Love Child

This is actually a surprisingly hard post to write. It’s strange to have big news, though, and not be sharing it with this community, so, having just finished dinner, with J and Bram upstairs in the bath together, and with absolutely no desire to do what I should be doing – which is still.working.on.my.almost.due.dissertation – I thought this might be the right moment.

****

So, here’s the thing.

We’re pregnant.

I’m pregnant.

With my body. A baby we’re calling (for reasons I’ll explain) Love Child.

****

Why this is hard to write. For most of our readers, this will be nothing but joyful news. And I love that. And I’m grateful for that. But I know that some of our readers found their way here because they were unable to get pregnant, or to carry, and they wanted sisters in that. And there is something about sharing the NGP role as mothers who didn’t choose it at first, but who ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY choose it now. Who have embraced the magic that is NGP-hood with a love that is fierce and great and in no way less than. I feel a huge tie to that group of women. I feel like whether or not I’m able to carry to term, I will feel of them for the rest of my life because that was just my path to motherhood. But I know that for me, when other NGPs have gotten pregnant, it has stung a little. I have felt happy for them, sure, but also a little sad for me. Sometimes more than a little sad. Like they’ve left my club, and we fought for this club, and it was hard earned, and it is deeply beloved, and really: can’t we all just stay in the club? For this reason, I almost never tried again. And in part for this reason, I decided to give my body exactly one. more. try. And I can’t say what the next year will bring, so I may not carry safely to term, but I have an awful lot of faith in this new being. And if I do, that will make me both an NGP and a GP. And though this makes me happy, it also makes me deeply sad. And like I’m somehow betraying the single best (loosely assembled) group of women I’ve ever known. And that is hard. But that’s only one part of it.

****

So a few more parts. Written chronologically, which is never my thing, but which seems the only way to tell this story.

• A couple of months ago, I went in for an annual/physical. We did a big lab workup, and everything looked great. My thyroid numbers are holding steady and healthy, which is wonderful as I’ve been medicine-free since late July. This was a nice moment for my bodily confidence.

• A week or two after that, we got curious, so we contacted the high-risk clinic we saw near the end of my last pregnancy to see if they’d want to see me before or during a possible pregnancy. They said no. They said to take a baby aspirin a day for the Factor V Leiden, and to see whoever we wanted. That we could go to the low-risk hospital where we delivered Bram. That we could stay with our beloved midwives. We also asked our dear midwife friend and two nurse practitioners, and they all felt confident that what happened to E was about her and not me, and that I could, and even should, try again.

• From there, J left it up to me, and I was fairly set against carrying. I liked knowing that I had support, and that people believed in my body, but the strong, decisive desire I used to have to carry has just faded now, so I felt a lot of ambivalence. It’s been that way for awhile, really: strong, biological urges when I ovulate, but otherwise, I’m fully contended with NGP-hood. [This is still true now. I don't need this in any way.] But then, shortly after my period ended (the only period that J and I shared, by the way, between her pregnancy with Bram and this pregnancy), I woke up with a strong (STRONG) instinct to try THAT cycle and never again. To try one time. To see how it felt and leave the door open for future tries, but mostly: to offer my body to the universe for this purpose one time and then let it go for once and for all. I called J at work a few hours into the day, and she (bless her consummately supportive self) quickly agreed. She’d called our nurse practitioner and our sperm bank by the time she came home that day. It was one of the most spontaneous things we’ve ever done.

• Those two weeks were great. One of the things I wanted out of this try was to see if we were able to be laid back, happy people about it. To make the try as close to a moment of reckless, playful, forgot-to-use-protection sweetness as possible given our, you know, lesbianism. I wanted to know if it could feel fun. I was so worried and stressed and frantic about getting pregnant with Emmett Ever, and we were so grief-stricken when we were trying to make Bram. I wanted to see if we could enjoy just playing around, giving the universe an open door, but being okay whether the universe took it or not. And we nailed it. We had a blast. We dreamed of a baby that could come of that experience, but we didn’t do it with desperation. We were playful.

