Baby

In the past two weeks, three friends have had babies and one has announced her pregnancy. Last night, it was our turn to bring dinner to one of these new families. To say we dragged our asses there is putting a really perky spin on it. On the way over, Adam suggested we sing "We are the losers!" to the tune of "We Are the Champions." I love him for that.

Thankfully, this visit was a blessing in disguise because these babies (twins) were conceived via donor eggs after 3 years of infertility (she is in her early 40s). These people know exactly what it's like to visit your friend's new baby when your own arms are empty. They made it easy for us. We arrived, put the food down, and Jenny said, "How 'bout you wash your hands and pick up a baby?" It was all very matter-of-fact, which broke the ice. And holding that little girl made me feel good, not sad. Like maybe it's possible for me, too. I looked down at her perfect face and thought, "Oh, I hope."

Laugh when you can

I know a woman who, after a really traumatic pregnancy loss, wound up at Chili's one night for dinner. Salt in the wound perhaps, but she was at the mall and there was nowhere else to eat.

So Chili's was doing a little table tent promotion for their signature ribs. It read, "I want my babyback, babyback, babyback..."

She took it home and keeps it on her desk. I love her for that.

Aaaand...crap

So yeah, Adam's grandfather died Saturday. There is so much suffering on top of suffering right now, I just don't know what to do or how to think about it. We're muddling through, one foot in front of the other, but I can't face TTC this cycle in the midst of all this loss. And that feels awful.

Bugaboo

I bought a big red suitcase on Saturday. An optimistic gesture, since one of the pesky residual symptoms of the big post-miscarriage depression is a fucking fear or fucking flying. I was never afraid to fly before. I loved flying. I loved travel. It was one of my great strengths, having such a sporting attitude about adventure.

Now the thought of flying puts my stomach in knots. It's not a fear of terrorists or of falling out of the sky, but of having a big fat panic attack in a sealed container 38,000 feet above the earth. There are drugs for this. I know these drugs work. But my brain likes to invent scenarios in which the drugs suddenly don't work and I'm trapped! I'm the crazy lady on the plane, convulsing in the aisles, disrupting everyone's plans, forcing an emergency landing, sending the FAA into fits.

This will not happen. My rational brain tells my dinosaur brain that while it may send out crazy imaginings that feel real, they are mere obsessive fantasies with no more substance than fog. I have a cross-country flight coming up in less than two weeks and I'm trying to hold on to that fact. And packing drugs.

Yesterday, on the way back from a little Sunday road trip, my parents and I stopped for dinner at a casual restaurant in a fancy town. A really rather cute couple came in pushing a little dumpling of a baby in a Bugaboo stroller that was the same shade of red as my new suitcase. My mom rubbed my arm sympathetically. I didn't fail to note the poignancy of this parallel...that, rather than being whole and happy with a baby and toting my new red stroller (though I would never, ever buy a Bugaboo, nojudgementandallthat), I am left with a phobia and a discount suitcase.

Due date

Today is my due date. The first baby, who might have lived if I didn't have APS.

When we first lost her (and because I can't know for fact, I imagine that she was a girl), I comforted myself with the thought that she wasn't meant to live. "It's usually a genetic defect," intoned the midwife, the obstetrics resident, the nurse. Funny, then, to learn that only half of all miscarriages, maybe sixty percent, are caused by defects. Is it really more efficient to assume that it's just nature's spell-check at work until the miscarriages pile up? For whom?

This was the baby I saw on the ultrasound, the one whose due date inspired real plans. My parents are here now because last July they scheduled a trip to come meet their grandchild. They decided to visit anyway. I needed it.

This is the baby who would have been ruling my days all this time, the one conceived on Adam's birthday. Whose flickering heart reassured me, until I was told otherwise, that she was fine, everything was fine, I was a worrier. The one whose remains were tossed with the day's medical waste. I wanted it done, over, to put the setback behind me. I wish I could bury her. Why shouldn't she have a place in the world?

There is the comforting borrowed Buddhist notion of souls alighting and departing. Did she only need those nine weeks two days to achieve...completion? Was she meant for this brief stay?

And then there's the thought that she wasn't meant for anything. She could have lived, but I have a disease and she died. Or maybe I would have miscarried anyway. Maybe it was genetic.

Some say that she was an embryo, not a person. I don't even know if she was a she. A potential. Isn't this the assumed view? It feels like unearned credit to call her a baby. Maybe we just don't have the words for this in-between life.

There are things I didn't know at the time. I wish I had, but I didn't. She should have been growing inside me all this time. But she died. She has become more real to us in the months since we lost her than she was during the brief time we had her. I am her mother. She was from us.

That look

Like most infertiles and hab-abs, I can spot a pregnant woman like a lion spots wildebeest (which is not to truly compare either of us with anything beastly. It's just that I'm that quick). Adam and I were walking behind a couple last night. Both young, slender, and fashionable. Nothing obvious from the back. But there was something about her walk, a slight rolling back on the heels, her stride just a bit wide. As we passed them I caught a sidelong glance. Sure enough. Pregnant.

That's ok, though. Life isn't a pie. Her pregnancy doesn't make me less pregnant. In fact, right now I'm riding high on the emotional peak that precedes each new cycle. Steeped in my happy hormone bath, I am all optimism, energy, and hope. Peace be with all of you. We are all one. Next week? We'll see...