four months

It was four months ago yesterday that our boy (finally) slipped out of my wife’s body and into my arms. It was a year and four months yesterday that Emmett left. It’s hard to remember the people we were before Bram; it’s impossible to remember the people we were before E. I’ve wanted to parent since I was still a child myself, but even with all of that anticipation, this lived reality is so much better than I could ever have imagined. Our son gets sweeter by the day. He’s a joyful, curious creature, and watching him discover the world is like seeing it anew myself. We definitely want more kids, but right now we’re in love with the dynamic of our little family of three.

I’m thinking through a few big posts (politics this election season, attachment parenting and all this new press it’s getting), but I don’t have time to write one of them today. I thought I’d celebrate this lovely third.of.a.year, though, with a few glimpses into our lives right now, both narrative and photographic.

First the narrative:

• We’ve learned that Bram loves yogic ohms, and if he’s crying and we ohm to him – or sing his name that way – he’ll calm down almost every time. Sometimes his crying will even become controlled first, so that though he looks bewildered as to why it’s happening, he’ll stop crying and start ohming with us. It is magnificent to watch his out-of-control cry become a strong, controlled sound. Lovely to think that we might be teaching him to harness his own emotions instead of letting them take over.

• We’ve had a whirlwind weekend to round out his first four months. Dinner with our wonderful midwife/now friend, her wife, and their little girl (in the country, which it turns out is delightful!), lunch in a neighboring city with dear friends, and a wedding shower for Bram’s Aunt Laura. We kept the boy out past his bedtime both nights, but that seems to have caused me more anxiety than it has him. In fact, he slept through! the! night! last night (from 10pm to 6:30am), so maybe we’ll plan more outings soon. Having woken so well rested, we all spent the morning laying about in bed, probably the most relaxed morning we’ve had as a family of three. Then we took a family walk to visit other friends (who were nice about my whining re: the heat). We deviated from our no gluten, soy, or dairy a little this weekend, though, which seems to be catching up with Bram now in the form of an upset stomach and a little bit of rash. This afternoon has been rough, but otherwise: a triumph of a weekend. I’ve thought “this is the best weekend of my life” so many times since B was born that I think I need a new scale. Weekends used to be nice. Now they’re often things of glory.

• Finally – though I’m sure that lots of you already know this – we’ve been THRILLED to learn this week of the birth of a beautiful new baby. Congratulations and strong-baby-making to the moms over at Love Invents Us! Happy new world, sweet Monkey; happy new big-brotherhood (in the literal not the Orwellian way), Yogi! It’s such a joy to imagine the four of you together. J and I await each new photo with childlike pleasure.

Now the photographic:

A photo my mama took before our Mother’s Day brunch together. How different this Mother’s Day was from last year’s. Still, I’m thinking of all the women out there who are struggling with infertility or child loss, for whom this holiday is a crushing affair (many of whom, I know, are readers). May you find every bit of the joy we found this year in a Mother’s Day to come. And may you find peace in the meantime.

I had to send the AAUW a “work-action” shot. This was tricky for me because unlike some of their fellows, I’m neither an astronaut nor an acrobat. This photo is pretty much what my work looks like these days, so this is what I sent. I don’t expect to see it showing up in their advertisements, but it brings me pleasure to think that this is what my work looks like right now.

Oh my gosh, this little girl. I’m not sure how much her mamas would want us writing on here, and I want to respect their privacy, but I had to include this photo because we L.O.V.E. this child, and it seems that we love her about as much as she loves Baby Bug Bram. [Why didn't anyone ever tell me how much little kids adore each other?!?] Anyway, this child is bold and fearless and just full of bounding sweetness (and the perfect amount of mischief for a twenty-first-century girl). She is a total life force. B is lucky to count her among his first friends.

Our serious boy. His high, curious eyebrows. His widow’s peak. His elephant Shmuel.

Possibly my favorite new photo of my two favorite people.

Aunt Kippie is a bringer of lightness and laughter.

Bram adores his Uncle Buddy.

Snugging with Aunt Laura during her wedding shower.

Baby loves to stand. Mama loves the way baby’s naked toes stretch and squish out when he does so.

Our lazy morning.

Postscript: I recently got a comment from a woman who lost three of her four babies, full term, to Factor V Leiden (the clotting disorder I have that they think kept E from developing feet). I haven’t written her back yet because, honestly, I don’t know what to say. I read an article about Toni Morrison recently wherein she (having lost an adult son) says we shouldn’t tell grieving people we’re sorry; we should just hug them and mop their floor. I think this is just about right. Only I can’t hug this woman, or wash her floor. I can’t do anything besides hold space for this knowledge. For those little beings. For her grief, and for all that love.

 

doors

I closed the door last night to the last classroom I’ll probably ever teach in at this university.

