#choicemom

[unlikelywallflower]

letter to a new mama: on the first six months

This is (some of) the advice I actually wish I’d gotten in the first six months, or did get and feel like is worth passing on:

1. Put your own oxygen mask on first.

You will feel guilty doing this, because you have been socialized and told to believe that you must sacrifice your entire being to this tiny, wailing creature whom you have just met. Obviously, you should meet your baby’s needs as much as you’re able. Please remember, though, that you not only count, too, but that your well-being is integral to your baby’s. I had to remind myself of this dozens of times a day, every time I wanted to do anything for myself (including going to the bathroom).

2. People will tell you to enjoy every moment. You won’t.

You will also feel guilty about this, because some Instagram mommy influencer told you life with your baby should be all sunshine and rainbows and cooing and cuddles. Maybe you are somehow a magical unicorn who can enjoy existing on a total of 3 hours of fractured sleep, and alternating between being sucked on and spit up on all day, but probably you are not. Have compassion for yourself.

3. It’s okay if it’s hard.

I’ll say it again: IT’S OKAY IF IT’S HARD. It’s okay to say it’s hard. It is hard. See: enjoying every moment.

4. It really will get better.

People will look at you with your vacant expression and bleary eyes and tell you that it will get better, that it did for them around five, or six, or seven months. In your severely sleep-deprived state, you will not believe them, but it will. It really will. Caveat: my little one is just shy of a year old as I write this. It has been and will be hard again since the first six months, but in different ways. 

5. No dogmatic way of doing anything is worth your well-being.

This could go for anything to do with feeding, sleeping, playing, etc. The world is chock-full of dogmas to buy into. I was extremely attached to breastfeeding exclusively, for a few reasons: first, I honestly think breastfeeding is a mundane miracle. I often had (and still do have) the thought that I cannot believe how cool it is that my body makes food for my baby. Second, we’re still in a pandemic and I wanted to pump her full of as many antibodies as I could possibly provide. Third, even though I am a fierce supporter of the idea that “fed is best”, underneath that, I’d still bought into the well-meaning promotion of breastfeeding as the ultimate pinnacle of motherhood that the dogma of being a “natural mama” promotes. All of this combined to mean that I pushed real hard to keep exclusively breastfeeding, when combo feeding likely would have saved me a lot of heartache. Feed your baby in whatever way works for you. Do what you need to in order to maximize sleep quantity and quality for everyone. Do what you need to do to survive.

6. Every tiny thing will seem monumentally important. It isn’t.

You will not realize these things are not actually important until much later, even if you tell yourself now. Real-life example I bought into (momentarily): having to have a sparkling clean bathtub before I bathed my baby in it, every time. This is absolute nonsense. Nonsense!

7. If your love for your newborn isn’t there right away, it will come.

It does not make you any less of a mother/parent if your love for your baby is not instantaneous and all-consuming. I spent a lot of time in therapy discussing how afraid I was that I wouldn’t explode with love the second I laid eyes on my newborn, and in the end, came to terms with the fact that I might not, and it would be perfectly normal if I didn’t. When the time came, I didn’t, and I was a bit sad about it, but the love did come and grow over time. Interestingly, even if my mind hadn’t caught up, my body did love her from the start; I instinctually showered her with kisses and cuddles and sang to her and did all the things I’d imagined.

8. Read Precious Little Sleep. 

I’m like a walking infomercial for this book. Seriously. There are many books about baby sleep out there, and most of them will have you believing that you will ruin (ruin!) your child’s entire life if you do not do things exactly as they say (see: dogma). Thank God for my friend who told me to read this book, which is not only not dogmatic, it’s hilarious, and it lays out a bunch of different options for how to teach your child to sleep, so you can choose based on what feels right for you and your parenting values. Also, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that despite all my pre-baby reading, I didn’t really know that newborns should only be awake around 45mins at a time, and need a lot of help to fall asleep. If I’d read this book earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time, frustration, and sleep.

9. Learn how to ask for and accept help.

I am particularly bad at this (see: Strong Independent Woman™), to the point that neighbours would see me struggling with large heavy loads of things while I was pregnant and say with exasperation “let us help you!”. It’s still hard for me to ask for and accept help, but I’m getting better at it, because there is literally no other way to function as a new parent, let alone a single one in a pandemic.

10. Some people will show up in the way you’d hoped, some won’t. Have compassion.

Almost every parent I’ve met had the realization after they had their first baby that they wished they’d been able to do so much more for their new parent friends than they had. I was no exception. You simply can’t know how vulnerable a time it is, how much every little check-in and meal drop-off matters, until you’ve been through it yourself. Have compassion for yourself for the people in your life for not having known. Everyone is dealing with their own shit and doing the best they can.

[mdesenna]

I'm here. I've just been working. And soaking in all the stresses. Swimming in it til my fingers are all pruny. 🍇🌊💃🏻💋xo #piecesofm #digitalmama . . . I'm mustering up the courage to talk about hard things. To be able to speak freely, as I currently see it, is a privilege. And I'm not referring to hate speech. I'm talking struggle speak. It's the kind of content I relate to most and the kind I hope I can share without regret. More soon. 💋xo . . . #momblogger #mumlife #workingmom #girlboss #momlife #girlpower #momtogs #momstyle #thehappynow #clickinmoms #momswithcameras #momblog #momboss #beautyblogger #motherhood #mom_hub #momof3 #motherhoodrising #styleblogger #diymom #independentmom #choicemom https://www.instagram.com/p/BxvBNhngUyK/?igshid=79z56xttacxr

[wearego]

Reasons NOT to have a kid: Only Parent Edition

Before I decided to have a kid, I was actually pretty aware that most of what I spent my days thinking about and focused on was bullshit. But if you YOU are focused on something in your life that is not bullshit, AND you are considering becoming a single only parent, then that should give you a moment of pause because being an only parent necessarily splits that focus. 

When I thought about how hard being an only parent would be, I thought about how wistfully all of the women I know who are mothers speak about Free Time. I imagined all of my Free Time being violently ripped away from me. And that made me very anxious. Then I thought about what I did with all that freedom. Binge watch Netflix. Burrito & Movie Saturdays. Kindle & Beer Sundays. Binge watch Netflix. 

Oh my god, I miss those things!! But you can see how I might have thought burritos and Netflix weren’t worth giving up my opportunity to have kids. When I imagined my life ten years in the future (when I will be approaching 50), the idea that all that “freedom” was still going to be my life practically sent me running to the fertility doc. But if there had been something truly important to me at the center of my life, it might have been a different story. 

A friend who has three kids gave me a piece of advice when I was trying to make this decision. He said I needed to be aware that my career would probably stagnate for a few years after becoming a mom because I wouldn’t have the time to “go the extra mile” that gets promotions. I thought that was just dandy because I already don’t have the ambition that gets promotions. Now I have an excuse. 

So here it is exactly three years later, and I’m in the exact same position at work. I see a movie in the theater no more than twice a year. I did binge watch the new Gilmore Girls episodes last week with friends, but I had to take advantage of a good friend to do it. Three years ago, I was willing to risk my Phantom Career and Free Time on the chance that my kid would be pretty cool. It worked out. 

If you are thinking about becoming an only parent, what do you want your life to be in 10 years? Do you want to be doing the same things you are now? Do you want to be doing MORE of what you are doing now? If so, your decision might be a lot more complicated. 

