My Last Best Year: Recurrent Miscarriage

Two days after I posted My Last Best Year’s initial blog, I had a positive pregnancy test.  Glory!  The raw truth is that conception has not been our primary burden, but it had been a while since I had seen that plus sign and the joy was overwhelming.  I Sarah-laughed at the irony of it all, receiving what joy I could; bracing myself all at the same time. 

I have been pregnant before.  Twice.  Now three times.  I am familiar with the first trimester and all the joy and barfiness it brings.  I am also painfully familiar with a burden it brings…oh, I weep as I write…the fear and fragility that it brings…I weep and I realize even more…the loss that it has brought.  This is not as it was meant to be.  Lets do away with that platitude.  (In case you missed it, “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”)

This is not as it was meant to be.  We knew our babies were at a high miscarriage risk since the loss of our second one a few years ago. Yes – we know that we have a balance translocation (chromosomal) issue.  We know it is an “uncommon” translocation and therefore the probability of a “live birth” has to be drawn from family history.  We know each of our babies has a 50/50ish shot of making it past the first trimester.  And we know that none of ours has.  This is not as it was meant to be. 

For the last few months I have been doing life and trying to keep from tossing my cookies because I, in fact, was pregnant.  And today, I am, in fact, not.  What terrible news.  But there is a glimmer of hope: I watched one less episode of Friday Night Lights yesterday than I did the day before.  (Thank GOD for Netflix).  I went to the gym today.  I am increasing my hours at work day by day.  My laughter is as spontaneous as my tears.  And I feel Faithfulness rising up like fruit from a tree. 

We lost a baby.  Our third.  And for now, even with all the problem-solving that is available to me, I am grieving – sheltered and as God allows.  Strangely thankful amidst the anger and certainty swimming in a sea of doubt.

My Last Best Year: A Strange Thankfulness

I have a strange thankfulness recently as I connect with other women that experience infertility.

Before I lodge that gratefulness though, let me remind us that not all infertility is alike.  Bearing life is a fragile, miraculous, delicate process; the "reasons" can be countless, and many are mysterious.  And even if some of us are alike in technical terms, each of us has our own story with this.  In such a place of vulnerability, honoring each person is key.

There are strings that lace us together though, and one is commonly this: feeling like our bodies have betrayed us.  For many women, this is the first experience of their body not doing what it is supposed to do.  Yes, what it was designed to do.

And here is where a strange thankfulness arises in me, quiet and sure.   The battle of body betrayal was fought in my 20s.  Deep within me, even as I walk steps each day, I am acutely aware that this body's function is a fragile, precious gift.  I can steward it, I can honor it, but I cannot control it.

And so, even with our own brand of infertility, I have at least this: a knowledge that this life, literally - this body's life, is not my own.  And neither would be one that I am to mother.  Freedom.

My Last Best Year: Deeply Personal Very Public Information

Today I turn 34.  Ever since my health went haywire at 25, I have welcomed each birthday as a gift; thankful for more time to be with people and live more fully.  More time to give, love, and heal.  I have truly celebrated aging.

That is, until sometime in the last year or so.

Although I have not made a public announcement of our desire to have children, some things are apparent: we are in our mid-30s, happily married for 5+ years, financially stable, in good health, we welcome children in our home and lives…so…”Do you have kids?”  Family building is such a deeply personal affair, yet so very public.  The answer, plain-as-day, is no.  So maybe this isn’t an announcement after all. 

We have a deeply personal story here.  Complete with joy, pain, sex, surgery, giving, receiving, herbal teas, financial worries, love growing, sobbing, chromosomal testing, medical specialists, anger, you-name-it analysis, prayer, hope, travel, drama, applications, helplessness, empowerment, fixing, waiting, castor oil, dreaming, needles, resting, discipline, licentiousness, counseling, tinctures, test kits, and God, God, God.

Any western woman knows the line the medical community draws in the sand: 35.  Frankly, I think its BS for a jazillion reasons. Nonetheless, this damn statistical line is hovering in my peripheral vision…and this is me giving it the finger.  (See that?  That’s my middle finger).  And, mysteriously, less loudly, I want to give it a warm embrace all at the same time.

Happy 34^th Birthday to me!

Here’s to being unashamedly, (but appropriately?), open in my 34^th year. 

My Last Best Year. 

Blog Birth

I started this blog October 2010: at my kitchen island, with a (second?) glass of wine, whilst my husband sautéed mushrooms in a cream sauce to go with our filet mignon, on a Saturday night; bluesy music playing.

After a soul-crushing-ultrasound Wednesday, a black-hole Thursday, a hallowing-surgery on Friday. 

…questions, projections, recollections…swirling.  When life is a blur, we eat steak.

When hell threatens my core again, apparently I start a blog…and eat an expensive steak.

I had thought about blogging for years, but there was something about this loss, at this point in my story, with this movement of grief that made me say, Oh hell no.  Hell no.  This time, this fear, this loss, will not shut me down, or shut me up.  I’m writing. 

Thanks be to God.

And so I started this blog, yet held this blog birth close.  Close and protected.  Until now.  Because part of my writer’s block is blogger’s confusion: not so much what to write, but when.  So, now I weave in to this a fabric of motherhood.  Even though today we have no children in our home.

There is a very real space in life that needs more and more hopeful, loving words.  That holy, inward space; womb-like.  Lets put out there and celebrate it, no matter how the story unfolds.