Longing for Normalcy

I am 15 weeks pregnant now and so far so good.  Except that I’m still feeling nauseous and I’m still feeling tired (rumor has it that stuff is supposed to go away at 12 weeks, never been the case for me).  I am also growing quite large and gaining weight rather rapidly.  I am busting out of my typical clothes, but my maternity clothes really don’t fit yet either.  My hormones are all over the place, I’m an emotional basket case, laughing or crying at any given moment.  I feel completely out of my own skin.  I do not feel like myself much of the time, physically or emotionally.  You see, I’ve never worn pregnancy well.  It’s always been a tough road for me, even before it was really tough.  When I was pregnant for the first time, when I was pregnant with Wyatt, I often cried to Rob and told him I couldn’t do this anymore (as if I had a choice), I bought books such as “Pregnancy Sucks”, and scoffed at women who proclaimed that they loved being pregnant.  Don’t get me wrong, I was excited that I was bringing a life into this world, but it was challenging to watch my body morph into a big blob, it was brutal being so sick and so tired, and it was stressful being the one that had to be vigilant, responsible and alcohol-free to boot.  Of course, at the time I had no idea how stressful it could really be and I had no idea what vigilance was really like.  I had no idea.  No idea at all.

After the tragic day of October 6, 2005, after I had carried that beautiful baby for 40 exhausting weeks and then watched him slip through my hands and through my heart in an instant, all of these thoughts, these complaints, these ridiculous rants of mine came back to haunt me in full force.  And they came back in the darkest of forms, in the most distorted shapes, as they came back and changed their images into nothing other than the purest of all guilts.  How could I have thought all of these horrible things, how could I have tainted my mind with these unappreciative thoughts, how could I have not realized how blessed I truly was to be harboring and holding a life inside me?  How could I have been so selfish?  How could I have been so insensitive?  How could I have been so ungrateful?  Maybe if I had displayed more gratitude, maybe if I had complained less, maybe if I had basked in this pregnancy instead of dwelled on the negatives, maybe, just maybe the outcome would have been different.  Of course, my rational mind knew differently, but my emotionally scathed and brutally scarred mind couldn’t help but consider this as a possible option. 

So after this loss, my scoffing at other women transformed.  Instead of turning my nose up at the women who glowed during their pregnancies, I found myself screaming my internal dialogue at those who complained.  At my sister-in-law’s wedding just three short months later, a fellow bridesmaid was pregnant.  And as if that wasn’t hard enough in and of itself, she complained to me about how horrible this wedding was going to be because she wasn’t going to be able to drink.  Whaaa?  Hold the phone.  First of all, insensitive bitch, you have to know what I’ve just been through.  And you have no idea how lucky you are, how blessed you are, how grateful you should be that you have been given this amazing opportunity.  You have no idea how fortunate you are that your baby is still alive and that he still has a chance of being yours to keep, and that you have been given the opportunity to nurture him, and dream of him, and hope for him.  You have no idea what you are complaining about and how ridiculous your complaints are to me.  Fool, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  And at the time, I thought I was completely justified in these thoughts, and I wanted to throw each and every one of them in her face, but I didn’t.  I just smiled and nodded, as I often did when confronted with someone else’s ignorance of the possible tragic outcomes of pregnancy.  I was the Queen of “You have no idea” and most certainly uttered this under my breath to most pregnant women who crossed my path.  It hurt to see someone else’s dreams being realized when mine were crushed, and I longed to be back in their shoes, to be able to take hold of gratitude and hold onto it as tight as I could, in hopes that this clinging would be the saving grace that I longed for it to be. 

And when I was pregnant with Abigail, just six months later, I’m certain I embraced this gratitude and held it like hope that my baby would be safe this time.  But the reality is, my memories of this pregnancy are sometimes cloudy, especially when I try to remember my emotions.  It was wrought with fear, anxiety, and continued grief for my son.  I also know there was hope, excitement, and positive thoughts for a happy ending this time.  But the details are blurred by the swirling and often conflicted emotions.  What I do remember quite vividly, however, is how I felt after Abigail was born.  When I was pregnant with her, I remember many people trying to tell me how difficult those first couple weeks or even months would be.  And I remember my internal dialogue once again scoffing at their ignorance:  You have no idea about difficult.  You don’t know challenging.  I have just clawed my way out of hell and you are going to tell me what is hard?  Ha, you have no idea.  No idea at all.  So I was convinced that after everything that I had just been through, this parenting thing was going to be a breeze.  And I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Holy hell, was I wrong.  But the real struggle wasn’t that I was excessively challenged as a new mom, no, the real challenge was that I felt like I didn’t have the right to complain about how tired, exhausted, frustrated or incompetent I felt.  I had lost a baby, he was no longer here, but I was given the gift of life this time and I thought the only thing I was allowed to feel was gratitude. 