[unlikelywallflower]

on tumbling deeper into uncertainty

My second date with Mr. Gigantic Blue Eyeballs happened in that anticipatory window of not knowing yet whether I was pregnant or not. The Open Roof Film Fest’s closing night film (Booksmart) and the conversation were both great, and, similar to our first date, I wasn’t sure how he was feeling about things. I tried flirting in small ways (a hand on the arm here, a look there), to no response, but again, the date kept going, so...On our way to get a drink afterward, I shared with him what I’m up to in terms of baby-making, and he was unfazed; he had even agreed to be a donor himself for a couple he’s friends with. After drinks, he walked me home, and it was the most friendly but perfunctory, unromantic goodbye I’ve maybe ever had. A couple of days later, I put my cards on the table, messaging him to be clear that I was interested, but didn’t want to make any assumptions about how he felt, and he let me know that he, despite wishing it were otherwise so, did not feel a romantic connection. So I thanked the universe and my matchmakers for bringing me the closest I feel like I’ve ever come to what I’m looking for in a match, and continued on my way.

The second miscarriage a few weeks later was, in many ways, easier than the first. It was earlier, at only 5.5 weeks, which meant I’d had less time to get used to the idea, less time to get attached, and hadn’t gotten far enough along to see a heartbeat on that first ultrasound. Though it was harder to allow myself to get excited when I saw that positive pregnancy test again at the end of August, I willed myself to do it, knowing that that joy was under the detachment somewhere anyhow, and that it wouldn’t make it any easier if I remained detached and the outcome I feared came to pass, again. And then, it did.

It was also harder the second time around. To have my hopes dashed, again; to be suffering through physical pain along with the heartbreak; to live with the fear that now, it wasn’t necessarily just some fluke, but a pattern. I rallied the troops of my support network, but also downplayed it, telling myself that it was easier and that I would make it back to being okay faster this time.

Just over a week after it happened again, I had my first appointment with the second of the two specialists to whom I’d been referred. The first one had declared me “exceedingly normal”, at least from a hematological point of view. The rheumatologist spit rapid-fire questions at me for half an hour until my nerves were fried and overwhelmed, then sent me out to get an X-ray and have blood drawn for a plethora of tests. My grief then mutated into fear: what if one of these tests was positive and I had a serious, lifelong auto-immune disease? What if I had to take major drugs, like prednisone, which basically made me too agitated to function the last time I was on it? What if I had a complicated, risky pregnancy that required intense medical follow-up? What if I had no choice but to give birth in a hospital, surrounded by stranger doctors? What if this all took months to figure out and I had to wait to try to conceive again? It took a considerable amount of willpower to remember that a healthy baby is the goal, and that regardless of whether it was my original desire or intention, I would do anything I needed to in order to get there, including way more medical intervention than I’d ever wanted.

And then the results came back, all of them negative save for the same imprecise umbrella test that had given us reason to believe there was an issue in the first place, meaning I don’t have an auto-immune disease that could impact pregnancy, they have no idea what is causing the miscarriages, and I’m free to try again. The relief was palpable and sweet, but not immediate; it was the sheer helplessness I felt at the lack of answers that welled up first. I hadn’t really wished for a positive result, but it would have given me something concrete to treat, to manage, to do something about. And that, truly, is all I want right now—just something I can do, something I can control, something that will help stave off this feeling of helplessness. Once the relief had surfaced, then subsided, the grief I’d pushed down came back up to be released. So I am back, now, to finding pockets of joy whenever/wherever I can, and controlling the only thing I can—taking gentle, compassionate care of myself, and allowing others to do the same.

[unlikelywallflower]

on the magic of asking and allowing people to show up

The day the second miscarriage started, as I sat on the floor of my bedroom, weeping and waiting to head to my fertility clinic for an ultrasound, hoping that somehow the bleeding would resolve itself like it had the previous week, but knowing in my core that it was already too far gone, one of my closest friends called me. She was actually calling me for support with an issue she was dealing with, but she dropped it immediately when she heard me crying. When she asked who was bringing me to the clinic, I answered that I knew my brother would if I asked, but that he’s not really the person I lean on for these kinds of things. My brother and I are close in that we would do absolutely anything for each other, but we are not super close emotionally. 

My friend gave me a gift that day, though. She said that maybe, if I gave him a chance, he would show up in exactly the way I needed. And so I did: I called him, and he dropped everything to bring me to the clinic, to hug me, to listen to me cry, to wait with me for the interminable half hour between the ultrasound and seeing the doctor to confirm that the worst had happened again, to drive me to pick up gluten-free vegan pizza and ice cream, and to hang out with me while I ate it. There was no question for him that he would do this for me, and while I never really questioned that he would, I hadn’t yet made space for him to be able to show up for me in this way, until my friend gave me the blessing of that gentle challenge. I would say I’m better than average at asking for help, given the work I’ve done and the community I have the privilege to be surrounded by, but it still isn’t easy. Sometimes, though, people are just waiting to be asked, and are happy to have the opportunity.

In the intervening weeks, I tended my wounds, protected my heart by only bingeing happy/comedic TV and movies, and tried to move forward. I was stuck, though. Even the relief of the negative auto-immune test results did not unstick me from the gloom—the pall I felt had come over me of being, now, someone who had had not one unlucky miscarriage, but two. When I travelled to Montreal to see my guru and receive blessings, I thought it would be a moment of joy amidst the near-constant feeling of trudging through my daily life. But when I stood in front of her, all I could do was weep. All of the grief that I had stuffed down to deal with the anxiety of the tests, the fear of the future, all came to the surface. It was a magnificent release, and incomplete.

The following week, I screwed up the courage to make a request of three close friends. I knew that something more than putting one step in front of the other was required to lift the pall, and I knew that like before, I wanted to mark my period with ritual symbolizing release of the old and making space for the new. Unlike the ritual I marked alone after the first miscarriage, this time I asked my three closest spiritually-minded/witchy femme friends to engage in ritual with me. It felt scary to ask, even though I knew they would be happy to show up for me in this way. And it felt even scarier to ask that they come up with contributions to the ritual so that I wouldn’t have to plan it all myself.

When my period did start, it was simultaneous grief and joy: grief at what was lost, and that I was having to have a period at all; joy that I was being given this literally fresh start. And then my friends did show up, magically and in full femme force. It was one of the most transformative rituals I’ve experienced; to be surrounded by friends, not to mention the fierce women in my lineage that we’d called in, to allow myself to completely let go in their presence, to say goodbye and invite in the new. It felt like a literal weight lifted, and a week later, I find myself smiling and laughing and bouncing now, in a natural way that has none of the compulsion I’d been feeling before.

A friend of mine who had two miscarriages before her first baby (and another later on) once told me, after my first miscarriage, that she felt like having miscarriages makes you, in a weird, fucked up way, a deeper person. I think that is true, likely, of anyone who has experienced loss; our hearts break, and they consequently open wider to both the pain and the joy. I am laughing more now, and I am still crying. When I can allow this to happen without getting freaked out that it means I’m not okay, instead knowing that it simply means I am living as I promised myself I would—open-heartedly—it is then that I know I really am, and will be, okay.

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 5b: on surrendering, again, and a new arrival

(This is a continued catchup of events from July 2020 to today. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5a.)

We packed up and went for what felt like the longest ride of my life, with contractions coming on and nowhere to go. As we entered the hospital, I was hit with the hustle and bustle of it all, the people in scrubs, the industrialness of it: it was everything I hadn’t wanted. I turned, sobbing once again, to my friend, and melted down, blubbering “I don’t want to be here”. She held me while I cried, hanging onto her in my bathrobe and flip flops in the hospital lobby, until I could surrender to what was happening, what I’d chosen as my next right step, and we went upstairs.

