My Sadistic Stork

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about my hopes and fears with this new pregnancy.  Well, the inevitable happened.  Blood.  I think I have an unknown medical condition--possibly a second antibody--that makes it impossible for me to carry a baby.  7 or 8 years ago, before my angel Alli was born, I had my first miscarriage.  It was traumatic.  We made it to ten weeks then went in to be told those dreaded words, "There is no heartbeat."  I don't think I had before then heard a more traumatic phrase.

Then Alli came and four months later, died in an accident.  She was a miracle, unaffected by the Kell antibody that could easily have killed her.  We held her for four precious months, then she was gone.  I learned there is a more traumatic phrase than the first, and that is, "We couldn't revive her."  It turns out losing a baby who had become the center of your world is even more agonizing than losing the dream of a baby you had not yet held.  At least, for me, it was.

Then I started a string of miscarriages. One or two made it as far as eight weeks.  Most were gone by week five.  One required a D&C.  For one, I took morning after pills to avoid the D&C.  I would never do that again.  I nearly bled to death.  The rest flushed on their own.  There were 13 over the course of our four years of trying, all at varying stages and all before the end of the first trimester.

So we decided we were done.  We weren't going to try again.  We had been taking careful aim with all of our research and, over the course of the last year of trying, had succeeded twice.  Only to have blood twice more.  After some prayer, we decided to turn it all over to the Lord.  We weren't going to try again.  And if a year of careful trying resulted in so little success, not trying would probably result in none, right?  Wrong.

Here we are, a year later.  I thought if I turned it over to the Lord, and pregnancy happened, maybe it was Time.  Maybe whatever had taken the other 13 [or 14 if you count the one before Alli] wouldn't affect this one.  My little girl even felt a bond with the baby [or babies, as she felt].  She sensed angels there.  Turns out it must have been the one angel in the womb and perhaps my Angel Alli, there to be with me when the inevitable struck.  Blood again.  At first, I thought it was just a UTI.  But after an ultrasound revealed the fetus was just too small to be a full seven and a half weeks, I knew I had another angel.  I cried all day and most of the next, in tandem with the blood. And now, not only are we going to NOT try, we're going to ANTI-try, as in avoid any possibility.  I just can't take it.  I have lost 16 babies in a row, more than most woman can imagine losing.  I'm done.  It hurts too much.  Every time.

I am thankful for my fleet of angels.  I know they're with me when things get rough, witness my little girls feelings.  I know I'll see them and hold them when the Lord comes again.  But in the meantime, my house feels so silent and empty.  My arms feel emptier still.  I love that the Lord sent me two I could hold before the dam arose, one of each.  I just have to cling to that faith and that gratitude when the tears start to fall again.

9-11: Others' Trauma

As others are doing, my family is commemorating the anniversary of the terrorist acts of 9-11.  Having been through loss and trauma myself, I hear these stories with a much more personal and empathetic feeling than I ever did before my own loss.  I went to school in New York State, though, to my knowledge, I didn't know anyone in the building.  However, for me, it was a personal event, more than just the death of just under 3000 people.  It's more than a number.  It's not just that I went to that plaza years before the towers went down or that I saw it when they were still clearing away the rubble from ground zero.  It's also not just that I know a lot of people who live in New York and did not know right away that they had all escaped the events of that day.

For me, it's a day that means loss for so many.  It's a day during which mothers lost their children and children lost their parents.  My heart aches for those who went through the experience of going to work like any other day and being scarred for life or lost.  My heart also aches for those who said goodbye to their loved ones for the last time on that day.

I don't think anyone who was not there can imagine what it was like.  However, many of us know what it is to lose loved ones.  We can all feel the pain, on some level, of those hurt by that day.  We can all take a moment and mourn with those who still mourn, comfort those who need comfort.  For just that day, we can get beyond the differences that separate the US and find common ground in a time of healing.

12th Anniversary

Today is my 12th wedding anniversary.  12 years ago today, my husband and I got married.  I look at pictures of myself then, before 15 child losses in a row, including the loss of my sweet Alli, before the legal complications, before stress and worry filled my 40-year-old face with worry lines.  I see my smile then: how innocent, how carefree, how easy that smile seemed.  I miss that easy way I saw the world, the "it can't happen to me" philosophy I had.  I did not know I would face pregnancies that would be off-the-charts with their risk, including that vicious Kell antibody, a.k.a. the killer antibody that stands in the way of any baby that makes it past first term.

I wonder if I had known then, 12 years ago, what I would face if I would still have moved forward as I have.  I know I would have done some things differently.  But would I have chosen differently when it came to marrying my husband?  I don't think so.  But I think my smile would have been a lot less easy or carefree.  I think it's probably a good thing that we don't know everything that's coming.  Sometimes, we'd rather just not know.  But I know I made the right choice 12 years ago, even with the trials we've been through.  I prayed about it.  My husband prayed about it.  We both knew without a doubt it was right.  And I wouldn't trade my live children for anything.  Sometimes, I just miss my easy smile.  I miss the self I was before I knew hell could happen to me, too.