So, this time, I feared your inner dialogue.  I feared whining and complaining on my part would conjure up judgment and misunderstanding on your part.  And I find myself feeling a similar emotion today.  I want desperately to tell you how miserable I am still feeling and how tired I am of chronic exhaustion.  I want to let you know that I can’t stand my roller coaster of emotions, my often sleepless nights, and the horrifying varicose veins that are beginning to pop up on my legs.  I want to be able to tell you how I almost cried when I packed away my skinny jeans and pulled out the gigantic elastic-waisted preggy pants that I will soon fit into.  But I am afraid to tell you these things.  I am afraid of the reactions and thoughts that will pop into your head.  I’m afraid you will label me ungrateful, judge me unworthy, scoff at my unappreciative nature.  And maybe it’s not really you I am truly afraid of, maybe it’s not really your internal dialogue that brings about my fear, maybe you are not my worst enemy.  Maybe you would embrace my complaining, understand my overly-emotional state of being, maybe you might even convince me that all of this whining is very normal.  Oh, how I long to be normal.  How I wish that I could go through this pregnancy with the ignorance and naivety that so many women get to experience.  I wish I could be okay with myself sometimes being irritated with the symptoms of pregnancy, with the challenges that pregnancy presents without the guilt quickly following, without feeling the need to swiftly qualify my annoyances with gratitude.  Because I am grateful.  I am extremely grateful that I have been given this opportunity once again, that I have been given this life to nurture and hold within me.  My appreciation far exceeds my need to complain on any given day.  But sometimes I wish I would just let myself whine without the fear of your judgments, without the fear of my guilt, without the pains of my past coming back to haunt me again and again.  Sometimes I wish I would let myself feel normal.  Oh, how I wish my innermost and darkest thoughts wouldn’t morph into my worst enemy.  I do not like being my worst enemy.  There must be a way that I can be gratefully irritated or irritatedly grateful without completely beating myself up.  I just haven’t quite figured out how to do that.  Yet.  But I have about 5 ½ months left to try to figure that out.  And then years of parenting after that…. I feel like I have just recently gotten there with Abigail, so there is hope for me still, there is hope on the horizon for me to feel like a normal mom, like a typical parent, as crazy and complaint-ridden as the rest of you, with this baby-to-be just yet.  There is always hope, and hope has always been my friend, and hope is most certainly nothing to complain about, so for now I will just hold onto that hope.  Hoping for normalcy, hoping for peace and hoping to be easier on myself in the days to come. 