After my my midwife broke my waters and they came out clean, active labour came on pretty quickly. I tried and failed to get comfortable in the beautiful but poorly designed tub in my room. The next contraction that came as I was making my way back to bed was enough to put a look in my eyes that made it pretty clear to both me and my midwife that the next right step was an epidural. I really hadn’t wanted one, but there was simply no option left: my tank was empty, and I needed sleep if I was going to make it through active labour.

Sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, hunched over and clutching my friend’s elbows for dear life, riding out intense contractions while trying to sit perfectly still, was one of the hardest physical things I’ve done in my life, but 20 minutes later, when the anesthetist came back, his prediction had come true: he was my new best friend. Epidurals are FUCKING MAGIC. I was under the mistaken impression that I was going to be numb from the waist down, but instead it was the most curious sensation of being able to feel pressure but not pain. In “natural” circles, epidurals get a bad rap, and I had bought into this with my desperate dreams of a fully “natural” birth, but I am so, so grateful I had the option. (The idealization of a “natural” birth is so problematic that it’s hard to swallow now how deeply I was invested in it, but that's a whole other post…)

I slept through most of active labour, waking only when my fetal heart monitor needed to be adjusted. Sometime in the early morning hours, my midwife and student midwife had to leave after having been awake for 24 hours, and a new midwife arrived. The next few hours were a blur: I spiked a fever from the epidural, kicking off the Covid protocol and a round of antibiotics; they gave me oxytocin to get me from nine to ten centimetres; I slept some more; then, the time finally came. I was ready to push. My friend put on some Beyoncé and I got ready to meet my daughter.

Many birthing parents describe pushing as their favourite part of labour, and I was no exception. I am an athlete and a yogi, and I know how to isolate specific muscles to get a job done. Finally, I had something active to do that I had some control over, and after having slept a few hours with the blessed relief from pain, I had energy. At some point during a break between pushes, I turned to my friend and said, “this is awesome!” The midwife kept telling me to hold my breath while I pushed, but my conditioning to be compliant was so strong even in this most fierce moment that I couldn’t tell her I had zero intention of doing that. Instead, I did as I’d intended, which was to use my breath, but I exhaled quietly so she wouldn’t hear me, which my friend thought was hilarious. Regardless, I managed to push quickly enough that my daughter came before the backup midwife even had time to arrive.

I wish I could say that when they laid her on my chest, I was filled with a love greater than I ever thought possible. I wish I could say that I was fully present and drinking in this new life I had literally grown inside me and birthed into the world. I wish a lot of things, but mostly, I felt numb. I don’t remember much about this time, other than trying to still myself amidst the bustling of my midwife stitching me up, the respiratory therapist wiping my baby’s face to clear the meconium, birthing the placenta, the backup midwife arriving and taking her to be examined across the room. But I held her, I breathed her in, I felt her sucking on my cheek and knew it was time to feed her. I stared at her in relief and awe and numbness and thought, “holy shit. You’re here.”

A few hours later, we were out and home with my parents; bruised, battered, bloody, exhausted beyond belief, and ready to start the next chapter.

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 5a: on surrendering, again, and a new arrival

(This is a continued catchup of events from July 2020 to today. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.)

Here is how I visualized my labour and birth going (don’t laugh): after a restful night’s sleep, I would wake up in the morning a few days before my due date to the first twinges of early labour. I would excitedly call my friend and birth partner and let her know things were starting. I would go for a long walk in the forest to help my body ease into active labour. I would then go home, bake a gluten-free vegan “groaning loaf”, and set up my bedroom for the birth. Then, my friend would arrive and fill my birth tub for me, and I would alternate between the tub, walking, yoga, and resting on the couch as labour progressed. Active labour would come on within a matter of hours, I would call my primary midwife, and she and her student would come over. My friend would support me through contractions by rubbing my back, having me hold on to her, and cheering me on, and I would be primal, powerful, and moving naturally into whatever position my body needed in each moment. We would all enjoy the groaning loaf together (me in between contractions), and when the time came (which it would fairly rapidly), I would transition to the bed and give birth on hands and knees to a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Very little of reality matched this vision. 

Here��s how it actually went down: six days past my due date, I got my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, ate a few too many cookies with eggs in them (which I normally avoid), saw my acupuncturist, and saw my midwife for a stretch and sweep (which, given I was only about half a centimetre dilated, was more like just irritating my cervix). When I laid down for bed that night, I started having what felt like intense gas pains, which I attributed to the cookies. They came and went and the little sleep I got was fitful. The next day when I got up, the pains were thankfully gone, and I enjoyed a long walk around the neighbourhood with my mom, chuckling at the stares my gigantic belly was getting. I also had another ultrasound; at this point I’d had so many (“advanced maternal age” + overdue = a million ultrasounds) that the techs were joking that they hoped they would never see me again. That night when I laid down, I had what felt like menstrual cramps, on and off all night, again enough to keep me from sleeping. The next night, those cramps progressed to pain beyond what I’ve felt before (and I’ve been on prescription muscle relaxants for cramps). At some point, I asked for another stretch and sweep to get things moving faster, but my backup midwife explained that all the babies were being born and no one would be available to be with me if I went into active labour at that point. I mostly had been able to avoid feeling sorry for myself for being single throughout this process, but I cannot describe the loneliness of being awake and alone for the third night in a row, in pain, anxious, and exhausted. Nothing my friend and I had talked about in terms of her being my birth partner had included what might happen if I was in prodromal (“false”) labour for days, and there was no sense in her being as exhausted as I was when things finally ramped up.

After the third night of little to no sleep, my friend came and set up and filled the birthing pool. Being in the pool felt heavenly; I was able to rest a little in between the contractions, which were picking up, albeit not very steadily. At one point we went for my envisioned forest walk, which had the opposite effect I had intended: my contractions stopped completely. At that point, given it looked like things were going to take a while yet, my friend went home for a bit to get some rest in her own bed and see her family. Every time I tried to rest, even with Tylenol and Gravol and propping myself up on pillows, the contractions would come on even more intensely. 

Around midnight that fourth night, the contractions had intensified enough in duration and frequency that I called my backup midwife (my primary midwife was off call). We spoke for a while, with her listening to me during my contractions. She didn’t think I was in active labour yet, so she recommended I try to get more rest, which after three nights and countless unsuccessful attempted naps, was incredibly frustrating. I called my friend, realizing at this point that I could no longer be by myself, but she didn’t pick up. Panicking, dialing her number over and over, feeling helpless and alone, I started to think I would maybe have to call my mom, but eventually, my friend did pick up and she came over. I alternated between being in the pool, which was soothing to the point of slowing my contractions, and getting out so they would pick up again. In between contractions when I was out of the pool, we played Quirkle and I read. No one felt like baking a groaning loaf. By the time my midwife’s student called and said I could come to the clinic if I wanted, it felt like there was no longer a point. They said my backup midwife would call to make a plan for the evening a little later.

In thinking about what I would want that plan to look like, I realized I’d hit a wall: I’d then gone four days and nights without any real sleep, and while I could handle the pain of the contractions easily enough, I had absolutely no juice left. I was truly and utterly exhausted. I knew, without a doubt, that even if I went into active labour that very minute, I wouldn’t have the energy to make it through and deliver my baby safely. I turned to my friend, sobbing, and just said, “I’m so tired. I think we have to go to the hospital.” (to be continued)

#singlefeminist #choicemom #singlemombychoice #infertility

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 4: on stretch marks and liminal spaces

(This is a continued catchup of events from July 2020 to today. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

Sometime around 35 weeks I got my long-awaited, albeit brief “golden period”: a few weeks where the insomnia eased, I slept better than I had since before I’d conceived, and was feeling good (if heavy) in my body. 

