Sunday, February 6, 2011

processing.

So, you wanna know a secret?

It's not really a secret.  It's just something no one talks about, really.  Well, I need to talk about it.  Finally, after a year, I finally found a way to verbalize what's been bouncing around my head.  What it is is pregnancy after loss, and how it affected me.  Sad that it took a fight with my sister to finally break the ice floe loose in my brain.  It's like I'm awake from a foggy, groggy sleep.  And I've been working on this post for just shy of a month... how's that for slow?

I mentioned in a previous post awhile back that I felt like I was robbed of some of my joy from my pregnancy with my son because of previous losses.

It happens.  I know I'm not alone.
I can't honestly say how many losses I had before The One.  I was so elated the day the cross-hairs showed up on that little purple pee-stick.  My husband and I had just come home from raiding a flea market for a table saw we found on craigslist.  I just decided I needed to test.  And I did.  And it was positive... planned for the first time and soooo wanted.  And we danced in the kitchen.  Then we started telling people.  And we set an appointment with the midwife.  And we were so happy about it for about a week and a half.  Then everything spiraled down the Saturday my husband had the car torn apart in the garage (literally, he had to dismantle the entire front end of the little VW Cabrio, our only car, to replace three parts), while I tried not to panic as it ended quietly with a whimper.  I felt cold and empty after the time we spent in the ER, and broken.    You've read the story if you keep up with this at all.  I covered it all in that post about losses a couple months back.

Then an amazing thing happened when I felt most broken.  We decided to just let go of precautions and if it was meant to be, things would go, if not, they wouldn't.

Then came *another* positive test almost a month after the loss... and I didn't know what to do.
I calmly handed the stick to my husband that morning before work and while I felt hopeful, I was also oddly detached.  I was about to enter the rollercoaster of pregnancy with a whole bunch of baggage from the last ride.  I didn't know if I could trust my body to hold on to this baby.  I wanted desperately to have and hold this child, and prayed with every fiber of my being.  I didn't even know if I could depend on the Almighty's help with this one.  It's hard being in that spot where I neither trusted my body or my God to get me to the finish line.  I felt broken and untrustworthy, like my old car- you could always trust it to start, you just couldn't depend on it getting you safely to point B.

While I can tell you everything about the moment of implantation (yes, I felt it), and how grateful I was for every symptom and every good beta test, and how I enjoyed knowing that there was indeed a baby growing in there, I cannot tell you that I believed that this time was going to be different.  My history hung there like a big black cloud overshadowing my joy.  I was disconnected from my darling baby because I didn't want to hurt like that again if we were to lose him... but he kept growing and growing, and every day there was something new and amazing reaffirming that he was there and staying there until he was done baking.  Unfortunately, I had already retreated into myself before he was conceived.  I put distance between my husband and I, because I felt like I was guarding not only my feelings, but his too.  If he couldn't spend time around me, he couldn't spend time around this baby who we may not get to meet.  It's warped logic, but it worked at the time for me.  Maybe not so much for him.

I effectively spent the first three months of the pregnancy in bed or cocooned in my home office when I wasn't at work.  Those were my safe and sacred places.  Part of it was because I was so tired, and part of it was that I didn't want to be around him because I felt he couldn't help me get through this.  Some of that was because he stopped going to school after we lost the one, while I put on my brave face and went back to work.  I can't fault him that, we all have our ways of grieving, mine is to soldier on, his is not so much.  Anyway, I built walls.  I reinforced those walls mightily.  I thought through how I'd deal with each scenario from potential losses to things potentially going wrong in birth.  I'm morbid like that.  But, my morbid mind was only protecting me from emotional pain as it has my whole life.  (Someday I'll talk about my childhood, but that's a bag I'm not ready to unpack...)

Anyway... so, there I was, the wall-building cocoon artist, watching the sun set most every night from my bedroom window.  Spending my waking hours either working or researching pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting survival tips, all the while not sure if I was going to be using much of the information I was absorbing.  It was during this time we met with my family doctor, who recommended we go see his favorite sOB... who the nurse guaranteed allll the ladies loved this guy, and we most certainly would as well.  I showed up at that appointment with my fertility folder full of cycle charts, from the previous cycle with the loss all the way up to that day of the current pregnancy.

I wanted answers and to see things from a professional angle, to have reassurance.  I needed to be safe, and while I didn't totally trust doctors, I still felt *some* safety in the doctor's office  Instead, I had an arrogant ex-Marine, sOB reminding me that a) no pregnancy is a sure thing until sometime after 20 weeks, and b)those things are pretty indestructible, there's probably nothing wrong with you. That was after he asked why we were there.  After we'd spent two hours in the waiting room.  After we'd spent a half hour filling out forms and answering questions for the nurse.  While he was staring at my chart.  The man argued with me about when I had conceived this child (yeah, 'cause he was totally there for the event), and told me my estimate was off on when this child would arrive (Ha! I was right!).

I called their office for three separate spotting episodes and was treated like a flyspeck each time, reminded that I had yet to set my "Nurse Appointment" which is apparently a big thing- where I tell the office nurse all about myself (it was in my charts!! did hooked on phonics just not work for these people?) and let her tell me all about what the doctor 'expects' of his mommies-to-be.  I wasn't supposed to spend time talking to doctor.  Apparently the guy who spends his time sticking things up your old 'ginny isn't supposed to know jack about the women who hire him.  He pays a woman to know the women, and he gets to show up whenever he pleases.  I fired him after the third spotting incident.  When my husband almost hit him with a gun butt... yeah.  It was bad.  My midwife was much better.

I don't know really what was going on with my husband... other than he was pretty protective of me.  My husband the handicapped evolved into my husband the handiman.  He wouldn't let me lift heavy things, wouldn't let me work long in the garden, took over many things that I normally did because he didn't want to risk me harming myself or our offspring.  We had a few fights about this because I am and always will be independent and driven to do on my own.  He spent lots of time talking to friends on facebook during the day while I was at work... well, up until he announced that we were doing a homebirth and almost all of his female friends attacked him like a flock of angry birds.  That's a story for another day...

Obviously, this all turned out well.  E is a healthy, active, intelligent little boy... tenacious like bull, really.  Has been since the day he implanted, all the way up to now.  I worried so much about losing him through pregnancy, but he made it all the way here.  Some part of me knew I just had to trust the process and let go.  Perhaps I had so much fear invested in making it through the pregnancy, that I had little to no fear left by the time birth rolled around.  But, I wonder, if I had not had the previous experiences, would there have been any fear at all through the whole process?  Would I have perhaps plunged into the whole process as most American women do, kvetching about every ache and pain and miserable because that's what a woman is supposed to be?  Or would I have treasured each symptom, cradled each wiggle, or rubbed those tiny feet that poked so insistently at my right ribcage like I did?  Maybe that's the good that came of all the not-so-good there.  That I treasured every second of my pregnancy.  I laughed about it.  I slowed down and let life wash over me.  I actually took care of myself for a change instead of everyone around me.  It's what I needed.

I hope and pray that none of the women in my life have to go through a loss like this.  I hope if they do that they are surrounded with love, understanding, and support, and that their next time around goes off without a hitch and with every possible ounce of joy packed in to make up for it.

-L.