Learning to Commit Again

We had a 12 week appointment last week.  My nerves had settled a lot since my 10 week appointment.  Hearing the heartbeat at that time was very reassuring.  This appointment, however, was going to get me past that milestone.  Past the point of the last pregnancy when I went in and heard a whole lot of nothing and saw too little of something.  This upcoming appointment was also going to be unchartered territory for me.  We were doing genetic screening for the first time.  I was a complete basket case the night before.  I guess just a huge case of the fear of the unknown.  They had already taken blood a couple of weeks prior and the next day they were going to do an ultrasound that consisted of some measurements that would all be combined with my age to give me a “new” statistic on my risks.  My current risk for Down Syndrome (primarily what the test is for), due to my “advanced maternal age” (aka very old lady trying to have a baby), is 1 in 66.  Sounds alarming, huh?  So alarming that I must always flip this statistic around in my head like this:  this risk is just 1 ½ percent.  So the reality is that there is a 98.5% chance that I will NOT have a baby with Down Syndrome and I’m not entirely sure where the other syndromes and their numbers come into play.  I remind myself that I would play the lottery every single time with these odds.  But I don’t really want this to be a post about my age (because frankly I don’t have the courage to go there yet), and I don’t want this to be a post about genetic abnormalities (because my feelings and thoughts on this issue are complicated and not so straightforward).  So… to be completely anti-climactic and to get directly to the point, the appointment and the testing came back as good as I could have expected.  We now have beautiful ultrasound pictures of a tiny person, heard and saw a fabulous heartbeat, saw a measurement of 2 ½ inches (right on target) and was told that my stats for DS had changed to 1 in 385.  Equivalent to a 32 year old.  Okay, sure, whatever.  I’ve always been pretty bad at math, but I did just complete a three course series in statistics and it is completely bewildering to me how in the heck they can come up with these numbers.  It seems a little like wizardry to me.  Add a little blood test here, a neck fat calculation there, throw in length for good measure, don’t forget the old lady factor, finally a pinch of rat tail and….. poof!  Somehow you get a statistic like 1 in 385 and a new maternal age in a matter of minutes.  I’m often a skeptic, but my ignorance combined with my skepticism really makes me question the science behind this one.  But if you want to start thinking of me as a 32 year old, you have my permission.  I’m all for that.  The new statistic brings some sense of comfort too, of course.  But just when they have my attention, just when you think this appointment has been a good thing, a curve ball has to come….they always have to qualify any result they give you:  “This does not guarantee that you will have a healthy baby at birth”.  Seriously?  Shut. Up. Are you really going to go there with ME?   I already know there are no guarantees at birth.  I have already lived no guarantees at birth.  I just told you my “at birth” story as you nonchalantly asked me if this was my first pregnancy, asked me to relive my pregnancy history before doing your homework and looking at my chart first.  I know about statistics and their lack of guarantees so please don’t qualify to me.  Please just stop at “things look great right now”.  Please just STOP.  But I can’t outwardly project my inner dialogue, it isn’t appropriate, it wouldn’t be acceptable.  This well intentioned nurse practitioner can say or do something that I consider insensitive, but me, I have to just sit, nod my head and only tell you how I really felt.  I often leave situations feeling like I have to be the bigger person or the stronger person when the reality is I often feel like the weakest and least powerful person of all.  It’s funny how the norms of our culture work.  Funny how those of us that have suffered feel responsibility (or obligation) in making those less pained feel more comfortable.  Funny…..or irritating.  Choose your adjective, I’ve picked mine long ago.

But alas, this appointment and these results did serve to do what it was set up to do:  calm my nerves, settle my anxiety and have me trying to reconsider my commitment issues.  And this post is all over the place, which is appropriate, I guess, because my mind is all over the place too.  I’m trying to figure out where to go from here.  We are 13 weeks, we have past our most recent doomsday milestone, we have seen factors indicating only good things, I should be ready to display some signs of committing, but something is holding me back.  Oh, yeah, well there’s always that.  There’s one milestone yet to hit, but 40 weeks is pretty far away.  If I don’t commit before then, it’s going to be quite a rocky ride.  I will need to make some choices here soon.  And I remember crossing this bridge with Abigail’s pregnancy.  I remember all too clearly that I had to make choices, choices that were scary and challenging to say the least.  I had to choose to commit.  And I had to commit as fully as I knew how.  I had to convince myself that this was going to happen no matter what.  I had to fool myself into believing that I had paid my dues and the world was just and fair and this baby would be mine to keep.  I had to lie to myself so that I would hold onto the notion that statistics were now in my favor and my dreams would most certainly be realized this time.  And no matter how naïve this all may seem to me now, somehow it worked.  Somehow it was exactly what I needed to do to get through her pregnancy without going completely insane.  I committed whole-heartedly.  We never took down Wyatt’s nursery.  We never took a single thing back to a store.  I held on tight to these items as if they were my dreams and turned them into hope for another baby to be able to enter our hearts.  Although I had items that were sacred, that were only supposed to be his, I also knew he wouldn’t mind sharing certain things with his little sister.  The sister I hoped he wouldn’t meet for a long time.  A very, very long time.  Holding onto these items and not letting them go was my first step towards committing.  I was committed to securing this dream of bringing a baby to this home, to this nursery, to these things and I was determined to have this dream realized.  When we found out we were having a girl this time, I found myself committing further.  I bought little pink clothes and little pink toys that served as big pink hope that this baby would truly be mine.  I committed again by repainting the nursery.  This nursery had been designed for a little boy to sleep here, but he didn’t even get the chance to spend one night.  Although it was hard to let go of the various shades of blue, I wanted this baby to know that this room was now hers, she shouldn’t have to sleep in the shadows of my grief.  But I still wanted her to know she had a brother, and I wanted us to never forget our first born, so I left one blue square in memory of our Wyatt Nicholas.  It’s still there.  I committed with her pregnancy over and over again.  I was terrified, don’t get me wrong, but I felt she deserved all of the commitment that I could muster.  I didn’t want to look back and realize that I didn’t do everything I could have done to welcome her into our world.  I didn’t want to have any regrets.  Some people believe that doing all of these things might serve to “jinx” the pregnancy somehow, but I think I felt the opposite.  And I also knew that fully committing wouldn’t change anything.  Doing these things or not doing these things would ultimately not change how I felt if for some reason we had a reoccurring fate.  If something horrible happened again I knew that trying to protect myself, that trying to guard my heart, that trying to hide from celebrating this life would not make the pain any more bearable.  It would hurt the same no matter what.  It would hurt like hell whether I sat in a hole for forty weeks pretending nothing was growing inside me and it would hurt like hell if I celebrated whole-heartedly this life that I was carrying within me.  If something horrible happened again, it would hurt like hell no matter what.  And it was this last realization that carried me through her entire pregnancy.  I knew she deserved to be celebrated with everything I could conjure up within me.  And although most days I was scared, and some days I hurt, and often I wept, I basked in the opportunity I was given to carry her with me for each one of those miraculous days. 