• The insemination followed suit: intimate, casual, sexy. We put Bram to bed, J made a little nest on the living room floor, and our nurse practitioner stopped by. J did almost everything. It was magical. I had no real expectations, which was so nice. We actually had fun. This, by the way, is why we’re calling this baby Love Child. Yogi’s mama knew we were trying, and she called any baby that came from this try “a little a love child,” and we adored that. Love Child. Yes.

• The next day, I felt hopeful and peaceful, which was surprising to me (the peaceful part, at least). I had expected to be anxious (nervous whether or not I was conceiving), but I just wasn’t. But I also felt strongly that I never wanted to try again. We had had such a lovely IUI, but I didn’t need it at all, and I sort of didn’t want to push further, if that makes sense. I told J that this was my only try, and she was completely supportive. I felt excited for the two-week-wait because I felt that it could be the last two weeks of my life when I might be pregnant; I wanted to enjoy it. Anyway, it was a sweet day. But, though we didn’t know it, my dad fell that day. And when he went to bed that night, he would never wake up.

• We got the call the next morning, and we rushed to him. There was a moment when the rest of my family went to move their cars while I followed two nurses and my dad from the ICU to hospice. It was just us. I told them we’d just tried to conceive because I wanted to tell my dad, and because I was struggling to make sense of the timing. They were kind. And as we moved through the hallways, his bed in front of me, I put my hand on my belly and wished there was a baby there. Someone to make this make sense. Please be here with me now. It was the one and only time I wished fiercely for a particular outcome (instead of just surrendering to the experience).

• In the days between when my dad died and his funeral, I became increasingly convinced that I was pregnant. I was sure when I gave my dad’s eulogy. Not sure in a willful way, but just sure. I told J sometimes, but I tried not to be too confident out loud. I knew that with my dad dying, I would sound crazy, desperate. And I didn’t feel that way. I just felt sure of that little being. Sure that s/he was with me and my dad when I was saying goodbye. [Incidentally, I don't remember ever feeling confident during my pregnancy with Emmett. Deeply desirous, but not confident.]

• This Sunday, J, Bram, and I spent a gorgeous afternoon together. A long walk that ended at the pharmacy to buy pregnancy tests, followed by a delicious dinner. Lots of laughter and sunshine. We had agreed to test Monday morning, but I didn’t want that: the tense waiting, the expectation. I knew what it would say (as insane as that must sound), and I wanted it to be on that gorgeous day, not in the morning, not rushed. So when she took B up for his bath, I tested. Then I ran up the stairs to show her.

• So that’s the story so far. I don’t have a worried feeling, but I could be wrong. A dear friend said, “you know, sometimes souls just head up, and then bounce right back down again.” I don’t know that I believe in that exactly, but it’s the sweetest thing to imagine that my dad is a part of this child. It’s not the tribute to him that I always wanted – that I always thought we’d find only through adoption – but it feels like the loveliest tribute nevertheless. We’re leaving our profile up at our agency because, of course, this little one could not stay. It’s early days. And even when it’s not, there will be higher risks. We wouldn’t want to leave the agency if we didn’t have to. Only time will tell, and we like open doors better than closed ones. But it feels good. It feels sweet and right in a strange, grief-stricken, peaceful, almost wholesome way. Our little Love Child, who we invited in but didn’t beg.

• Oh, and about timing. We probably conceived on the day my dad fell. And this child is due on November 21st, 2013: one year to the day after Saul came into the world. Our second trimester begins on May 10th, which is the day I defend my dissertation, and ends on my mama’s birthday. This baby has our kind of timing.

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.

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.

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.

 

bodily

Things are going well here in our fourteenth (almost fifteenth!) week with Rabbit River. We’re happily settling into the reality of being here (this house. this town. this version of our lives.) for two more years. J is getting over a lousy summer cold, and though the coughing has brought back her nausea, we’re hoping it’ll abate again soon. I finished an eighty-one page dissertation chapter draft yesterday, and am moving on to the next today. (I’m trying to get as much written as possible before this baby comes, so I can spend most of my time loving on him or her!). J is a finalist for the job she most wants, though this isn’t as exciting as it sounds: it means they’ve offered the two positions to two other people, but if either of them turns the offer down, or fails the background check, that line will be offered to her. She’s super disappointed (and doubtful that in this economy anyone would turn down an offer), but we haven’t given up hope. She has another interview on Monday. Other than the difficult work of hiding her belly for interviews, things are pretty peaceful.

