An Anxious Pregnancy

It's Infertility Awareness Week. Can I tell you it's a really weird week to be pregnant for me?

Like I'm cheating on my fellow infertility sufferers. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the weight and space this pregnancy is taking in my life and in my emotions.

After dealing with secondary infertility for more than a decade, I could be trying every single fertility treatment and becoming pregnant is still a stunning occurrence. After two confirmed, and fairly dramatic losses, becoming pregnant doesn't equate to a baby for me.

It equates to an eternal soul, but when half your children are dead and you suspect you've had some additional early losses that were unconfirmed, the immediate sensation is not HOORAY BABY, it's PLEASE GOD PLEASE.

At the end of September, we were waiting with an open foster home for the word on placements. I had heard from my licensing rep that an expectant mother was due anytime and we were anticipating being the foster home for this baby. We didn't know gender, ethnicity, anything really, other than that we were on high alert for a hospital trip and it was time to make sure the baby carseat was ready to go.

On October 3rd, I walked out of the hospital with a baby who needed a foster home for an undefined amount of time. Our days and nights became wrapped in her care. We settled in to the newborn phase of life and a kind of magic surrounded us as I watched our family knit closer around this common purpose of new life.

A few weeks later, I thought to myself, "that's funny, shouldn't I be starting a new cycle?" New baby fog hadn't made for the best record keeping, but surely sometime around now was the start of the next month, right?

Feeling unsure what else to do, I took a test on a whim. As it turned immediately in the affirmative, I crumpled over the bathroom counter sobbing.  No, God, no. Not again. I can't lose another baby. I can't do this. 

I needed to call the doctor, I needed to start checking hormone levels and getting any necessary medications, but I was frozen in terror. The sobs wracked my body as I stood unbelieving in my bathroom. I frantically messaged my close prayer partners, I just got a positive pregnancy test. I can't stop crying. I'm having an anxiety attack and I can't calm down enough to call the doctor. Please pray.

Their love and prayers flooded in, and slowly, my breath stopped catching enough that I could make the call to the doctor with a wobbling voice. Tests were ordered, I went straight out to get them done, newborn in tow.

Progesterone was prescribed and levels were monitored. Always just on the cusp of sustainability.

Even as I worried the baby would survive, the waves of nausea rolled in. Standing upright left me shaking and dizzy. All my energy, all my effort was on just the next thing I needed to do to care for the girls.

In the background of it all, as I fought through the sickness laying over my life, all I could think was, this could all be for no baby. I could just be this sick and then have to survive another ectopic.

As I made it to the day of the first ultrasound at 7 weeks, I walked in with dread. Seeing the baby's little heart beat, I thought, this may be our only time seeing this baby.

At 12 weeks, my progesterone levels dropped dramatically and waves of anxiety rolled over me as I waited for my doctor's appointment that week. The nurse put the Doppler on my abdomen and nothing. No heartbeat could be found. My heart dropped and I focused on all the people who were praying for me at that moment as I struggled to keep my composure on the way to the ultrasound room.

That wait, those moments, I felt the tangible and physical presence of grace surrounding me. Nothing else kept me from hysterical sobs on that table, as they looked for the baby.

Expecting this to be the moment where my life crashed down around me once more, it took a minute for it to fully sink in that I was seeing my baby moving on the screen. There, wiggling around, happily alive, was this little warrior. An anterior placenta and scar tissue from a csection had blocked the doppler from hearing this fully alive and moving baby.

As we publicly announced the pregnancy, elation rolled in from everywhere. Friends who have watched us walk through dark and difficult passages reached out to share their joy at the news. Still, I would think, yeah, but the baby could still die, guys.

Each time these thoughts entered in, I would think about a story my mom told me. When my mom was a young grade schooler, her mother entrusted her to the care of Our Lady of Mount Carmel as she left the house. So I prayed, Mary, this baby is yours to hold. I give you this baby to guard and protect because I know your mother's heart will hold this baby as tightly as my own.

Mary had to take over, I could only rest in the knowledge that her heart, pierced with sorrows, would hold this baby close and mourn with me, if needed.

At first, I felt guilty to not be excited like my friends about the news of this baby. But, the Holy Spirit spoke clearly into me, let them hold the excitement for you until you can carry it too. This is the Communion of Saints at work in the Church. They can hold my excitement in their hearts as I walk a harder path set before me.

Each phase of pregnancy has carried different worries, and slowly, the baby coming home sneaks in as a possibility. At week 17, I drove to school pick up and was suddenly assaulted with the thought if the baby dies now, we're going to have to do a full funeral with everyone. That overwhelming thought settled in me and I answered it, that's true, and everyone will surround us if that happens.

Slowly, I counted weeks/days until that mark of survival, Week 24. Finally, if something happened with the contractions that had been sneaking in, the baby might not die. Each week past that moment was a weight removed, closer, closer, more possible, we might make it.

Each week was a practice in asking for help, letting others take on more for me as my body told me to slow down more and more.