I’ve taught a class a semester here for four years. As I turned off the lights and pulled the door closed in an empty building (I collected essays until 9:15 last night, so I think I was the last instructor there), I reflected on what these past four years have meant to me. When I came to this town, I had only been studying literature for three years, and had only taught for one. I knew I wanted a transatlantic focus, and that postcolonial studies spoke to me, but I was intimidated – completely baffled, really – at the thought of making my own narrow way through such broad spaces. Everything felt new, on the brink. J and I were committed, but not yet engaged. We’d yet to grieve Charleston. To find this little cottage. To find our footing as partners. To meet our wonderful wonderful friends. To sit in silence – in a room full of our loved ones – promising to always uphold each other. To honeymoon in Boston. To be nearly run off a mountain for being gay in rural Ohio. To get pregnant. To lose E. To get pregnant again. To bring our son into the world. J didn’t have an MA or a passion for doula work. We didn’t know I had Graves’ Disease or Factor V Leiden. I’d yet to hear Jack Halberstam speak and feel the puzzle pieces of my scholarship click into place. We had no idea what terrible gardeners we’d become. I’d only just started learning to cook. We couldn’t fathom how deeply we’d love parenting.

When we first got the offer here, we weren’t sure we’d come. I also got a funded offer from SUNY Stony Brook, which houses a higher-ranked program. My mentors in Charleston felt strongly that SUNY’s was the offer to accept. But J and I had a hunch, an instinct, that this was the place for us. So I called the man who would become my dissertation director (though we didn’t know it at the time). Then we packed up everything we owned in a u-haul, put the cats in a carrier on the seat between us, and drove across the country towards a small city we’d never been to before.

Now here we are. I closed that door last night and began to face the prospects of a whole year with no teaching. The last year of a long road of formal education. I found out last week that in addition to the internal dissertation fellowship, I will also receive an AAUW (American Association of University Women) fellowship starting in June. For me, this is a big deal. This is a dream. The AAUW has been funding women in higher education since 1888. They’ve funded some pretty amazing women doing some pretty remarkable things. I’m blown away to be in that kind of company. Truly: aside from my ongoing struggles with medical anxieties and an autoimmune disorder – both of which I’m trying to cure – my life is pretty much perfect. I’ve been striving for so much for so long, and now I’m surrounded by the things I’ve wanted. And you know what? Now that those things are here, they’re even better than I’d imagined.

As I type this – green tea at my side and rain falling steadily from a gray sky outside – Bram is upstairs taking one of his very.few.ever crib naps. (I know I should be doing the laundry, babe. I’m sorry.) We got to spend lots of time this week with our dear C (Kippie), and having her here makes all three of us happier. She even brought us some of this year’s first crop of asparagus, and you know how I feel about that. My mom’s coming on Friday, and we’re planning a trip (B’s first time on the road!) to visit lots of J’s family this summer. It isn’t that things are easy. Really, they’re hard. My writing schedule for the next year is intense. I just finalized the plan last night, and I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. We need to find in-home childcare we can trust for about eight hours a week, and that’s daunting. Being back at work is hard on J, and though I love doing it, being home alone with B for forty hours a week is tough. We’re both exhausted. But it’s an exhaustion born not of grief, nor of longing, but of doing what we’ve desperately wanted to do. It’s an exhaustion of life coming together.

Now a few photos of that life.

First, Bram and Ramona at three months. He’s not one of those constantly-smiling babies, but he’ll give you one if you earn it, and gods they’re worth the world:

B and his dearest friend. He loves that boy madly:

Bram in Aunt Kippie’s arms:

Sitting up for peace:

B now joins us for family dinners:

I hope this spring is treating all of you kindly. I’m as grateful as ever for this community.

 

 

the other side

I recently received a comment that meant a great, great deal to me. I first planned to respond only to the woman who wrote it, but since part of what I love about this community is its ability to reach out to people we don’t even know are reading (this woman, L, has been reading Breaking Into Blossom for awhile, but I never knew), I thought I’d share my response here. L wrote that she and her partner also lost a daughter during pregnancy, that though she wants to desperately, she will not be able to carry again, and that they are switching to her partner’s body. She wrote that she has no fears about her ability to bond with a child coming to her in this new way, but that she’s heartbroken about all of the experiences she’s losing out on: the kicks, the nursing, the whole bodily deal. She wants to know how I have grieved this. What’s hurt. What’s helped.

This is a somewhat unusual subject position (a lesbian who wants to carry as much or more than her partner, but can’t). Until L contacted me, I’ve only known of two other women who share it, both of whom I’ve come into contact with via this blog. I’ll offer L – and anyone else who’s interested – my thoughts here, but if you’re out there, and you’re in this position, I’d love to hear what you think. How you’ve made peace with the loss you’ve faced (your child or children, your fertility, your bodily trust). Please share anything you feel safe sharing in the comments section of this post, or, if you have a blog, let us know so we can tune in. I think this conversation is worth having.

The infertility piece itself is one thing, and it’s a thing that deserves more attention. We should be talking about infertility a lot more than we are. Still, support is out there. I’ve wanted to get an infertility awareness ribbon for the blog for awhile now, but I haven’t known if it was right for me to do so. In my case, I could technically try again. I had a relatively easy time getting pregnant. They think there’s only around a 1 in 3 chance of what happened to Emmett happening again. Only, I’m still heartbroken over our little girl. I always will be. I can’t get behind 1 in 3; not where there are other paths. And with the thyroid disease that has surfaced since (as a result of?) my pregnancy, doing so feels dangerous. Pregnancy hormones wreck havoc on women with autoimmune disease. And what I want more than I want to carry is to raise Bram. To raise other children. So I never know whether what I have counts as infertility. I’m making this choice. What I do know is that the longing doesn’t go away. At least not for me, and at least not so far. I don’t even know that it’s gotten better. I do think, though, that I’ve made space for it, allowed that it will always be a part of me. It’s started to feel familiar. There’s an odd comfort in that.

