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.