Finally, now, I'm here in the third trimester, 31 weeks. Even more things have to be taken off my plate as I honor the baby's needs and my body. We need to keep baby in at least 4 more weeks, according to this week's doctor's visit. Almost there, closer, closer, and there, standing with me, are all the friends holding the excitement, loving us, caring for me, praying for us.

The journey through this pregnancy has been hard and heavy and physically painful and emotionally draining. But my interior growth as I've released the anxiety, let go of guilt over how I "should" feel and let others care for us is slowly transforming my interior, in step with the physical transformation of housing a person. So here I sit (or lay most times), waiting out the days until we all rejoice together that the baby is here.

When Everyone is Pregnant But Me

Three months ago, I wrote about my experiences on both sides of the fertility fence.  In that moment, I was hopeful that my time on the infertile/subfertile side of the fence would be short-lived.  You see, we finally found the answer, we thought, to our fertility struggles.  I was diagnosed with very low progesterone and given a prescription for 4 HCG shots, timed specifically to induce my body to create the required progesterone.  A blood test the next month revealed that the hormones were responding exactly as they should.  Our doctor told us to expect to be pregnant within three months.

Except now it's month 4.  Which, I realize in the grand scheme of times that people have waited for things isn't really that long.  But I've already waited 8 years plus 4 months....and that seems plenty long enough to me.

It is difficult to live in a place that hopes for a child, but does not grow jealousy; that longs for a child, but does not cast away the hope after months and years of waiting.  There is a delicate tension that is so easy to lose hold of between waiting and quitting; hoping and turning away. 

As much as we long for more children, there are those moments where I think it would be best and easiest to just never try again; to completely remove ourselves from the game by stopping the charting and waiting game.  To just be.  To live with our two children without the hope or effort of more.  To go to Disneyworld like everyone else and stuff our disposable income into having fun and ignoring that gaping hole of the family we thought we'd have.  To remove ourselves from the pain of hearing "no" everyone month by stopping the asking. 

If I, the sullen child, stomp off declaring, "Fine then! I don't want another one anyway!" then it's me that gets to be back in control, if only in my delusion.  Because in my fallen nature, I want nothing so much as to be in control.  I want the injections I've taken for four months to be predictable and work exactly as they should.  I want 2+2 to equal 4.  But children are nothing if not illogical.  Why should the getting of them be logical?

I think the place I should stay is right in between throwing my hands up in disgust and pining the day away.  Cari wrote so beautifully about the cross we carry when we struggle with infertility. 

I have yet to find a way to balance on the tightrope between what I want and what I have.  I struggle to quiet the longing long enough to find the blessing in my day. 

This has been more apparent lately as the school year gets started and activities increase with our wonderful homeschool community.  As I sat in a meeting last night with other families planning our activities and logistics for the coming year, I'm pretty sure every mother under the age of 40 was expecting...and a couple over 40 were as well (this is probably the exaggeration of my id, but it seemed to be the case!).  One woman I sat near recently had a hysterectomy, so I'm fairly confident there were at least the two of us not in the family way.

I was surrounded by the culture of life in all its beauty, sacrifice, and joy, and I almost choked on it.  This is where the faking it til you make it that I've talked about comes in.  Mostly when I was surrounded by those women expecting their sixth, seventh, eighth, or more, I just wanted to cry.  But not necessarily for the reasons you would think.  While we deeply desire to grow our family, I do find joy in this news from my friends.  Sometimes I have those moments where I think, "really? Why can't I have another one?"  But that's most certainly not directed at taking anything from another.  It's more of a "why can't it be me too?" instead of a "why can't it be me instead?" that I feel.

What stings is when I feel shielded from the news.  When I feel like everyone has known and shared in the joy, but they felt to guard it from me to spare me.  That is a compassionate thought, but I'm sure to discover the news at some point, and it only serves to isolate me when it isn't shared.  It is likely I will have very little of this joyful news of my own to share, sharing in yours is a gift.

There are so many ways I feel like I don't belong in this world of abundant-fertility homeschooling families.  I've seen close friends cringe as they share their news.  That holding back is a reminder of the divide that stands between us.  A divide that doesn't need to be.

Many of those women who were expecting have dealt with incredible hardships in the having of children.  They have lost many children through miscarriage, they have suffered with health problems that have made the child they carry a much longed-for and long-awaited blessing, they might even be risking their life to bring that child into the world.  That knowledge brings us together.  We might have different numbers in our cars, but there is so much more the same between us than different.

We've both lost children, we've both had medical complications, we've both known the struggles of breastfeeding or potty training.  We are both the same in so many more ways than we're different.  If I turned away every time it was hard to be me, I never would have known that, and I never would have had the blessing of these beautiful women in my life.

To those women I say, please share your joy.  It gives me something to hope for.  Please share your excitement, it reminds me this struggle is worth it.  Please trust me to be gracious with your news, and forgive me if I'm not.  You are so dearly loved, and I'm so thankful to share in your life.