The NGP experience, for a person who has struggled with this longing, is bittersweet. I compare it to adoption in my mind a lot, both because that’s where many heterosexual couples turn when they face what I’ve faced and because that’s where I hope we’ll turn for our next child. On the one hand, you get so many of the experiences that adoptive parents don’t necessarily get. I did J’s insemination, so I am as responsible for why B is who B is as much as J, or as our donor. A different moment or different pressure would have made a different child. And the memories of this pregnancy are so, so sweet to me. That first faint line, and the buzzing I felt in those early days. The protectiveness that sprang up in me. Nursing J through morning sickness. Watching the baby grow inside the woman I love most in the world. Cooking them nutritious food. Attending every single midwife appointment, and hearing all those heartbeats. All those heartbeats. The ultrasounds. The kicks, which I started to feel only one week after J. The reading and the singing to the belly. Those sweet hours in bed with my hand so close to his body. Just layers of beloved flesh away from my beloved son. The labor preparation, and the labor, and the believing my wife when she says that I was pivotal all those hours. Catching my son. Being the first person to touch him. Holding him when he took his first breath. These memories are the sweetest of my life. The level best. They are such a part of my love for him that I know I’ll mourn them deeply if we get to adopt our next child. In this way, queerness becomes a sparkling privilege, one unbeatable ability that outshines all of the rights we’re denied. If one womb falters, for whatever reason, there may be another womb there waiting. J and I were a team in making our children, and I feel with all of my body that we share them both equally. I know she mourns E as much as I do. I know B is as much my son.

But there’s another side to these moments, which is watching your beloved experience each and every moment of something you wish you could do. Watching her feel those first kicks. Watching her grow. Watching strangers congratulate her (leaving you completely out of the conversation even when they know you’re together). Noting her cravings and aversions. Learning about labor with her in spaces that make it clear that you’re very much secondary. Watching her labor with, and then deliver, your child, and feeling none of the pain. Being surprised that you don’t feel the pain. There’s privilege here, but the intimacy of being oh-so-close to pregnancy, and yet not being pregnant, is not without deep sorrow. I often think I had to grieve my infertility more fully as a result of J’s pregnancy. Had we gone straight to adoption, there’s so much I would never have seen, never have known I was missing. All that beauty would have been enough out of my reach that it just might never have haunted me. It did haunt me, though, and it made every second of J’s pregnancy complex. Neither of us could just revel in the glory of it. It was all double-edged, even for her, which broke my heart. We’ve had to grieve that too: that trust. That simple excitement.

If you might occupy this subject position in the future, you should know that the pain you’ll likely feel will be pretty much invisible. Even more so than infertility or pregnancy loss, and those are pretty invisible too. Very few (deeply empathic) people in your life will understand the complexity that is a subsequent pregnancy, not of your body. People will be insensitive, not because they’re cruel but because the subject position will be so far outside of what they can grasp. If your partner struggles with pregnancy (if the hyper-femininity of that subject position is foreign to her), you’ll have to work through that too. You’ll have to sympathize with her, stay compassionate about the parts of pregnancy that are daunting to her, all the while struggling to put down your own jealousy. There will likely be much talk about irony. You will both feel hurt and isolated sometimes.

So that’s some of what you might face. How you get through it, though? I don’t know. I can tell you what I’ve done. I’ve searched for power in the loss, in the vulnerability. I’ve come to understand that this (my infertility) was the only path to this child, and I will say this: this child is the most incredible creature I have ever known. I don’t believe in destiny, but I can’t imagine a wider joy than being my son’s mother. For this reason, I can’t wish away a moment of what it took to get here. I’ve also investigated the assumptions I held about womanhood, and I’ve let lots and lots of them go. I’ve noticed, from this place, how left out fathers and other NGPs are from the pregnancy and birth experience, and I’ve become an activist in that arena. J and I have stretched and grown into roles we weren’t sure we’d be any good at filling. As a result, we’ve discovered that our capacities far exceed what we assumed them to be. She found her female body empowering for the first time in her life. That’s just huge. And I found deep pleasure in nurturing both of them, which I could not have done if I’d had the inherent self-absorption of pregnancy. J found a calling: she’s attending doula training now, and she wants to become an advocate for LGBT parents. To offer consultations, family-inclusive childbirth classes, and doula services. And I found a calling, too, in advocating not just for NGPs but for a redefinition of family that is not about blood. I am passionately devoted to undermining the weight those around me place on biology. Family is about so much more.

I think it would be easy to miss all of the unexpected beauty this experience stands to offer. To stay in the hurt, the resentment, the bitterness so that your eyes are closed to all that you’re being handed. Sometimes I’ve done that, and I think that’s okay. More often, though, I’ve rediscovered myself. I’m proud of who I’ve become through all of this. When I first lost E, I felt like less of a woman. Now I feel like more of one: I am resilient, adaptive, and generous. I am open to vulnerability. I hope that if you’re reading this, and you share this position, you’re able to find a path through that brings you more fully into yourself. I hope that you find a path to motherhood that is full of more joy than you ever could have imagined, even if that joy comes alongside sorrow. And if you ever want to talk, please seek me out. It can be lonely work, this grief business. I’m here if you need a friend.

 

.what could have been.