So I sit at this crossroads again.  Unfortunately, in some ways, I feel like I have a larger hurdle to overcome.  I have had a lot more time to process everything that has happened.  I have been even more jaded by a subsequent loss that served to make me realize even further that life is not fair and that there are no guarantees.  Even if you’ve been through hell, bad things can still come your way.  The world does not owe me anything.  It’s a very humbling realization.  But each and every day, I find myself committing more.  I have pulled out some maternity clothes, I have been telling others beside my blog followers that we are pregnant, and I have stuck our ultrasound pictures on the fridge.  We even made a huge step in the commitment direction and told Abigail last week.  This was a hard one for me.  I find myself one step away from qualify it to her, you know, “there’s no guarantee…”, but of course, I don’t.  I just hope I don’t have to have another conversation with her about babies and death.  These conversations haunt me often, her frequent questions fatigue my heart.  My body is definitely committing and there’s nothing I can do to fight that. I have a swelling belly, raging hormones, and I could sleep standing up.  This baby is also beginning to commit as well.  I am pretty certain I am already feeling movement inside me, and I’ll say, it’s the most amazing thing ever.  But as far as commitment goes, I’m not fully there yet, although I’m determined to be.  I truly feel like it’s the only way.  I owe this child my joy.  I owe this child my entire heart, not just part of it. I want to give him or her everything I’ve got, regardless of the outcome.  I want to have no regrets, it’s the only way to fully live.  So, I am on my way, I am preparing myself for this journey, I am in the process of teaching myself how to commit one more time.  I owe it to myself, I owe it to my family and most of all, I owe it to this tiny life growing inside me. 

A Brand New Bundle of Someone Else's Joy

I have been waiting for this day.  Trying to prepare myself for my reaction.  I could not even begin to speculate what my response was going to be.  I have been bombarded with a variety of emotions regarding this pregnancy and this impending due date.  Given the circumstances and situations, some of which I can talk about and some of which I cannot, my emotions have swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the other regarding my brother and his wife’s pregnancy.  We found out we were pregnant within six weeks of each other and I don’t know about him, but I was pretty darn excited that we would be having children so close together.  I was ecstatic that we were going to be able to share a journey together and that our kids would be able to grow up so close in age to each other.  When I sent out “the email” telling our extended family that we were expecting, I remember including a sentiment regarding my excitement over this shared time frame, this creating of cousins that were bound to be the best of friends.  My brother and I haven’t always been close.  We fought like cats and dogs growing up, I mean really, multiple broken hockey sticks through multiple bedroom doors of mine doesn’t say much for sibling affection.  But as we grew older, survived the divorce of our parents together, lived in the same town in our adult years, and began playing on the same soccer team (we’re convinced this last one brought us together the most) we really began to form a friendship, a sibling bond and a connection that we had never had before.  And I will never forget that my brother was here instantly when we lost our son, cried almost as much as I did at times it seemed, asked for pictures of his nephew when everything was said and done, and seemed to really get and understand how significant this loss was for me.  I will never forget how much he cared during a time when I needed him the most. 

So when we found out that we would no longer be sharing a journey, that my journey was abruptly stopped at 12 weeks while his continued, needless to say, things were challenging for us both.  Here they were with all of their joy and excitement of the pregnancy of their first child being overshadowed by the loss of mine.  Here we were with the loss of the pregnancy of our third baby being overshadowed by the joy and excitement of theirs.  It was complicated, confusing and frustrating to say the least.  At the end of the day, we both did our best to navigate through this situation and ultimately had to do what was best for each of us individually, on our own, within our respective worlds, taking care of the ones that were by our sides the most and trying as hard as we could to reach out and be understanding of each other. But the reality was I had never been in his shoes before.  I had never been pregnant at the same time that someone so close to me had experienced a loss, a loss with excessive baggage to boot.  And the reality was he had never been in my shoes before.  He had never experienced a pregnancy loss, let alone a loss at the same time that someone close to him was moving on with their pregnancy within the same timeframe.  I didn’t understand his world and he didn’t understand mine.  And I truly believe that both of us would have responded completely different to each other’s events if they wouldn’t have occurred so simultaneously.  But this wasn’t our reality, our reality was, if I must reiterate:  complicated, confusing and frustrating, to say the least.