But I’ve been dealing, in the aftermath of January, with two bodily problems, and now that things have settled down, I’m finally addressing them.

The first is a fear that – because so many things happened to my body at once, because things went so wrong and we still don’t know quite why – maybe there’s more wrong with me that we don’t know about. I get swelling above my ankle now, and feel sure it’s a blood clot. I worry that my heart murmur might be a problem. I get scared a lot. That I’m going to die before I get to raise a family, or grow old with my wife. I learned (the night we lost E) just how out.of.control a body can feel, and now I can’t seem to get back my trust.

The second is a resurgence – since deciding that it isn’t safe for me to try to get pregnant again in the future – in the old, old ghost of anorexia. I haven’t acted on it, but not doing so has been a struggle. Like many women, my late teens and early twenties were a battle for self-esteem, and I fought that battle with (among other things) food denial and exercise. It was difficult for me to recover from because, personality wise, I get a lot of pleasure from self-denial. There are pictures where I’m too thin. J hates to look at them, but try as I might, I still can’t believe that I’m not prettier in them. To this day.

I won this battle a long time ago, and it hasn’t come up for me since coming out eight years ago. And it helps that J and I became cooks together because now I love food too much to be as good at denial as I used to be. :) But I hear this in my head all the time now: if you can’t be pregnant again, you can at least be thin and beautiful. I hate this voice. I feel a responsibility as a teacher, as a parent, and as an educated woman to FIGHT against the dangerous beauty standards to which we subject ourselves and one another. I know how influenced I am by the women I look up to – teachers, colleagues, friends – and I take any influence I might have over female students or other women seriously. I am devoted to never passing this on to my daughters. I want to be an influence of health and moderation: I’ve exercised consistently since I was nineteen, and that’s important to me. Strength is important to me. Healthy living is important to me. Food ethics are important to me. But there’s a line, and it would be so easy to cross it, so easy to feel in control that way.

Because that’s what it is, right? I’ve felt out of control, and I know I could get the sense of control back by over-exercising, by obsessing over everything I put in my mouth. I’ve found control that way before, found value in my body that way before. Once you know you can get it so easily, so cheaply, you never forget. I can’t control what happened to my body in January – nor the knowledge of its weaknesses that I’ve learned about since – and it’s hard to just face that. Retaliation and resistance are easy; vulnerability is the tricky part, the part that requires real guts. But I want to learn how to accept vulnerability. Refusing it is an illusion anyway, and I’m not interested in that. So this week, I went to my school’s clinic (the only place my insurance covers me without a referral), and I set up an appointment to help me let go of these false measures of control. Living in fear is not living in the moment. These are (God willing) the last six months that J and I will be a couple without people to parent, that we’ll live alone together. I want to enjoy that. I want to enjoy this Rabbit’s arrival, to enjoy his or her presence, without wasting so much energy on fear. I want to love my body not because it can make healthy babies, nor because it is thin, but because it’s mine, and it’s healthy (enough), and it carries me through this life. And I want to be present for the people I love, not self-obsessed. I think these issues make sense given everything I’ve been through. I think they emerged as coping devices, and maybe I needed them at first. But my goal now is to begin to put them down.

mercury in may

• I am so proud of J for finishing her MA (with flying colors, of course). I’m blessed to have been at both her BA and her MA graduations, though this one was sad, as I was supposed to be hugely pregnant with E, and not having her there with me to celebrate her other mama’s accomplishment was heartbreaking. I loved spending this past weekend with J’s parents, though, and they both gave her the attention and praise she deserves (which meant a lot).

• Our IUI this month went very well. It was (we think) well timed, and we both somehow found it in us to be laid back about the whole thing. (This is unusual for us, but we’re going with it.) If we’re successful in making our next child this month, s/he will be due three days after the one-year anniversary of losing Emmett. At first this thought made me sad, but now I find it astoundingly lovely. That would mean that for exactly one year, E was our only child. It would bring our next child to us in the early days of 2012, and, as our friend L suggested, perhaps 2011 was just for Emmett. We are calm in waiting, but full of hope.