I’m sitting here with a sleeping Bram in my sling. I love feeling the soft, warm weight of him against my body, and the hands-free mobility that the sling provides is a welcome relief for my arms. I thought I’d take a few minutes to write, as I’ve been struggling through some postpartum depression in recent weeks. There’s been a lot to process alongside my hormones: breastfeeding/colic troubles, sleep deprivation, cabin fever, changes to my diet, etc. I think that having Bram with us has also cast into stark relief just what it is we lost when we lost E. To know that if the dice had been thrown differently, that she could have been with us in these ways, that R could have known full-term pregnancy/birth and a breastfeeding relationship, and that I could have known myself in an NGP role, these have shown themselves as more fully realized losses to grieve. I know that postpartum depression loses a lot of power when you talk about it openly and take proactive steps to treat it, so I’ve begun to open up about where I’m at emotionally. I’ve also started taking additional EPAs and DHAs, started light therapy again (as I think the winter compounds the problem), committed myself to a more rigorous exercise regimen, and made an appointment with my therapist to talk this stuff through. I’ve noticed a significant improvement over the last three days since putting some of these changes into action. I’m hopeful that this will result in an upswing, as I don’t want to waste any of these early days with Bram locked into sadness and irritability.

In other news, Bram’s rash seems to be getting better, as does his night-sleeping. I really attribute this to taking all of the dairy out of my diet. Also, he has let us put him down for a few long day naps in the Mamaroo swing, which has been wonderful (though R and I have a hard time pulling ourselves away from watching him in order to accomplish the work we need to do). I find myself transfixed with watching him all the time. He’s just such a miracle, you know? This recent post over at Insert Metaphor has me remembering the day we conceived him. We were only three months out from losing E. It was the day after my graduation from my Master’s program. My parents had visited and just left. We’d been taking OPKs all weekend. We had only ordered one vial of sperm that cycle (the only cycle that was ever true of). R had an instinct not to ask them to send the most potent vial available (again, something we had always done), instead she wanted to leave it to chance what vial we were sent. We planned to inseminate the night we surged, but R had an instinct to wait it out until the following day, which we did. I think that if we hadn’t trusted all of her instincts about that cycle, Bram would never have come into being. I am just so very grateful to have been able to make this particular baby with R at that particular time. I feel like we were always meant to be his mamas; we just had to wait our turn to pluck his little self out of the ether.

And on a closing note, some new cute pictures of this particular Rabbit:

                                                  Bram at home in his space-pod-esque Mamaroo!

                                                         This boy LOVES his Saturday tub bath!

                              I call this his Hobbit-look. Melts my heart every time he gives me those eyes!

 

nearly thirty-three weeks with a gestating rabbit

My son is in there! He’ll have been there for thirty-three weeks on Monday. Whenever dance music comes on, he starts to move. I adore him.

We got this guy from my cousin L, and I’ve been calling him Sue. (I like Johnny Cash.) My mom predicted that one day soon, we’ll have to drive back some forty miles when we realize we’ve left him and Rabbit won’t stop crying.

We’ve named this fella Shmuel. He arrived yesterday care of MTB, a SUPER talented (and loving) friend of ours. I alternate snugging Shmuel and Sue. Shmuel tagged along for our maternity photo session today.

This is our clearly mistreated boy cat wearing the rabbity-eared hat that MTB sent with Shmuel. (Alternate caption: Further evidence that it’s time.)

Back in May, I told J that once it was winter again – once it had been spring, and summer, and fall – our baby would come to us. When she walked in all dusted with snow last week, I felt the nearness of his arrival.

Our SHARE Support Group’s holiday memorial service was last night. We hung this swirly purple and white glass ornament for E. (C: This sphere feels like the sea.) Seeing all those ornaments go up on two full trees was powerful/heartbreaking. J watched one man light five different candles. Five. E’s ornament came home with us; I’ll hang it in Rabbit’s room this week.

Between the blogosphere and our natural childbirth classes, we know about a trillion expecting couples. As of this evening, we’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of three overdue babies (two here in our town plus the folks over at Parenting Cricket). What a world.

Happy December, friends!

 

giving thanks

Troublesome origins aside, I adore Thanksgiving. No material gifts; just gratitude, family, and good good food. Here (in no particular order) are just a few of my reasons for giving thanks on this day.

• You people. Friends. Family. Blog friends, whom I love from afar. Your words, your care, got me through this year, and then through this past week of panic. This week in particular, some of you came and spent whole days with me when my fear got bad. Some of you introduced me to paths of less suffering. So many of you listened to my fears, my struggles, without judgment. Thank you for your generosity and your compassion. It has not gone unnoticed.

• My health. All of my labs this week came back great. That rare disease? Not in my body. It’s hard for me to perceive my body as healthy and strong, but I’ll get there again. I am devoted to getting there again. To trusting. This week revealed some wounds. Now I’m ready to heal them.

• My wife, who as I type this is working on a vegan walnut lentil loaf in the kitchen. It’s an ineffable thing, the sense that you are understood by someone. That you understand someone. I am blessed by this marriage dance.

• My mom, who’s spending her Thanksgiving here with us, helping us prepare for Rabbit. Who bought J and me Christmas Eve pajamas for the last time this year (since next year, that tradition will move on to the boy). Whose presence this year has been of tremendous comfort. Family matters. Family matters a lot.

