And God spake unto Noah, I will establish my covenant with you; ... neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. ... I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. (Genesis 9: 8-17, KJV)There's been a cataclysm. God promises the people that a cataclysm like this will not happen again, and that this promise to the people will always be remembered, and every time they see a rainbow, they will know that they are remembered, and they'll remember the terrible time, and the promise that it won't happen again.
Obviously, with recurrent miscarriage, I know that losses can happen more than once, even when it seems unthinkable. That's how I felt this time last year. Pregnant for the second time, so glad we were finally pregnant again after what felt like an eternity (4 or 5 months), and I just thought there's no way this could happen again. But it did. In a totally different way; the pregnancy looked doomed from the start, despite stupid doctors and nurses refusing to acknowledge that constant spotting at 5 weeks could definitely signal a chemical pregnancy. So for me, the rainbow is less a promise, a trust that I have some kind of deal with a man who controls the universe, and more a sign of remembering and hope. And I think the story fosters that reading as well. I'll see the beautiful sign and I'll remember the terrible storm that preceded it, and I'll always remember that there is always hope after the storm. Hope for something truly beautiful, that actually could only have been created in the wake of the rain.
I'm 15 weeks pregnant today, and sporting a tiny bump that's looking less and less like a thickening. If I were Princess Kate the paparazzi would definitely be in a tizzy with speculation. My breasts are huge--I look like an actress in a Jane Austen adaptation in a corset and empire waisted dress at all times--they are popping out like on a shelf! I'm usually pretty small breasted so this is a weird new development for me (I wear a lot of scarves to cover the cleavage in my lower-cut dresses because I am just not ready for this new body). I hope I'll be able to feel my baby in the next month. I am so, so, so, so grateful and happy to have made it this far. I love my baby so much. I came across this article today that fetuses react to music as early as 16 weeks. How cool! Then I read more than just the headline and it turns out that that was only if there was a vaginal speaker. Eww. No thank you. Perhaps babies ears need to be protected from such stimulation when they're at such a tender developing stage. But still. I know later on they are able to respond to sounds outside my abdomen. I also read that after the baby's born and placed on my chest, I should talk to it right away, and MFP should talk to it too, because it will recognize my voice and his voice. And this could calm our baby down after it's had a shock coming out of my body. I had never thought of that before. So beautiful.
Last week I came across the blog of a mother who just last month lost her son to stillbirth in my city. After reading through a few posts, I also saw that she seems devout and she is very anti-choice, though of course she's filled with much more despair at her own loss right now than anger or resentment towards other women; in fact, she wrote about telling her fellow anti-choice activists to have compassion and listen, though I think she meant to the supposed grief of women who had abortion, not their gratitude for the procedure. I was thinking about how pregnancy loss, I'd guess, can reaffirm the deeply held beliefs someone already has, rather than turn everybody in the same direction on any issue. For everybody, the loss hits them in the context of their own lives, and that's just never going to have the same outcome, even if we have similar griefs.
When I saw my baby on the last ultrasound a few weeks ago, crying and shaking MFP's hand, I told the ultrasound technician that it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, seeing that baby-looking body moving and waving, even though I couldn't feel a thing and it wouldn't react at all to the poking of the tech into my abdomen. At that point I was about 12 weeks, and most abortions occur before that point (nine in ten abortions occur in the first trimester, in fact), but still, many women have abortions at or later than I was at that stage of pregnancy. They might only have just figured out they were pregnant--who's really that vigilant about her cycle when she's not on a fertility mission?--or they might only just have finally gathered up the funds and the transportation and all of the other obstacle-overcoming means (that anti-choicers have put up in their way) to have the procedure.
I did, for a moment after the scan was over, ask myself, do I really support abortion when the fetus looks like that, can move like that? To me, the experience was so incredible, so fascinating, it looked like nothing I'd ever seen. Then I remembered: but I want this pregnancy. I feel this way because I want this baby so, so much. Another woman might feel so many different things because of the context of her life. Fear, dread, panic, grief. And I remembered too, that despite what image the technology created, the baby still absolutely 100% needed me, and what if I didn't want to be needed? We were caught in a network of mutuality, and that's what the baby needs to grow: me, on board. It's wrong, to me, to grow a child by force and shame. We have to both be on board for this pregnancy, this life, both of these lives, to work.
I'm so glad I'm working to grow my rainbow. Here's to hope.
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