, angering, and unbelievably wondrous. I used to love admiring children. Now encountering them is like staring at the sun. I'm blinded by my own pain, grief, envy, shame.
Everybody's infertility story is unique--like Tolstoy wrote, happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way. Well if that's true than every coupling that can't even be a family must be radically distinctive. I've always wanted children, though I've wanted other things too, and thanks to good luck and some bravery and work on my part I've gotten some of those other things. I blame myself sometimes, or really worry that others will blame me for my miscarriages by saying I focused on the wrong goals, like I can only have one or the other. I knew I didn't want to be only a mom in my life as a social role, but neither did I want to be only not a mom. Mostly what hurts though is how much it's come to mean to me to love and raise a child. I've learned a thing or two about what a child needs and what I didn't get; which is to say, I've learned a thing or two about love. How much I want to give that love to my child, to share in that intimate joy. I loved my babies during my short, debilitating pregnancies last year, much of which was spent trying for an unusually long time to get unpregnant. Those two brief interludes were the happiest, most hopeful stretches I've had in a long, long, time. I had already been experiencing a lot of loss, a lot of grief, and I felt shocked, taken aback, by how quickly my planned pregnancy became the possibility that mattered most to me in my life. I had no idea how much it would mean, how much hope I'd feel, even in the face of what I thought was the worst of my despair. And then--you know the story, "I have bad news, there's no heartbeat"--and complications, and then after a few horrible months, a new hope, then "I'm sure it'll be fine, we get calls like this from women every day"--and then it wasn't fine; and then emergency surgery and a jerk surgery resident, and a long journey back to normal, and here we are. Just me and my partner and my dog know the story--the supplements, the acupuncture, the trying not to think about it, the testing, the careful effort not to pretend that it's really in my control anyway, so it's okay not to wear myself out. The way I miss caffeine and an occasional Manhattan; the temp-taking, the yoga, the vigorous shaking of my head at friends who gently encourage me to let go and "see what happens," the surveillance of my most intimate self. I mean who really wants to hear all about this anyway? Do you? I used to read a lot of mommy blogs for some reason; now I'm writing an infertility blog. Go figure.
