Giving Up

I gave up.  I threw in the towel close to a year ago.  I had been trying for something like four years to have a rainbow baby.  I even prayed about giving up.  I gave away everything, all the baby stuff.  13 miscarriages in a row, including a prior miscarriage, 15 baby losses in a row.  I knew my body wouldn't carry another baby.  I figured if I was trying, truly trying, for a baby for so long, there was no way my rainbow could happen.

A few days ago, I nearly fell down with vertigo.  I never get vertigo except when I'm pregnant.  Sure enough, we passed the test I'd been working so hard to pass for so long.  It's not that we weren't ever getting pregnant ... just that in spite of careful trying, it was getting rarer and rarer to the point that it didn't seem possible anymore.  And here we are.  I don't know which I'm more scared of...that we lose the pregnancy again, as usual, or that we keep it for longer than usual then go through yet another painful later miscarriage or baby loss [a very real probability with the antibody I have] or that I hold the baby then lose it like I did with Alli.  I think it's the last.  No, it's definitely the last.

There's nothing I want more than a baby and nothing that terrifies me more.  From my experience, there is a very very fine line between a live baby and a dead one.  I prayed for this before.  Now, with my neatly ordered existence and my thinking moved beyond this possibility, I feel lost, confused.  A baby would be a marvelous blessing.  A live baby.  But I have a hard time hoping, even a little bit, that this double line on the pregnancy test can translate into a live child for me.  For most people, pregnancy means you're expecting.  I'm only expecting more loss, more pain.  More blood.  I keep telling myself I'm fine, that whatever happens, I'll be fine.  But I'm not fine.  I'm terrified.  Between my consistent and unexplained pattern of early loss to my antibody that is likely to kill to a fragile baby facing a world full of dangers, I have a hard time seeing the path between me and a child old enough to be less fragile.  Even my older kids scare me when they go out into the world because I still envision the many ways I could lose them.  I used to see myself as a Disney princess.  Now I'm Dory because I can scarcely remember my own name thanks to the symptom of mourning, forgetfulness, and I'm Marlin because everything looks like a danger to the babies I have left.  I want to see this through the eyes of faith.  But I understand too well "but if not faith."  I want this baby to live, but if not, I will know it is for my good.  I don't know that I can endure any more loss.  Please, Father, help me survive this, however it works out.  

Healing in Fiction

This week, I read a book by Rachel Ann Nunes: Ariana The Making of a Queen.  It was a sweet LDS romance novel that reminded me somewhat of my own.  It was recommended to me by a friend because of the resemblance.  It's clearly a first book.  I see some of the missteps I read about in novice writers like excess of adverbs and flashbacks and an ending that is too perfect to be very believable.  But it has a power that I like in its telling of tragedy.  Spoiler alert:  when the main character's baby dies, I feel it.  I know how loss feels, especially loss of a baby that one has held near to her heart as the center of her existence for the first several months of life.  There's a potency and power that gives the reader a sense that the writer understands such loss.  I wept for Ariana's pain.  It was a therapeutic kind of thing, like what I want to do with my writing.

So many writers feature a miscarriage or a child loss as something bad or painful but pretty much gloss over the experience.  It's like they're afraid an audience can't handle the pain or don't want to go there.  But without showing the depth of agony, the author is betraying the people who have lost like that.  They're showing loss as less cataclysmic and life-shaking than it really is.  While reading about her loss, I felt I could weep about mine without necessarily reliving it.  This is the kind of therapy I think comes from reading fiction that mirrors one's own sadness and trauma.  For those who have lost and can handle reading stories about other's loss, I highly recommend it.

Empathy

One of the things trauma and loss gives one is empathy.  Those who have not gone through serious, life-changing loss can sympathize, can reach out, can truly care.  But to really empathize, one really has to have been there.

I went to hear a presentation given by a woman whose child was taken hostage--along with the entire school--by a man and his wife just over thirty years ago in Cokeville, Wyoming.  This story was recently retold through the movie "Cokeville Miracle," which I highly recommend.  This is trauma.  After this mother presented her story of trauma as she faced the very real probability of losing her three children who were in that school, I went up to her and gave her empathy.  I did not go through the same situation, but I did go through trauma that threatened my family and/or members of my family.  We both had experiences of miracles involving angels protecting the family.  There was a time I would have found her story interesting.  Now, I see her story as a deeply personal one, something with which I could connect on multiple levels.

I'm not saying that most people want to suffer trauma and loss.  But after I heard her story, and she heard mine, we left as sisters in trauma.  We made an empathy connection I could have had with her no other way than through experience.  After moments like that, I feel thankful not as much for the trauma and loss itself but for the growth I've undergone as a consequence of life experience that allows me the empathy I may otherwise lack.  Loss is hard but the consequences and results aren't always bad.

One of those Days

I thought I was over baby jealousy.  I told myself I was, anyway.  Most days, I'm fine that we've given up on trying to get pregnant after 14 miscarriages and a baby loss.  I usually don't have a problem being surrounded by pregnant ladies or little babies.  At least, anymore.  Right after I lost my baby, all of that was really hard.  Usually, I'm fine.  I'm grateful for the two I can hold now and for my angels I will hold one day.

But today was a little harder than most.  A friend who had a stillbirth recently seems to be successfully pregnant again.  Another friend is nervous about the twins she's expecting.  It seems so effortless for some people.  I keep telling myself this is the way it is, and I've learned to accept it.  But on days like today, I can't help but feel a little hurt.  I can't help but wonder what I'm doing wrong as a parent that I wasn't so blessed.  I know this is not a great way to think about it, that some really wonderful people don't have even one they can hold.  But all the logic in the world doesn't still those frustrating little thoughts and the emotional pain of all I've lost and what I won't get anytime soon.  Most days, I'm thankful for all with which I've been blessed.  But we all have our days when what we don't have weighs heavy on us.  Sigh.  

Family Trips

I like family trips.  I know my angels come with me.  They're never so close as when we go together on memory-building adventures.  I don't visit Alli's grave often because I know she only goes there to be with us.  She can just as easily be with us anywhere.  But I know I can invite her and the others along on trips in prayer.  I pray that my angels be allowed to come as we trek through Yellowstone or the Tetons or even just on local campouts.  

I know I have my own private army of guardian angels.  We've tried their protective power out a few times with problems and minor accidents with which we've dealt.  I know they are attuned to our wants and desires.  My little girl asks for a pet in prayer, and my angels are there to grant her wish with as much detail as they can manage.  But there's really no need for Alli or the others to be with us all the time.  I can, however, know they will be there when I invite them, when there's need or true and sincere desire.  They travel with us.  I love days in which I know they're there.  I'd travel every day of the year if I could, just to create memories and bond with those we can see and those we can't.