• Emmett Ever, who was with us last Thanksgiving, and who we carry now. I’ve always loved Yeats’s idea that “nothing can be sole or whole / that has not been rent.” I just never quite understood it before our girl.

• Rabbit River. Who kept his mama and his mum up for most of the night last night. And who is nearing four pounds. And who has the sweetest energy. And who I believe I was meant to parent.

• Rabbit’s donor. I don’t think about him a lot, but he’s on my mind today. Though we may never meet him, he is our family now. And I love him for his gift to us and for his silent presence.

• Gratitude itself. And joy. And the ability (struggle though it sometimes is) to be present. And wisdom, even when it comes through painful experience. And growing pains. And surrender. And vulnerability, even when it feels like it might break you.

• The greatness that is J’s 31-week belly, and the way it peeks out from this flannel shirt.

The mobile above Rabbit’s crib. The way it dances in an apparently still room.

The stained glass full of concentric circles. Circles, which feel like life to me. Circles, which will surround our little boy in the space where he will begin his life soon.

Thank you all for reading. For being a part of our family this way. For the things you share with us. For community. Happy Thanksgiving.

 

the post-traumatic fear spiral

I’ve learned a lot this year about loss. About child loss. About infertility. About losing faith in your own body. About fear. Because I’m prone more to anxiety than depression, that’s how losing E has affected me: by making me scared. I read about parents who, after losing a child (or even the idea of a child), can’t get out of bed for weeks or months. Can’t work. Can’t imagine moving on. That hasn’t been the case for me, but I have been shattered in whole other ways.

Last month, my therapist said that, after loss and/or medical trauma, it is extremely common for people to experience medical anxiety for about a year. When someone goes through medical trauma, they see how precarious life is. They see their own bodily susceptibility to disease. To destruction. It’s hard to shake. This happened to me. I feel like I watched life passing away (Emmett’s. Parts of my own. Parts of J’s.) on January 19th, and I just stopped trusting. Learning how to trust my body again has been more difficult than I could have imagined.

Part of this struggle comes in the form of self-blame. There’s this quiet voice since she died that says, over and over again: “there must be something seriously wrong with you. Babies don’t just not have feet. You broke her. And her being broken means that you’re broken too.” I haven’t talked about it much because, when I have, my amazing friends and family have rallied to tell me it isn’t my fault. And I love them for that, but it doesn’t help. This takes self-forgiveness, and I haven’t been ready for that. It also takes self-trust, and I don’t know how to get that back. Things fell apart, and now I wait vigilantly for everything else to unravel too.

Since that night, I’ve thought I was dying of one thing after another. Of Thyroid Storm. Of hemorrhage. Of an allergic reaction to wet wool (seriously). From food allergies. Or Mitral Valve Prolapse. Or some other dangerous heart murmur. Or swelling caused by blood clots. And now I’m obsessed with this particular (and rare) kind of cancer that causes flushing. I’ve had flushing for many years now. Sometimes it gets worse. Sometimes it gets better. My mom had it for decades. Two great aunts. One of my closest friends. Another friend’s whole family. I know it can be caused by anxiety. And thyroid imbalance. And food sensitivities. And skin sensitivities. And I have all of these things. The medication I’ve been on for ten months to treat my hyperthyroidism has made me hypothyroid, and that is causing lots of symptoms (edema. weight gain. fatigue. thinning hair. maybe flushing.). I hope to go off of it soon, but they want me to be even more hypo when I stop because research shows that staying on the medicine for a year, and being firmly hypo when you stop taking it, increases your chances of entering thyroid remission.

So all of that, all of those reasons for flushing, and I obsess over one doctor who proposes that maybe it’s this extremely rare thing that happens mostly to people in their fifties. Mine is in my cheeks, ears, and knees. This rare disease is usually face, neck, and chest. I can see the irrationality of this, but I can’t seem to let it go. So this past Wednesday, I went to see a general practitioner to request tests to rule it out. Because the fear was getting to me. But the person I went to happened to have lost her husband to this very rare disease. What are the odds of this? So, though she tried to reassure me that the odds of me having it were infinitesimal, she also gave me a lot of information. Too much information. She kept calling it, “this disease.” She kept comparing me to her husband. Because she no doubt has PTSD about her loss. So now, as I’m waiting for tests to come back, I’m finding myself in the biggest fear spiral I’ve seen since the months after E. Moments of sheer terror.

I don’t want to live this way. This setback aside, it has gotten better. And even this feels like an opportunity: to mourn a little more. To face and let go of this terror. But it’s hard. And it’s embarrassing. And it makes me feel like a bad friend, and a bad wife, and a bad mama to this boy who deserves the attention I’m giving to fear.

It’s hard for me to write these things, but this community is so full of compassion and love and understanding. And I thought that, maybe, starting to tell the truth about this struggle might rob it of some of it’s power over me. Because I want to be in these beautiful moments I’m living, not in some hypothetical fear-based scenario in my head. I want to be free of this. I won’t have these results until the middle of next week, but I don’t want to need the results to trust my body. I want to acknowledge the fear without letting it drag me under. I don’t want to live this way and, most of all, I don’t want to put this on our little boy, to teach him this. But it is hard to let go of the fear that something will take me from my family. It’s hard to trust again.