By this time, my belly was huge, and I had the stretch marks to show for it. I vacillated between hating these glaring marks stretching themselves across my abdomen like I’d been clawed by an angry tiger, and being immensely proud of them and what they signified: I—and my baby—had made it this far. I had a couple of friends help me with a pregnancy photo shoot, and while I did cry at the vulnerability of having someone see my tiger marks, and had a hard time looking at the photos of them after, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the photos in which I was clothed, radiant, caressing my belly full of a baby I had wished for, longed for, cried for, and prayed for for years. I framed one of them and hung it in our bathroom to commemorate this slice of my life full of possibility and trepidation.

I didn’t have a car and wasn’t taking public transit at this point (see: pandemic), so I was walking everywhere, and the belly garnered me quite a bit of kindness from lovely strangers. There was the lady who, upon seeing me trudging down the street lugging my grocery-laden granny cart behind me, said “you got this, mama!”; the man who saw me resting on a post at a street corner (after a looong walk uphill) and asked if I was okay, leading me to burst into grateful tears; the countless times neighbours saw me struggling (because asking for help is something I was/am still definitely working on) and came to my rescue. There were, of course, also the times when there were no neighbours or kind strangers around to witness the moments of loneliness and exhaustion, when having lugged the groceries home once again, I would think to myself, “if I had a partner, they’d be doing this for me.” If the Land of Infertility was an isolating place, being single and pregnant in a pandemic was even more so.

As I got closer and closer to my due date, I began to feel this strange sense of existing in several places at once. I was in the liminal space of waiting: one toe into (at least the idea of) motherhood, one foot in the “before”. Life hadn’t really felt like “before” for over a year, and this pandemic pause made the sense of liminality all the more poignant.

One way or another, I was going to get to meet this baby in the next few weeks. Amidst all of my walking (endlessly around my neighbourhood, up and down stairs, or with one foot on the street, one on the curb—whatever people said could help get my body ready and bring on labour), I had this grand idea of spending a day in meditation, communing with Cupcake and declaring my sense of readiness. knew I would never feel truly ready—no one can ever be ready—but I was, and felt, as ready as I would ever be. I’d done all the things that felt necessary, and I was feeling good. I had read the childbirth books, had made a birth “preferences” list (which if you know me, you know was obviously quite extensive and detailed), had visualized my ideal birth. There were moments of terror at what could go wrong, but they were more and more dominated by visions of holding my newborn babe to my chest—weeping, in bliss, both, or something else entirely; of actual excitement at welcoming this being into the world; of awe at seeing God in the form of this baby I’d grown; of thanking my baby for choosing me as her mother.

I told myself (literally wrote it in my journal) that whatever came in labour and birth, I would ride the waves, surrender to the power of my body, and go with whatever was needed. “I’ve got this”, I wrote. In the end, though almost nothing about my labour and birth turned out how I imagined it, all of that was true.

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 3: on the fallacy of the “golden” trimester

(This is a continued catchup of events from July 2020 to today. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.)

Many people refer to the second trimester as “the golden period” of pregnancy when the ���morning” sickness has gone down and you have energy again, before the exhaustion of the third trimester hits. Having freshly gone off the extra progesterone and gained somewhat of an emotional equilibrium, I was very much looking forward to this respite. At 12 weeks, I somehow managed to make it through leading four straight full days of an online executive leadership development program, feeling bone tired and just sick enough to feel like throwing up but not be able to, and couldn’t wait for relief. Then I got the call and the floor fell out from under me: my mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

This was my mom’s second cancer. When I was a teenager, she survived non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and I effectively shut down emotionally and threw myself into extra-curricular activities to avoid dealing with my  fear. This time, I was alone and pregnant in a pandemic, and terrified all over again: that I couldn’t be there for her through this in the way I wanted to, given the pandemic; that she wouldn’t be able to be there for me throughout my pregnancy; and most terrifying of all, that I would lose my mom before she’d even get a chance to meet her granddaughter. 

Reassured that they’d caught it early, I focused on what I didn’t have the capacity to do the first time around: being there for my mom, in whatever limited ways I could. This was hard to do from a distance, and it was hard to know what support I could provide that would actually feel helpful for my mom. Eventually, as a way of feeling connected, we landed on watching TV “together”: eschewing the fancy “watch party” apps, we would text “3, 2, 1, play” and start the same show at the same time and text each other throughout—something we still do to this day. It was a way of feeling connected without actually being physically together, and without putting any pressure on my mom to talk about anything she didn’t feel like she could.

Not entirely unrelated, I’m sure, the other less-than-fun (to say the least) thing that re-announced itself in my second trimester was insomnia. Almost as soon as the first trimester can’t-keep-my-eyes-open exhaustion wore off, I started waking up in the middle of the night and just staying awake, for hours. It felt like a cruel twist of fate that at this critical time when I was gearing up for the most exhausted I’d be in my life, when everyone was oh-so-helpfully telling me to “sleep while you can!”, my body was saying “nope!”. So I (mostly) learned to cope, got a lot of reading done, and napped as much as I could. Many, many people joked to me during this time that the insomnia was “practice” for when I would have a newborn, which made my weary brain want to punch them in the face (sorry, if that was you; I know you meant well).

My anxiety over whether this pregnancy would “stick” continued to fade, and after my Pregnant Chicken newsletter told me at 14 weeks that my baby was the size of a cupcake, Cupcake the baby became. While the anxiety never really went away, once I could feel Cupcake kicking inside me, things got markedly easier. They were like reassuring little reminders that the baby was there, alive, growing and thriving. As second trimester passed into third and the baby grew, Cupcake would have what we lovingly referred to as “dance parties” on a regular basis, which delighted me to no end. Hearing about them secondhand also delighted my mom, who after an agonizing ordeal of medical errors and multiple surgeries, had made it through and been given the all clear, without even having to go through chemo or radiation. There were so many reasons I was excited to have this baby, but high among them was fulfilling the dream of giving my parents a grandchild. 

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 2: on the third time hopefully being the charm

(This is a continued catch-up from August 2020. You can read “catching up again part 1″ here.)

I was convinced, on the second round after starting to try again, that I could not get pregnant. I was certain that any symptoms I was feeling were, as usual, side effects of the progesterone. So when the first stick I peed on showed an extremely faint but decidedly discernible second line, I spent the day mostly in disbelief, looking at it over and over, my heart skipping a beat, assuming I was imagining things. On the second day, the line grew a tiny bit darker, and I let myself feel a tiny bit excited, told SD1, and told my family by sending a text asking “who wants to see the cutest photo ever?”. My brother and dad answered, obviously expecting another photo of my cat and not a photo of a positive pregnancy test. My mom, who at any given moment is usually within arms’ reach of her Macbook, iPad, Apple watch, and iPhone, was out of the house and the last to answer, so she chimed into the chorus of “OMG! Congratulations!” with “what’s going on?” (“scroll up, Mom”). The next day, I told two of my closest friends. And on the fourth day, I woke up with anxiety worse than anything I’d felt in a long time, convinced that I had already had a miscarriage.

Being pregnant again on the 14th attempt and after two miscarriages was very, very strange. It was clinging desperately to my nausea, hoping against hope that it was in fact the pregnancy hormones rising, and not just some ingredient in the prenatal vitamins causing it. It was practically demanding a relatively unnecessary second blood test just for the tiny bit of reassurance that the hormones were doubling as they should be, even though the hormones did that in the first two pregnancies and those still didn’t end well. It was being elated one second and terrified the next. It was compulsively checking my heart rate on my FitBit to ensure it was still slightly elevated. It was buying a home baby Doppler and setting self-imposed limitations on how often I was allowed to listen to the baby’s heartbeat to reassure myself (side-note 1: the first few times I did this, I mistook my own heartbeat, which the machine was picking up through the veins around the placenta, for the baby’s). It was telling more people than I normally would, because those were all people I would want to know if I had another miscarriage, and what was even the point of going through this alone? It was reading poetry to my little blastocyst (then embryo, then fetus) every night, and waking up at least once every night with anxiety that could keep me up for hours. It was checking the toilet paper every single time I peed, convinced that I would see blood. (Side-note 2: apparently it’s not just anxious pregnant people who’ve had miscarriages who do this; I know at least one friend who did this too.) 

