I have been experiencing a second wave of grief these last few weeks. It seemed to begin a few weeks ago at work when I broke down crying in the bathroom after a mother of my patient was given horrible news. Hearing the gut wrenching wail that came out of her mouth reminded me my own feelings of despair, helplessness, frustration, anger and loss. Since then, it has been as if the floodgates have opened and the tears are always welling up in the back of my eyes, waiting to overfill and fall at a moment’s notice. I knew today, September 29th, would be hard. I prepared by making sure to take the day off, and planning a solo trip to a Michigan beach for the day. Well with a forecast of sixty-some degrees and suspected storms, that just didn’t happen. I settled for curling up under a cozy blanket on my couch, with Pippa at my side as I drank my morning coffee. 
I’ve been feeling hopeless this week. It is a lot to grasp to think that we started this whole “journey to parenthood” almost exactly one year ago. And in that year, we have been pregnant twice and lost twice. In that year I have switched doctors, and have been through the agonizing physical and emotion pain of miscarriage twice. There have been so many tears, so many questions, so many worries. Today would have been much easier to handle if I was still pregnant with our second baby. There are so many women out there who have had a miscarriage with their first pregnancy, who go on to have a healthy second pregnancy. The 1 in 4 rule doesn’t seem to apply to me much today. What am I, 1 in 1000? 1 in 10,000? I am in this place between the 1 in 4 and the “recurrent miscarriage” category of women trying to conceive, and it feels very daunting. Today I am grateful for the green light to go ahead and try again, but I can’t turn off the part of my brain that wonders if we should do incredibly expensive genetic testing as well. Have I asked everything that I should have asked? Is there something else I should be doing? Feeling this way makes me feel “crazy.” The back and forth that I play with myself is in and of itself, exhausting. Add the stifling coldness of “timed intercourse” to the “trying again” and you’ve got one heck of a recipe for feeling overwhelmed.
I have done my best to “pray about it” as much as I “talk about it.” I have prayed for motherhood, for feeling only JOY and not jealousy towards anyone who is pregnant, for peace of mind, for strength of spirit, for healing of my heart and for HOPE- that I continue to have it, each night before bed. But sitting here today, outside in my backyard oasis, I don’t know that I feel the HOPE for our future that I’ve prayed for. If I’m not crying, I just feel numb. This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. Someone told me recently that “it will happen when it is meant to happen.” And that really pissed me off. Why is it MEANT to happen for me after at least a year of pain and sadness? Why is it meant to happen for someone who doesn’t even want a child? Why is it meant to be that some people try to conceive for years and are never able to bear a child? I don’t think so.
But the hardest part about all of this is, is how consuming this has become. When we first stopped using birth control a year ago, our attitude towards conceiving was “let’s see what happens.” I don’t remember having baby fever. I remember running the statistics through my head regarding miscarriage and average length of time it takes to conceive. I felt this urgency to start trying because it COULD take us up to a year to conceive. I knew that we were most likely going to move away in the summer of 2017, and that it made sense to begin trying a year ago so as to give us plenty of time to conceive, and birth our first baby before moving. But I didn’t feel the desire to be a mother above all else. I wasn’t dreaming about being pregnant constantly. That was my attitude a year ago. Now, I feel a baby fever with such fervor that it is often all that I can think about. I see pregnant women and babies EVERYWHERE. So many of my close friends are pregnant, or have had newborns in the last few months. I feel this hole in my heart, that has been there since my first miscarriage back in February- a hole that I feel a desire to fill with an intensity I almost don’t even recognize in myself. Sometimes I wonder: who is this person whom I’ve become? How have I allowed infertility and “baby fever” to define me? The struggle to stay positive and believe in a happy ending is just that- a struggle.
But my pledge to the memory of my two babies has been to hold onto HOPE and to choose JOY in this journey. I am grateful for so much in my life. First and foremost, a faith that continues to exist despite feelings of betrayal and anger at times. Secondly, my steadfast husband who God chose to be by my side through this journey. Lastly, the countless friends and family members who continue to show me support in the individual ways in which they are able to do so. This is my own unique journey to parenthood. My path has been laid before me and I have chosen to make what I can out of it- all of it.
You were fiercely loved, baby HOPE. I am filled with sadness that we do not get to meet you today, but I know that someday we will be reunited. I think of you constantly, and know that you are always with me.