 

 

attachment living

It’s been an intense few weeks. On top of the typical post-midterm craziness of any academic semester (made more intense for me this semester because I’m teaching an upper-level course I’ve never taught before and trying to write as much of my dissertation as possible before Rabbit comes), I’ve been working on applications for dissertation completion funding. I’m applying for three different fellowships, and if I receive one of them, I won’t have to teach next year; I’ll be able to focus exclusively on my writing. This sounds like an unimaginable luxury to me. Really: it’s almost too delightful to consider. Throughout my course work, I thought of the dissertation as a means to an end – one last difficult requirement – but now I find myself deeply devoted to the work itself. I love the female (and two queer male) characters I’m writing about. I sense their power, their strength. But when they’ve been written about by other critics, it’s been to point out how powerless they are. So I feel a responsibility to offer them a different reading. A recognition of what has gone unnoticed. These characters have become real to me, and I love them both as individuals, and as a collective body of feminine power that has been long.long.long overlooked.

This funding would give me time with them. If I don’t get it, I’ll still have time, so the situation isn’t dire. (And I should add: I fully recognize this as a luxury problem. I mean, who gets a year off to just think and read and write? It’s an almost absurd privilege, and I see that.) But I long for it, and that’s disconcerting to my don’t.get.too.attached.to.anything.that.isn’t.yours cautionary self. These are very competitive. I met with a friend of J’s (from the private college they both work at), and she was tremendously helpful. But she also (inadvertently) made me aware of how different my public-school world is from her liberal-arts-college reality. There’s a different kind of grooming. Money begets money. These fellowships don’t just go to the neediest applicants, they go to the best applicants. And “best” means “best equipped to present oneself in a particular way.” This takes training. Grooming. So while it makes sense that I might not get these because they’re competitive – because others may have better (or more important) projects in the works – it makes me sad to think about not getting them because I didn’t go about applying in the right way. Anyway, I came away from the meeting feeling defeated, but I’m still trying. And though it seems dangerous to want this funding so much, I’m letting myself do it anyway. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that I can adapt. If (in the spring) I find out that I didn’t get any of them, I’ll go to plan B. Or plan C. And I’ll find things to love about those plans too.

Anyway, this process has made these past weeks stressful, which in turn made yesterday AMAZING. We took our last road trip as a two-person family to a favorite city of ours. J and I are so happy in cities. Every chance we get to travel, we find our way to one, and we eat, and coffee.shop, and people.watch, and stroll and stroll and stroll. Like Clarissa Dalloway in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, I’ll take city walking over country walking any day. Yesterday was even more special, though, because we splurged on a 3D/4D ultrasound of Rabbit River! Seeing him was incredible. Afternoons are his sleepy time, and he adorably refused to lower his hands from his face, but the tech still got some wonderful images. We are both so entirely in love. There is no holding back out of fear. No wishing things were different. There is only the sense that this baby is our son, and that we are meant to parent him, to help him become…well…him.

Here he is, left hand pressed sweetly to forehead:

And sleeping away:

And left hand, right arm, face, skinny ribs and all (I suspect this boy will be long and thin):

I said at one point that I think he’s going to have a big nose, and the tech said, “No! His nose is cute.” She doesn’t know how much I adore big noses. :)

After the ultrasound (which was after an amazing gourmet-Chinese lunch), we headed into the city, and we practically fell upon one of those upscale baby stores that basically amounts to crack for new parents and parents.to.be. We oooohed and aaaahed our way through TWO stories of gorgeous baby accoutrement, test drove our stroller (which J’s mom bought us, but which we’ve yet to see as she’s giving it to us at the shower next weekend), tried out the baby sling I picked for myself after lots of internet research, and purchased Rabbit’s first pair of baby leg warmers and a striped kimono-style onesie that we couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Then we hit a local coffee shop for a chocolate croissant and two espressos (J’s decaf, mine regular), where we watched the seemingly thousand new babies/new parents, and stared and stared at the ultrasound photos of our sweet boy.

After that, we walked around for awhile in search of an ornament for Emmett Ever. Our SHARE support group hosts a holiday memorial every year, where parents can hang an ornament on a tree to remember their lost babies. We chose a blown glass sphere with purple and white swirls that has a distinctive seashell-esque look.

We also discovered an oil and vinegar shop, where we sampled about a dozen aged balsamic vinegars and brought home one bottle of white balsamic (which we learned is less sweet/more acidic than the darker stuff).

Then we ate at a favorite Jewish deli and headed home. On the drive back, we listened to music that made me think a lot about E. I cried for awhile, not because I miss her or because I wish she were here, but because I love her. Because my connection to her creates an ache that is painfully sweet. Because I can love her and be happy at the same time.

So all told, a GREAT GREAT day, and a much needed break. I am so in love with my wife, who is carrying this baby with about a thousand times more grace than I could have done. It’s funny, we thought we knew which roles we would thrive in: I would be a better GP because I’m feminine; she would rock out the NGP role because she isn’t so into the girly side of girliness. But the truth is, all of that was culturally dictated. And none of that has anything to do with what it takes to nurture a child (via either role). None of that was about our particular strengths and weaknesses. In truth, I’m so well suited to non-gestational parenting. The choice it requires. The care it allows me to give my whole family. And J is brilliant at the gestational role. She’s heartier than I am. Less anxious. I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but it’s impossible not to recognize some wisdom to all of this that surpasses our limited understanding.