It was sending screenshots from the Bump app of what foodstuff my embryo was the size of that week to SD1 and my mom, then wondering if it was actually even still growing inside of me. It was rejoicing when my nipples start to get sore, because hooray! Another symptom! Of course, for others, it may be none of these things or all of those things and more. For me, it was all of it and then some.

It was hard to distinguish, while on the progesterone, what was emotional side effects, what was simply heightened anxiety, and what was pregnancy hormones. Crying multiple times a day was normal during that time, as was going from zero to 100 over something relatively insignificant a colleague would say or do. Once I stopped the extra hormones at 10 weeks in (when the placenta had formed enough to produce its own progesterone), however, it became very clear: it was the drugs. Holy shit, y’all. The jump from hot mess to (relatively) stable was swift and merciful.

Once I passed my “balloon date” (this is apparently what it’s called when one pregnancy surpasses the length of previous pregnancies), and especially once I passed the magical holy 12-week mark (when the chance of miscarriage goes down precipitously), I began to feel like maybe, just maybe, this one might work out. Connection with my little fetus still felt somewhat fleeting, and most of my pregnancy-related attention was focused on anxiety about the potential for another loss, anxiety about what it might be like to give birth and live through my fourth trimester in a pandemic, and clinging to any markers of progress (ultrasound photos, hearing the baby’s heartbeat, and produce comparison baby size updates included). All I could do was take it one day (/hour/breath) at a time, and surrender to the process as much as possible.

[unlikelywallflower]

catching up again part 1: on getting back on the starting block

It was wild to even think about trying to conceive a human being in the middle of a global pandemic, but I was sick of waiting and none of us knew when this might end, so when my fertility clinic opened again, I (cautiously) jumped at the chance.

SD1 was a gracious godsend of a human being throughout the NTU ordeal (a reminder, since it’s been a while: NTU=Not The Unicorn). When NTU and I fell in love and I told SD1 that I wanted to pause our baby-making activities and focus on my relationship and trying with NTU, SD1 was nothing but supportive and happy for me. When NTU and I fell apart and I told SD1 what had happened, he was nothing but supportive (and appropriately aghast). And when I went back to SD1 to say that I was ready to try again, there he was, affable and open as always, and more than okay with resuming our non-traditional baby-making activities.

Starting again meant going back on several meds, including progesterone, which has the intention of preventing another miscarriage, and fun side effects that include but are not limited to randomly bursting into tears at the drop of a hat and being irritable AF. If you were ever under the illusion that you had any control over your emotions whatsoever, I recommend adding some extra hormones to the mix and seeing what happens.

Starting to try again felt like the first time all over again. I was hopeful beyond reason, convinced that after so much pain in the last year, maybe this would actually be easy. By easy, I don’t mean that being on that many medications is easy, or trying to conceive for the 13th time after two miscarriages is easy, but easy like maybe it would happen right away. Easy like given it’s a pandemic and my fertility clinic was operating under much more restrictive safety guidelines, I was subjected to way less invasive medicalization: instead of between 5 - 8 days of daily blood draws and transvaginal ultrasounds, and an injection to make me ovulate when I was going to anyhow, I did a few ultrasounds at a community clinic the month before to ensure the results lined up with my at-home ovulation tests, then I was left to my own devices (along with the medications) for the next cycle. So once we’d tried again, riding on this hope of “easy”, I scrutinized every symptom, convinced that they meant I was pregnant, instead of just feeling side effects of the progesterone.

When the millionth stick I’d peed on still stubbornly refused to produce a second pink line, I was devastated. It felt like such a punch to the gut that my story of an easy pregnancy after all I’d been through hadn’t come true, and the extra hormones didn’t help. I began to feel, for the first time on this whole journey, like maybe I was getting close to being done. I’d been through so much pain, and while I am resilient and I always get through it, l felt like a boxer who’d been through round after round, still hanging on despite having been repeatedly beaten to a pulp. In the Land of Infertility, my journey, interminable though it  has seemed at certain junctures, has been a relatively short and inexpensive one; inexpensive both in terms of the actual monetary costs, and in terms of what it has cost me emotionally and physically. That said, I’d been through almost two years of focusing an inordinate amount of time, money, and energy on getting pregnant, at the expense of a lot of the rest of my life. Maybe instead of framing it as giving up, I could give myself the gift of allowing myself to think of it as stepping out of the ring and moving on with my life. What would it be like to date without the insistent and deafening ticking of my biological clock in my ear? What could I devote my energy to if it wasn’t mostly taken up by managing the emotional side effects of fertility meds and the rollercoaster I’d been on for so long? 

While some people might find that thought depressing, or at least sad, I found it incredibly freeing. I was giving myself permission to say that at some point, I could choose to put myself first. I wasn’t saying I was ready to do it right away, or even after a definitive number of future attempts, but I was saying it was a possibility. I did, however, admit to myself that I had maybe one more attempt at “natural” conception in me before I seriously started thinking about IVF. As much as I didn’t want to go through IVF, I had already done the harder part (growing and having the eggs extracted) years ago, and at least it would give me a higher likelihood of both getting pregnant and being pregnant with a genetically normal embryo.

The next round of trying involved even higher doses of medication, tipping the experience from bad to awful. I went home to visit my parents for the first time since the pandemic started during this super-fun time, which was beautiful and overwhelming and wonderful. It also ended in me sobbing hysterically, after my mom innocently raved about the Snoo that my brother’s friend had gotten for their newborn. In her more optimistic world, it was only a matter of time until I would get (and stay) pregnant, but all my drug- and exhaustion-fuelled brain could make of that was the desperate thought that “I should be so lucky as to get to worry what kind of contraption my infant gets to sleep in”. It was not pretty, and it fuelled my thoughts of giving myself an out; I was just so damned sick of putting myself through this.

[unlikelywallflower]

on wrapping up the NTU saga and other pandemic adventures

The first few months of the pandemic were, for me (like for most), a wild ride, made immensely more tolerable by mood-stabilizing supplements and weekly therapy. This therapy that I started in order to help me cope when NTU and I began falling off the rails was (and still is) a godsend as I went through the grief of losing all human touch, of getting to see people unmediated by screens, of the imposed pause in my fertility journey, of the broader terror and loss that hit all of us in our own ways.

As the initial shock of the pandemic wore off and I began to stabilize, I was finally able to grieve the end of my relationship with NTU properly. In other words, I was finally able to feel beyond the anger over how it devolved and ended, beyond the gripping fear of the virus and of lockdown, to the sheer sadness of losing something that had once seemed infinite. We were so happy and so in love, before we weren’t. It was like there were two NTUs: one, the Dr. Jekyll with whom I fell in love, who was incredibly sweet and thoughtful and romantic; and the other, the Mr. Hyde he became. I should be clear: I don’t think NTU is or was evil; the duality just seemed so stark. In the aftermath of my anger at Mr. Hyde, I was left able to finally grieve the love we had and the man I fell in love with, and to realize that despite the seemingly stark duality, the man who ultimately ended our relationship was still a good one. He was just one who was in an immense amount of pain, one whom I couldn’t love the way he needed, and who couldn’t love me the way I was.

