Maybe Next Time; or, Revisiting the Past

I'm sad today.

I wasn't a few hours ago. Then I was busy, writing a few articles for my freelance job, thinking about starting to work on the paper I'm delivering at the conference next week (I'm so anxious about it I'm procrastinating something awful), and checking out some favorite sites online.

And it's not like I didn't know what date today was: October 20th, right? It's not like I didn't know what date yesterday was: I was staring at the big October 19th on my lesson plan all day as I taught. But I managed to forget that last year on October 19th I saw this and wrote this.

Until suddenly I remembered. Who knows what shook that thought loose? But now it's all I can think of: how happy--ecstatic--I was this day last year, how exhilarated and content and certain I had found my happy ending.

Right now, I miss the lost hope and joy of those days as much as I miss the baby I thought we were going to have. Those weeks of happy hopefulness feel like a story I read or a movie I sat through--perhaps they happened to me, but I'm not convinced of it. I'm so sorry for that joyful girl, knowing that she will soon suffer so cruelly. I'm sorry for myself, that the intervening year has ground me down inside to sand, with nothing left to give but endurance.

I don't have that kind of hope any longer. The hope I have is objective and detached. My doctor says I'll get pregnant soon, so I choose to believe she's right. Statistically, I know that I'm likely to have another pregnancy, one day or other. Pragmatically, I know that this situation will resolve itself eventually. I won't always be waiting, however the waiting may end.

But speaking of hope emotionally, those butterflies of excitement and certainty and trust that This is the Time! and Now is the Day! are gone. I know that this month didn't work. My body is telling me so. Maybe my heart is, too.

And I'm sad as well that I have to know this. That I know what it was like to be pregnant and what it is like to not be pregnant and that I can tell the difference. Or if I can't tell the difference, then I'm sad that my self-protective pessimism was so often on-target it ceased to be protective and just became true.

The time I was pregnant passed so slowly and I lived through a lifetime's worth of emotional highs and lows in it. But in reality, it was brief--3 short weeks of knowing I was pregnant and then it was over. I expect those weeks will shock me with their quickness on this side of the continuum. Which is okay. Fast or short, they don't change anything.

These days, three weeks just gets me closer to flipping another calendar page and making a different month the focus of my "Maybe next time" mantras.

Lighting Candles; or, October 15th

Last night, when I told Lawyer Guy that today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, he sort of wearily sighed and said, "Isn't that every day?"

Point taken.

But his saying so helped me realize that, no, it isn't any more for me. I actually have days--or long stretches of time within a day, at least--when I don't think about the m&m and losing him or her. I never have a day without thinking about our struggle and our desire to get pregnant, but I do sometimes cease to think about the pregnancy we lost.

This sort of feels right. I grieved so hard for that baby for so long and it felt like the weight of my sadness would crush me sometimes. Now the moments when I feel overwhelmed by the sadness of the miscarriage are less frequent than the times I think of it with acceptance and peace.

This isn't to say I'm "over" what happened. I'm frequently taken aback by how much remembering that baby still can hurt: recounting our story to Dr. Man and Dr. Wonderful at our initial consultations, for instance, and in each meeting feeling myself fight back tears I hadn't realized I needed to shed. And maybe part of my acceptance and peace comes from the fact that we've just started down this new path to having a baby and I'm optimistic about success. After several months of disappointment and stasis, I may have a very different outlook. The only thing certain in this process is that the situations we encounter and our emotional responses to them will never be predictable.

I'm going to light a candle tonight in memory of the baby I was just beginning to suspect I carried at this time last year. This time--late October, as the world drifts into autumn slowly like a turning leaf--will always belong to that baby, so I'm glad that October 15th falls within the anniversary of his or her short life.

I do love you, m&m. Not the way I thought or hoped or dreamed I would, but the only way I can.

Returning; or, Confronting Anniversaries

Last night I cried myself to sleep. I can't remember the last time that happened--maybe the spring. I was remembering the d&c and reliving moments I had forgotten over the past 10 months: remembering how it felt to lie on the table as they hooked up the IV, tears running hot down my face into my ears and leaving cold tracks behind. I remembered sensing the doctor moving around the room and shouting (or so it seemed, it probably wasn't loud at all) "Don't do anything, I'm still awake!" And the nurses trying to focus my attention on other things and then finally losing consciousness. I remember waking up hunched in a ball with awful, searing cramps and a relentless need to vomit.

I remember moments of the pregnancy or the miscarriage frequently, and usually the memories lack the terrible charge they had during those first few weeks and months. They've regained much of that power recently, though. The weather's changing and I wore my grey wool tights and grey wool skirt to teach in yesterday. I remember standing in front of my classes in that outfit last October and November and thinking, "I'm pregnant and no one knows" and wondering how it was possible that something so amazing could be happening inside me without anyone sensing it.

I guess it's true that anniversaries are hard. Will you believe me if I say that I didn't think this one would be? I did okay when the potential due date came--I didn't dread it overmuch, didn't mourn incessantly, indulged in a few tears that night but was otherwise fine. But this is utterly different. It isn't just that I never thought I would still be in this terrible place a year later. It's more like my heart is involuntarily returning to that time over and over and over and that the grief is coming back with an edge it had lacked for a very long time. And I haven't even hit any of the dates of the pregnancy, I just feel them coming.

I'm tired of being sad. I want to be happy again. I'm tired of being a person who feels burdened by the past and who dreads the future. I want joy and lightheartedness, but I don't see the place for them in my life right now when everything is so heavy and dour.

Three

Three years ago, I married Lawyer Guy in the 19th-century chapel at my old high school. It was a hot day, but the old stone kept us cool in our formal clothes, even without air-conditioning. We stood under a chuppah of white lace knit by my best friend, Doctor Lady, in front of a deacon and a rabbi and promised to be always faithful to each other in words spoken by countless other brides and grooms in countless other weddings.

Our home is filled with reminders of that day-- gifts and photos, the framed invitation, and that very same square of white lace folded at the end of our bed. I treasure remembering how happy we both were, how much love we felt (from each other and from all of our guests), how months of planning became one beautiful day.

I didn't know then that three years later we would be facing these challenges or grieving these losses. But I could have predicted that Lawyer Guy and I would find a way to work through them. I could have predicted that--despite our differences and occasional arguments--we would each become the rock for the other, our mutual support and strength and stability.

Three years ago, I made the best decision of my life, and every day I'm rewarded for it.

Happy Anniversary; or, How Do You Measure a Year?

365 days

68 CBEFM pee sticks

Dozens of vaginal ultrasounds

14 pregnancy announcements

11 birth announcements

9.5 cycles (7 failed, 1 successful, 1 forced break, 1/2 in progress)

8.5 weeks of pregnancy (1 post fetal demise)

4 pregnancy tests (1 positive)

1 miscarriage

0 babies