And I wrote about this early on, how challenging this was, in the post Little Bundles of Someone Else’s Joy.  I didn’t want to feel resentment, jealousy, anger or pain in this situation.  This is my baby brother, we are close, I was so excited when they told us they were expecting, I could barely contain myself.  I didn’t want to experience any other emotion besides happy, but unfortunately these alternative emotions came no matter how much I tried to push them away.  The bottom line was it hurt.  Although I was still happy and excited for my brother, I was still crushed and broken hearted for myself.  And these emotions always seemed to catch up to me the quickest, happy and excited were always a distant second.  But I knew I had to make choices, I had to fight against these darker emotions, because I was not going to be left behind grieving a loss when everyone else was going to be celebrating a life.  I knew I didn’t want to be angry or bitter or broken any longer.  So I dove in from a distance and attempted to be as engaged as I could given the situation.  Most days I succeeded, although I was most certainly far from perfect.  I sent notes, made phone calls, sent a package.  I participated in the planning for the baby shower and sat front and center to write down all the baby gifts that they received.  I decided that being fully engaged would be less painful than sitting on the sidelines.  I knew that when I looked back, I would always regret not giving it my all but would never regret holding onto my grief at the expense of my brother’s joy.  And I’m not going to tell you it was easy, because it wasn’t.  There were times when my excitement was feigned, times when I had to bite my tongue and even times when I had to lie to hide my pain so my brother could experience some joy.  I was honest with myself on how challenging this newly defined shared journey was to me, I just didn’t have to be so honest with him.  His happiness was important to me, this was going to be one of the biggest moments of his life and he deserved every minute of it.  He deserved his fairy tale, his happy ending, if there was anyone in the world who I would want to have it all, I would want it to be him, I would want it to be him more than anyone. 

So when his fairy tale arrived and I received that phone call, I hesitated.  Rob answered the phone and I knew instantly who it was and what it was.  I took a deep breath, I still wasn’t sure how I was going to respond on the inside, although I had rehearsed many times how I would respond on the outside.  I wanted more than anything in the world to be okay with this, to have happy be the front runner of my emotions, to experience true excitement without the interference of pain, I was just pretty sure this was not possible.  I knew this phone call would be a reminder that I would have, should have been having a baby just six short weeks later.  That my belly should be a lot bigger than it is right now.  That I should be much more uncomfortable, sleeping more restlessly, counting down the weeks now until the cousins could finally meet each other.  I braced myself, grabbed the phone and was immediately told that I had a brand new niece.  Her name was Mackensie Marie and she was 6 pounds, 15 ounces and 20 and some odd inches long.  And I couldn’t speak.  I was silent.  I tried to get some words out but I struggled over the tears.  Oh, the tears flowed big and they flowed hard.  These tears caught me way off guard.  I knew I would have a reaction, but I had no idea it would be so intense and so strong.  I really wasn’t prepared to be completely and utterly overwhelmed with so much uninhibited joy.  I was choked up with these tears that only possessed joy and elation, tears that didn’t contain a drop of pain or hurt, tears that soothed my soul in ways that no other tear that has left me in the past five months could have.  And I cannot even begin to tell you how grateful I am for this joy.  I am so very grateful and so very thankful to have experienced this joy and to experience nothing but this joy in this moment.  It makes me feel less broken after all.  It makes me feel like all has not been lost.  It makes me feel that not everything has been in vain.  And all I wanted to do from that moment was hold her in my arms and when I did, the joy exceeded my expectations once again.  And although this wasn’t my fairy tale, and although my experiences have been far from fairy tales, in that moment, I very much felt like maybe I could believe in fairy tales once more after all.  I needed this moment, I needed this joy, I needed to find hope again in someone else’s experience, and I’m so grateful that out of all of the experiences that are out there, this is the one that chose to fill my heart back up again.  I love you Deron, Shannon and Mackensie and I’m so grateful your joy has entered my world and entered my heart.