I still wonder sometimes if there is anything else for which to take responsibility. Not responsibility like taking the blame or fault for him treating me the way he did, but responsibility like “how could I have responded differently?”. Obviously, everything I did at the time was what I could do in the moment given the tools I had. Looking in retrospect, though, as is typical, I can see some things that I couldn’t see when I was in it. Ironically, I think that if, instead of walking on eggshells and trying to cater to his every mood, I had been able to tell him straight up that he couldn’t treat me like that, had spoken up more forcefully for my needs, things might have gone down differently. I know from the one time I exploded in anger-fuelled truth bombs (“of course I don’t want to marry you right now!!!”), he was hurt but actually appreciated the honesty. Perhaps, if I had done more of that, the difference would simply have been that our relationship would have ended sooner, which might have been a blessing for us both.

Now that the perverse urge to scroll endlessly through my Instagram discovery feed in hopes of seeing a photo of him has abated (having been able to resist just going directly to his open account), the memory of the experience has faded to a kind of surreal quality. Less than six months ago, I still had a diamond ring on my finger, a gift from a man I thought was my person; now, he seems like a stranger I had a passing (if rude) conversation with once upon a time.

And so, I moved through the paces of the pandemic post-breakup, taking walks and petting my newly adopted rescue cat to keep myself relatively sane. In April, two of my closest friends had their second baby. I was supposed to have been a support person at the birth, but given the risks, that obviously ended up not happening. When I saw the photo of my friend with her newborn pop up on my phone, in the middle of leading an online executive leadership development course, I held back tears as long as possible until I could explain that I needed to leave the call for a moment to talk to them. It was an explosion of joy and relief like I have seldom felt in my life. The birth had gone smoothly, and everyone was well.

The sadness and grief came afterward in intense waves mixed in with the joy: sadness that I couldn’t be there to support them, to have that experience, to hold him in my arms on the day of his birth like I had his older brother; sadness that I didn’t know when I would get to meet him in person, when I would get to hold him, or how to support his moms from afar. And so many memories, so much grief from my own fertility journey that I had thought were behind me, but as grief does, got re-surfaced and stirred up by the circumstances. It is a curious thing to feel that much intense emotion ranging from joy to grief at the same time, but all there was to do was to feel it.

This pandemic has driven up so much uncertainty, or rather, highlighted the ubiquitous uncertainty of life and the absurdity of our illusion that we can be certain of anything, ever. Like everyone, and despite the privilege of my condo and my relatively secure job that could easily move online, I was anxious about the uncertainty surrounding the virus: how it spread, how bad it might get, how long we might have to keep the safety measures in place, the safety of my loved ones. Amidst all of this, the uncertainty surrounding when I might be able to start trying to conceive again was pretty high on the list. My clinic was shut down entirely and indefinitely, and I could feel the clock ticking away. I decided at some point, as much as I could, to enjoy the time off the rollercoaster of emotions and hormones that would come with trying again. And I did enjoy that time, as much as is possible during a shut-down, at least enough that when my clinic began seeing patients again in June, I was ready to try again.

[unlikelywallflower]

on running a seemingly endless marathon in the dark

The drugs the fertility clinic has me on were prescribed with the goal of producing two mature eggs instead of one in a given cycle, effectively doubling my chances of pregnancy. The first time I took them, that is exactly what happened: I developed two mature and one smaller, immature follicle. The ensuing pregnancy resulted in hormones so high my doctors were sure, until the first ultrasound, that it was multiples (not that they told me that until it was confirmed that it wasn’t, thank goodness). The second time I took the drugs, I only produced one mature follicle, and got pregnant again. This time, it seems, my body is as desperate as my heart and mind are to be pregnant, because it produced—count ‘em—five eggs (three mature, two maybes). It seems my doctor, seeing this situation developing, had me skip coming to the clinic for a day not because it wouldn’t have been valuable to come, but because the doctor on call that day would have cancelled the cycle and advised me not to try, with the risk of multiples that much higher. So I’m sitting in the consultation room the next day with the nurse, with the choice in front of me: do I take the ovulation shot and go for it, with all the risk involved, or do I let this cycle go? I chose to get the shot, knowing that I could always decide later not to try (never mind that we had already started trying the day before).

I managed to hold off freaking out until I could call my mom when I got home to talk me off the ledge. She calmly asked me questions to help guide me toward my own answer. With only three truly mature eggs, what were the actual chances of all three of them being fertilized? Low, but definitely within the realm of possibility. Given my history of miscarriage, what are the actual chances of all three of them being viable and surviving? Again, probably low. Could I actually see myself with three babies? No f’ing way. Wildly, the previously terrifying thought of twins was starting to look good compared to the—what’s the word for terrifying x 1000? petrifying doesn’t seem strong enough—possibility of three or more. Would I be able to cope with considering multifetal selective reduction? It would be hell, but I’d get through it if it came to it, knowing it’s actually what’s medically best for me and the babies, and knowing that I’m resilient as fuck. What kind of support could I envision being able to count on? More than most new moms, and probably more than many new parent couples, given my community. I was off the ledge, but still teetering, still asking myself if I was so blinded by wanting to be pregnant that I was taking a ridiculously stupid risk.

The ensuing couple of weeks were a wild hormone ride, given the progesterone that had been added to the cocktail—a ride that, cruelly, included exactly the same symptoms as pregnancy (nausea, bloating, constipation, mood swings, delayed period). Even though I felt like hell, I still managed to laugh about it some of the time, including when I took myself to see Brittany Runs a Marathon and had to stop myself from openly (and loudly) sobbing in the theatre because it was just so damn inspiring.

But no matter how many sticks I peed on, it turned out all of the symptoms truly were a result of the progesterone. I joked with SD#1 that either my body or his sperm were so freaked out by that many eggs that they decided to shut the whole thing down. I was upset, but not terribly distraught. It was more like a growing feeling of “I’m not sure how much more of this I can take”. One of my closest friends, who herself is a marathon runner, likened it to running a marathon, in the dark, and you don’t know where the finish line is or how close you are to it, so you have no idea how much longer you’ll have to run or whether you even want to keep running. There’s some shame attached to this for me, having heard other people’s infertility stories and knowing the hell they’ve been through. I honestly don’t know how someone goes through two years of this, even with the support of a partner. I don’t know that I would want to put myself through this again for much longer, or, God forbid, after another miscarriage. The shame tells me that it’s weak to wonder these things, when others have somehow survived what seems like so much more. Maybe I could get through another year of this, but do I want to? Probably not. My friend reminds me that though I may be running a seemingly endless marathon in the dark, the great thing is, I have a whole lot of people on the sidelines cheering for me. So I guess I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep taking the high fives, and we’ll see where it takes me.

[unlikelywallflower]

on coping with one thing after another, and dating again

I am sitting on the grass in the park that just so happens to be across from my therapist’s office, crying and trying to take deep breaths in an effort to stop myself from spiralling (what feels like) completely out of control. Bemoaning the fact that walk-in therapy is not yet a thing, I take the sign of where I happened to land to cry for what it is, and email her to see if I can make an appointment. Miraculously, she has availability that week, and three days later, I am sitting on her couch spilling it all out in between ragged breaths, fat tears streaming down my face. The last few weeks have been one. thing. after. another., and it all feels like too much. And I realize, sitting there, talking with this preternaturally calm and lovely woman who has, at different times, counselled almost all of my closest friends through some of our worst moments, that I have completely forgotten what I just realized and wrote about only weeks ago.