 

vulnerability

I’ve been thinking about the new question Gretchen posted over at Regular Midwesterners. She asked:

For queer couples with kids, there is a necessary third figure in our children’s lives. How do you plan to explain or acknowledge this person?

Indeed (as Gretchen goes on to acknowledge), there’s at least one other figure. For those of us intent on adopting, there are two. And we typically need the support of lots of other people: sperm bank or adoption agency support staff, medical practitioners, lawyers, family, friends. It’s one way that our families just aren’t like lots of straight families (though this connects us to plenty of adoptive hets). It’s an important question.

Since J and I don’t yet have children here to parent (though we are in the third trimester today, thank you very much!), our plans for handling this with our kids are still entirely hypothetical. I don’t know what we’ll say about Rabbit’s donor (a man I feel deeply and intimately connected with). I know that we plan on creating a consistent and cohesive narrative about donor conception, but I don’t know exactly what that will look like. I guess I think it’ll depend on our son, on how he seems to hear and internalize these ideas. On what kinds of narratives make sense to him, given his unique worldview. But I’m not sure that what we plan to say is as important as how we really feel about this reality because my guess is that our kids will hear how we feel about this lots more than we will actually talk about it.

So in terms of how I really feel about it, I’d say this: it comes down to vulnerability, which means that it comes down to how I, as a parent, handle being vulnerable.

Vulnerability is something I’m super interested in. It is the foundational concept of my dissertation, where I use alternative feminisms (queer. postcolonial. black. Islamic.) to try to read power in vulnerability. In the west, we tend to perceive vulnerability as a weakness, as something we’re supposed to fight against. Conversely, we perceive strength in all things impenetrable. In sovereignty. In liberation. But in looking at national sovereignty and the harm that’s done in its name (for example: our retaliation to the threat of 9/11; our belief that the need to protect the self justifies any assault on the other), this definition of strength seems problematic. The question here is: what does our resistance to vulnerability cost us in the end? So I tend to think politically about vulnerability, about what it might stand to accomplish. Because the truth behind all of our attempts to convince ourselves otherwise is that we are always already vulnerable. We are ceaselessly exposed to violence, to accidents, and to the breakdown of the body’s natural processes. At any moment, our lives – or the lives of the people on whom we depend (bodily, emotionally) – can be extinguished. We can lose. That reality is so viscerally threatening that we work hard to deny it. To shore up our sense of empowerment, and control, and invincibility. We pretend.

Maybe it’s the fact that I spend so much time thinking about these issues, but to me, parental narratives of possession are inseparable from all of this. We’re conditioned to think of the things we love as ours: our lives, our loves, our children, our homes, our friends. And in claiming all of this, we feel tethered to it. In owning it, we convince ourselves that it cannot be taken away.

But in his answer to Gretchen’s question, Josh said something really beautiful:

[This] goes to the heart of the radical nature of adoption and maybe other forms of alternative family(?): we share our children with others and do not wholly possess them.

This is the core reality of adoption – of non-biological parenting in general – to which people seem most resistant. They’re not really our kids. Or they’re less our kids. Or they can only be two people’s kids, and those roles are already filled. So here’s where I think we are ironically privileged: we know better from the start. We aren’t at liberty to ignore the fact that none of us ever “wholly possess[es]” his or her children. They are shared, as, I would argue, all children are shared. They are not our sovereign territory. And we know it before we even lay eyes on them.

So how do I think this functions in the lived reality of alternative parenting? I’m not sure yet. If I had to guess, I’d say that queer and adoptive (and queer adoptive) parents are positioned to teach their children this early on, that the children of queer/adoptive parents spend less time under the illusion of sovereignty. The dangerous traditions of in-group privilege and out-group exclusion. That, if they see us grappling with these issues, they’ll grow up grappling with them too. And that this is good for them.

I was born to an adopted father who was neither married to nor in a committed relationship with my incredible mother. To a brave, unwed woman who had never planned on parenting. For a long time, I saw pieces of this as a liability. I wanted a “normal” family, to feel a part of a secure, unbreakable unit. But I like these facts now. I think they’ve helped me immeasurably on this path. When I came out, when I married a woman, when I decided not to try to carry again, I gave up other pieces of a narrative that has never really served me anyway. It was probably easier to let go because I was already on the outside.

So it’s important to me that my children are raised in a committed, two-parent household. It’s important to me that they know they are safe and loved beyond measure. That they know that their well-being is our top concern, always always. But the idea that they might feel connected to the other people who helped give them life? That isn’t threatening to me. Because they should feel connected to those people, right? I feel connected to them. And it seems, to me, better to show my children how interconnected we all are than to have them sense that interconnectivity, but think of it as a betrayal to me. Like the women of the novels I write about, I think there’s more to be gained from the acceptance of vulnerability than there is to be lost. I think there’s more to be gained from the acceptance that other people are a part of my children than in the denial of that fact. Because doesn’t that break down so much of what we, as queers, are positioned to see through anyway? I love Rabbit’s donor. Though they may never meet, I hope that Rabbit will love him too. That he will be a silent, absent, beautiful, undeniable part of our family. That allowing lots of space for that will only serve to connect me more tightly to my son.