When my period came, I spent the evening in ritual, completing the miscarriage and the pain, suffering, and fear that came along with it. I felt at peace. And then, the “one things” started piling up. Without going into all the details, there were a lot of tests, scary moments, unexpected results, and unknowns, some of which have now resolved themselves, some of which have not. Each time something happened, my anxiety spiked a little, but each time, it went back down, it was over, and I told myself that I was okay. That is, until the test results that sent me spiralling and landed me in that park, while my friend drove across town to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to cry my way home on the TTC. I was not, it seemed, as okay as I had been telling myself I was.

In this session, my therapist is uncharacteristically direct with me: I can no longer afford to let myself spiral. I simply have to stop. This feels akin to being advised to stop breathing. I have lived with this anxiety in my body for so long, wrestled it into seeming submission so often, but just stopping? I know it is possible, have done so much work to cultivate the capacity to do just this, but at this moment, this lifelong pattern feels so habitual, I’m not sure I know who I’d be without it. I am driven to take action, and as long as I have some action to take, I feel some measure of control; when it seems there is nothing left to control, I worry, knowing full well that this accomplishes absolutely nothing.

And so we talk about ways to stop the habit—somatic practices to bring me back to my body, to my breath, to what is actually happening. These are not new practices (I taught yoga for six years, for goodness sake!), but it seems I am still not reliable for using them when I need them most. It feels like I’ve kept the Calm app in business these last few weeks, but it is working. I’m allowing the emotions up when they come up, and stopping the spiral (most of the time). When the next test results came back abnormal on two counts, and I was told I’m being referred to two different specialists, I did cry, but I also laughed, because at this point, it seems somewhat ridiculous. It feels like the universe is repeatedly hitting me over the head with a brick, asking me to learn this lesson, for the umpteenth time, of surrendering to uncertainty. It appears that I am out of actions to take, save for taking care of myself, saying yes to whatever circumstances come my way, and waiting. So that is what I shall do.

Amidst all of this, of course, I continued dating, because, you know, why not? It doesn’t feel like that will be any easier at any point further down this path. These dates included a super-progressive, kind man who after three dates, was just not that into me, not emotionally ready for a relationship with me (or perhaps anyone, right now), freaked out by my pregnancy plans, or all of the above; and a first date with an Australian world traveler who was very nice to look at but for whom my Toronto-bound community-focused self was not a match. And then, for the first time in the 2.5 years since I first met them right after Mr. Almost But Not Quite It and I split up, my matchmakers sent me a promising match: a slightly older man who really wants a family and seemed, at least on paper, to be everything I’m looking for and then some. A good friend Face-stalked him mercilessly on my behalf and got very excited, but I swore her to secrecy on all that she found, since I don’t research my dates ahead of time (preferring, instead, to wait until I can engage with the actual human being behind the profile). Given actual humans were behind this match, and one of my closest people already thought he was amazing, I got more excited for this date than I’d been for a while (while trying to stay in reality about it).

We agreed to meet for dinner, breaking my own no-meals-on-a-first-date policy, but I knew enough about this guy to assume we’d at least be able to make it that long. It was worth the risk: dinner lingered for three hours, including over an hour of talking musicals (yes, I was in heaven), and turned into dessert at a very weird and brightly-lit chocolate cafe with a surly server we managed to turn into a shared joke. I was entranced by his gigantic blue eyeballs (I’m a sucker for nice eyes) and quick wit, and had forgotten what it was like to have that good a conversation on a first date. By the end of the evening, I still wasn’t entirely sure, aside from the fact that we’d been talking that long, how he felt about it. But we shared a long and sweet goodbye and he asked about getting together again. So now I am waiting, mostly succeeding at keeping myself from future-tripping, and very much looking forward to the closing night of Open Roof Film Festival next Wednesday, where we’ll share our second date.

[unlikelywallflower]

on the nonlinearity of grief and the possibility of yes

So it turns out that my hope/prediction that it would keep getting a little easier every day didn’t quite pan out. After the initial waves of sadness had died down somewhat, there were a few days where it did start to feel a little easier every day. The many, many kind and compassionate responses to my last post, including those from so many people whom I hadn’t known had been through this, reinforced my feeling that I wasn’t in this alone and would get through it.

And then, for a while, it didn’t get easier. For a while, I just felt shitty, and irritable, and anxious, and so, so sad. I was stuck in a loop of fear about the future: what if I can’t get pregnant again and that was it? How am I going to survive the anxiety of being pregnant again after that experience? What if I get pregnant again and have another miscarriage? What if I just keep on having miscarriages? After a while, I began to feel impatient; I just wanted to be okay, to be able to tell the world (and my mother) that I was okay, to stop crying so damn much. Through the frustration, I just had to keep reminding myself that grief is not a linear process, that some days would be harder than others, that hormones have a profound impact on the human body, and that everything I was experiencing was normal. Some days, that helped; some days, it didn’t. Some days, I felt at peace in my body; some days I was restless AF, and/or one of the many body or energy work sessions I’ve been to (osteo, massage, reiki) had stirred the energy up to be dealt with and felt in a new way. And eventually, likely due to hormones falling to near-zero levels and my frayed nervous system beginning to heal from the experience, it did start to get easier again.

When I was ready, I began to inquire into the fear. I wrote out all of the stories I’d been telling myself. I began asking myself about the anxiety I was feeling about trying to/becoming pregnant again. (Sidenote: I’ve been reading Brené Brown’s Rising Strong and it couldn’t be more perfect. It turns out that a lot of the things I was already doing, including this inquiry into the emotions/stories, are part of the rising strong process, which both reinforced that I was on the right path and made me proud and grateful for all the tools I’ve gathered and practiced over the years.)

I had been rereading/rewatching (for the umpteenth time) the Hunger Games movies (forgive me this analogy, if you’re not a fan of the series, but they’re one of my go-to’s when I just need to escape). I came to that point when Katniss asks Haymitch to help just get her through the Victory Tour, then they could go home and everything would be fine. Haymitch reminds her that it would never be over; that she would have to keep putting on the show of her love for Peeta until she died. As odd as it sounds to have a moment of revelation from watching the Hunger Games, I did. I realized that the fear that I was worried would not just cast a shadow, but a stranglehold of anxiety over my first trimester was like Katniss’s Victory Tour. Yes, maybe after the first trimester I would calm down a bit, but it’s not like that fear would go away. Plenty of people (including people I know) have lost pregnancies after that point. So maybe I would be okay once I got to hold a healthy baby in my arms? Maybe, for an instant, but it’s not like parents stop worrying about their babies once they’re out of the womb—far from it. I saw, in an instant, a life ahead of me of constant, overpowering worry for my children’s safety—a worry that would not only impact my life, but theirs. And I didn’t want that life.

When I saw my reiki practitioner for a session, the main thing that came up was trust: to trust the journey, trust that I am being supported in ways I can’t even see, trust myself that I am doing all the things that need to be done to feel and navigate my way through this. The message she left me with was this: “let this crack you open”. A week later, in a group workshop with her, I got the clear message to “say yes to all of it”. So this is what I have been practicing: allowing the feelings, including the anxiety, sadness, and frustration, to come up and to be; to even say yes to them and choose what is. I so often add the needless (but oh so human) layer of suffering stories on top of these raw emotions: “I shouldn’t be feeling this way”; “I’m broken irrevocably”; “I’ll never be okay again”; “it’s not fair and I shouldn’t have to be going through this”. It is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over, deeper and deeper each time: adding the story and the suffering on top is what prolongs the pain. I don’t have to cling to that anxiety each time it comes up. I don’t have to suffer through my first (or second, third, or fourth) trimester, or through raising my child. Yes, I will likely have anxious thoughts and sensations come up. Yes, it will be a different experience of pregnancy. But I will get to create what that different looks like.

For now, I am focused on saying yes to the remnants of sadness and pain that continue to surface, to taking care of myself, to integrating this into my story without hanging on to the pain of it, to the feelings of joy that are beginning to return in greater and greater number, to being cracked open to the pain and love in the world beyond myself, and to continuing to let go so that I can create space for the new.

[unlikelywallflower]

on finally getting what I want, personal loss, and collective pain

In addition to the content warning in the graphic, I’d like to preface this with a content “request”: While I appreciate any loving shows of support (via text/email/FB message), I am not looking for any advice or suggestions on how to cope (the only exception, possibly, being if you’ve personally been through this and want to share what you did for yourself).

This is going to be a long one, y’all. Also one that feels strange, because while I do feel more women talk about this more of the time than they used to, it’s probably not something that many people are this public about. That said, sharing my whole journey, for my own processing and shedding light, and for the benefit of those who are dealing with some/any of the same things, is what this blog has been about from the start. So here we go...

What feels like eons ago, but was actually only six weeks ago, I started feeling crampy—like “my period is coming tomorrow” crampy—and immediately went into a tailspin of misery that I was not only going to have to go through it all over again, but was going to have to take more of the fertility drugs whose side effects I still hadn’t recovered from. But then, the next morning, I woke to a 0.4 degree rise in temperature (for those of you who aren’t fertility nerds, that is a fairly sure sign of either a fever or pregnancy, and I definitely wasn’t sick), peed on maybe the fifth stick that week, and for the first time in seven months of trying, saw a very faint second line. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or be terrified or think I was imagining the whole thing, so I decided to keep it to myself for the day. I slept terribly, and then that faint line got a little darker the next morning. I knew then that I was for sure pregnant, and alternated between crying with joy, smiling to myself, singing and talking to my little blastocyst, filling out intake forms for the six different midwifery practices in the city, looking at the stick every five minutes, and feeling more nervous than I had in a long, long time. I also made a list of everyone I was going to tell before making a grand public announcement and at what stage I was going to tell them, and started thinking seriously about how I was going to creatively share the news with each of those people.

That drive to come up with an individually personalized experience for telling every single person in my life got pretty exhausting pretty fast, and was adding to the already mounting swell of anxious thoughts that were continuing to wake me up at 4am: what if it’s twins or even triplets (the fertility drugs did their job, helping me develop two mature and one smaller “immature” follicle)? What if the baby isn’t healthy? What if I have a miscarriage? What if I somehow lose my job and can’t afford this? What if? What if? What if?

I managed to calm down a little after a few days, and started just, you know, telling people. In a time when my feelings about being pregnant were about 60% anxiety, 10% excitement, 15% shame that I was more terrified than elated, and 15% “WTF was I thinking?”, telling people felt like my only real access to feeling excited about this pregnancy. My hCG hormone (the “pregnancy hormone”) was on the very high side of normal on the first couple of blood tests, which did not help the twin anxiety, and at the six-week mark, the nausea and exhaustion kicked into overdrive. (Note to those who don’t know about pregnancy week-counting: they start counting from the first day of your last period, so by the time you find out roughly two weeks after conception, you’re already technically four weeks pregnant). I kept feeling like I should be glowing and walking on air, but mostly I just felt like throwing up and having a nap.

I was so nervous for the first ultrasound at 7.5 weeks, but comforted by SD#1’s presence. And it looked like my prayers had been answered: there was one little blob on the screen; one single, very strong heartbeat. I cried with relief and immediately got on a train home to tell my parents in person (I had already planned the trip; I luckily had a client meeting in my home town the next day). The clinic scheduled me for another (completely medically unnecessary) ultrasound at 9.5 weeks, which I thought about not keeping, but then realized fairly quickly that the reassurance would be comforting—waiting til the standard 12-week screening sounded awful.

After telling my parents, I settled into it a little more, and by nine weeks, had told what felt like a lot of people. No one that I wouldn’t want to know if it didn’t work out, mind you. Then the day of the second ultrasound came. I was, as usual, nervous, but SD#1 was with me again. The ultrasound took an unusually long time, but the technician had a relatively neutral face and was chatting me up about the Raptors, so I wasn’t too worried. That is, until the end, when she said that she wasn’t going to bring my “husband” in to see the results on the screen, because there was something the radiologist needed to look at, and that our nurse would go over everything with us. I immediately knew something was wrong, but tried to remind myself that it could just be some anomaly they needed to look at more closely. As we waited for what felt like an interminable half hour in the waiting room to see the doctor, my thoughts got darker and darker, and were finally confirmed when she told us that the worst case scenario had happened: there was no heartbeat. She rushed through options as I sobbed: wait it out at home (which could take up to two weeks), drugs to stimulate it happening faster (which would still take a few days and may end up having to be taken twice), or a D&C. I opted for the latter, and they scheduled it for three days later; I ended up moving it forward by a day just so I could have it over and done with sooner. I survived a long Uber ride home from the clinic, told my boss I was taking a few days off, called my parents, and they were in Toronto within a few hours. I am really blessed, y’all. I have a lot of really great people in my life who really showed up, texted everyone I’d told so I wouldn’t have to, fed me, cleaned my house, held me while I cried, listened to me talk for hours.

The day of the D&C, I woke up hours earlier than I needed to and cried in bed while I said goodbye to the little embryo inside of me (or fetus; the line when they “graduate” is 9 weeks, which is exactly how far along I was, so it’s a little blurry). The clinic staff could not have been kinder or taken better care of me. When I walked into the surgical suite and got on the table (already doped up on a mixture of Ativan and Gravol), it was freezing and I started shaking uncontrollably, and sobbing. My doctor, for whom I will forever be grateful, slid her stool up to the end of the table, put my feet on her knees and her hands on my feet and just grounded me until the pain meds kicked in enough to put me out. It was the kindest and most compassionate gesture in the midst of one of the most terrible moments of my life. I woke up an hour or so later in the recovery room, and we made our way home. All I could focus on for the rest of the day (in between sleeping off the meds) was that one moment I had been pregnant, and then 10 minutes later, I wasn’t. It was over.

The last few days have been a hazy blend of crying, praying, calm moments of knowing I’ll be okay, a very modest amount of retail therapy, fear of all the things this means for my future, ruminations on the terrible moments, a ton of supportive texts from the wider group of people I’d told, a whole lot of support from my closest humans, and doing/planning all the things I can’t/won’t do when I’m pregnant. I had a poke bowl with double salmon. I had a cider—my first drink since November—accompanied by a charcuterie plate. My dear friend brought me to Wonderland to ride all the biggest rollercoasters, in the front car for maximum terror, where I screamed my grief and fears into the wind. And I finally walked into the tattoo shop, with the encouragement and accompaniment of another dear friend, to get a consult on the tattoo I’ve been thinking about for over a year.

Here are a few of the things I know: as strange as this may sound, I prayed for this. I prayed that if this wasn’t a healthy baby, that my pregnancy would end sooner rather than later, because that felt like it would be infinitely easier to cope with. I know that I am surrounded by people who are going to support me through this. I know that I have a lot of tools, and that I will be okay. I also know that I know a lot of people who have been through a miscarriage, or several, and went on to have healthy babies.

One of the things I’ve said over the past few days is that this feels kind of like a breakup: right now, it sucks and is immeasurably painful and sad. And every day, it will keep getting a little easier. Unlike a breakup, though, which somehow feels intensely personal even though pretty much every single human over the age of 13 on the planet has been through it, this does not feel like a personal experience. Yes, I am personally in pain. But knowing that so many women have gone through their own version of this, that I am somehow part of a collective pain, has been immensely comforting. It’s a shitty club to be in, but God am I grateful not to be in it alone.