Nota Bene 1: I probably sound like I’m completely comfortable with vulnerability, and you should know that this couldn’t be further from the truth. I get so scared about so many things. I worry that something serious is wrong with my health, that I won’t get to see my kids grow up. I spent much of this weekend OBSESSED with one off-hand comment that a doctor made about a symptom I’ve been having. I worry that, in my lack of legal recognition, this little boy will be taken from me. I don’t mind sharing him, but I mind very much the horrible possibility of losing time with him. Still, I don’t think this serves me, and I work constantly (in therapy, with friends, with my wife) to find ways of letting go of these driving fears. They keep me thinking about what I might lose and not what I actually have right now.

Nota Bene 2: In losing Emmett, I learned a lot about the cost of vulnerability, so I don’t say any of this lightly. Still, I know this is theoretical, and therefore inherently simplistic. I know that, when we begin the adoption process, we could face painful realities I can barely imagine now. This is how I want to walk into this process, but I hold no illusions that the process itself won’t shatter these notions and force me to construct new ones again and again.

 

.nine months.

Tomorrow will mark nine months since we lost Emmett Ever. I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately and of how drastically the trajectory of our last year has changed. I think I’m finding my way to a place of acceptance. The grief is ever present, but life has progressed in such a way that to wish her back would be to wish away so much of the good that has sprung from her death. I think that transformation is the true gift of loss. This Rabbit baby wouldn’t exist had E lived. R and I wouldn’t be the people we are today (as individuals, as spouses, as parents) were it not for her short presence in our lives. These facts are Emmett’s sweet legacy.

Tori Amos recently released a new album, Night of Hunters, which is a narrative arc set to refashioned classical pieces. It’s a gorgeous set of music and a pretty exciting project from a long-time favorite musician of R and mine. The whole arc is set within one night and it focuses on a woman whose lover leaves her after they complete the Atlantic journey from America to Ireland. The acuteness of the loss she portrays speaks to me about what we went through in January. There’s something about those moments in life where you completely lose your fixity to that point, where your compass is just so wildly rewritten. For as extremely difficult as it is to walk through those moments, there is beauty to be found in the perspective therein.

The final track of Night of Hunters, “Carry,” has been haunting me this week. I would encourage you to check out the music video. In the meantime, here are the lyrics:

Love, hold my hand
Help me see with the dawn
That those that have left
Are not gone
But they carry on
As stars looking down
As nature’s sons
And daughters of the heavens
You will not ever be forgotten by me
In the procession of the mighty stars
Your name is sung and tattooed now on my heart
Here I will carry, carry, carry you

Forever
You have touched my life
So that now
Cathedrals of sound are singing, are singing
The waves have come to walk with you
To where you will live in the land of you,
Land of you
You will not ever be forgotten by me
In the procession of the mighty stars
Your name is sung and tattooed now on my heart
Here I will carry, carry, carry you
Here I will carry, carry, carry you
Forever.

It’s message is simple, but her delivery strikes such a resonant chord in me. Just stunning.

On another note, R and I recently had the good fortune to participate in a research study that is investigating resources for the LGBT population with regards to child loss. The scholar conducting the research is very thoughtful, which made for an engaging and emotional conversation about our experiences after losing E. One of the chapters for this book project is going to be largely photographic, in that the researcher has requested that the participants send along photos of items or symbols that they have used to commemorate their children. As such, I’ve taken some time to photograph and detail some of the ways that we have remembered E.

E’s urn:After we had E cremated, we chose this cloisonne urn to hold her ashes. We know folks who have handled this in a variety of ways, but, for us, it was important that she stay in our home. We know that we won’t live in this town for a long time, so it was very important to us that E’s ashes stay with our family as we move. We both loved the delicate colors of this urn. It’s tiny size breaks my heart every time I hold it.

E’s box:A week or two after we lost her, R contacted a lovely carpenter in Massachusetts. We commissioned him to make this box to hold both Emmett’s urn and the bowl of stones from her memorial. I love the subtle construction of the box, the tiny gold lock, and the swirl of the wood.

E’s stones: At E’s memorial, everyone brought a stone (or other object) that spoke to them. We bought this bowl from an artisan and filled it with these stones. Folks also brought poetry and prose to read aloud. These are copied onto note cards and accompany the stones in the box. R blogged in more detail about these dedications here.

E’s blanket: This was the first thing that R and I ever bought for E. We were in our first trimester and bought it from a local children’s boutique. After we lost her, R and I slept with the blanket every night. This continued until we bought Rabbit’s crib for the nursery. We’ve since moved the blanket into the crib, as we want it to be something that they share between them.

R’s tattoo/irises, which you can see photographs of here. Blue irises have taken on a lot of meaning for us this year. Our dear friend, L, sent a bouquet of not-yet-bloomed irises during that first week. There was something so cathartic and right about those flowers, their colors and bloom, that reminded us of our girl. R had a large half-bloomed iris tattooed on her back in the spring. We were already TTC with me, so while I plan on also getting an iris tattoo, it will have to wait until after Rabbit is born.

E’s papers and photos:In addition to the really gut-wrenching paperwork (certificate of stillbirth, notarized paperwork from the crematorium should we choose to bury her ashes in the future), we also have some lovely papers, including photos of our sweet girl, her ultrasound pictures, cards from so many loving family and friends, a Certificate of Life that we had made this year, as well as the many note cards with words from her memorial.

These items will always hold a sacred place in our hearts and our home.