• I submitted grades this morning, which means that, other than commenting on a few papers that students want back, I can finally put this semester to rest. It was a struggle to keep moving every day. To see the same faces, to have the same routine I had when she was still with us, before we became these people. We have some things to get through first (going to Charleston to help J’s mom through surgery, being with my mom during some upcoming tests, working fifty hours in five days for a conference at our university next week), but after all of that, my summer will consist of research for an assistantship (thankfully in my field) and writing for my dissertation. I think this shift will be healing, as will the bi-monthly summer supper clubs we host and the crop share we purchased from a local, organic farm. Good things ahead, I hope.

• We went to a hematologist to get more answers about my Factor V Leiden, and he contradicted everything we’ve been told thus far about the relationship between FV and fertility. He was also enough of an asshole – and we met him at a sufficiently vulnerable time – that I thought my wife might punch him. He was very condescending. Very dismissive. Not things that J responds well to, though I have to admit that she’s adorable when she’s pissed off and protective. Anyway, I will look at this in…I don’t know, a year or so? There’s a lot more to process first.

• I’ve recently discovered a handful of blogs kept by women who’ve faced/are facing infertility. It’s haunting how much their words sound like my thoughts. I’m grateful for these virtual spaces, and the way in which they give voice to people who are vulnerable, and who are bravely willing to expose that vulnerability. I feel like we’re able to help heal each other. Some of these women call themselves “orphaned parents,” and I understand myself better in those terms. They write: “I am a mother,” and I feel less ashamed for thinking of myself that way. Of course I am a mother. I held my child in my body. In my arms. I kissed her. And even if I hadn’t – if I’d had her for even less time – she would still be my daughter. Why do I let that reality be discredited because she was so small, because she didn’t live longer? Some women have done research I haven’t brought myself to do yet, and they offer quotes from doctors about how procreation is one of our strongest instincts. They write about studies that show that depression rates of infertile women are similar to those of women with HIV or cancer. They’re angry at a culture that, because it doesn’t know how to categorize this kind of loss, simply ignores it, and expects women who suffer from it to do the same. When I read the anger in their words, I feel like I’m given permission to feel angry myself. Some six million people struggle with infertility. With child loss. With feeling like failures. A few of these women even post pictures of the babies they’ve lost in the second trimester. Their children look a little like E. It’s astonishing how much we have to teach each other.

• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t care how my children come to me. I don’t need them to be biologically mine. I’m devastated that my body probably can’t do this one, critical thing, but that grief is a separate thing, as is the still.terrible ache of not having our daughter with us. In addition to these things, though, there’s still this, and it’s like a hole going straight through me: I need the people I’m meant to parent. I need to know that they’re coming. I’m terrified that things will just keep falling apart, and I’ll never get to do this thing that I feel most called to do. I need my children.

• A friend of mine posted this on her facebook wall this morning: “It’s full speed ahead everyone. Mercury is now direct and the planets are aligned in our favor.” I have no idea how much power Mercury has over our lives, but if there’s a chance that some planetary shift might signal an end to the barrage of bad news that has been our 2011, then color me “full speed ahead.”

more

We had our follow up this morning with the genetic counselor, and I was pretty convinced heading into that appointment that we would be told I was fine, and that what happened to Emmett was anomalous.

Instead, I was diagnosed with Heterozygous Factor V Leiden, which is a hereditary hypercoagulability disorder (the most common of these, impacting around 5% of Caucasians in North America). It causes up to 30% of deep vein thromboses, and about 30% of pulmonary emboli, and it increases a woman’s chance of having multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. A thrombosis (or a series of thromboses) caused by this aspect of my blood is almost certainly what kept Emmett from growing feet, and why she couldn’t keep growing at all. They could put me on blood thinners, which would reduce the chance of a loss like E’s happening again, but doing so wouldn’t eliminate that risk, and doctors can’t even say for sure how much it would help.

I can’t know how I’ll feel once I’ve processed this new blow, but I don’t think that’s a risk I can take. I will be reeling from the pain of losing her for a long, long time, so putting myself, another baby, and the rest of my family through that again seems unthinkable (not to mention that, because of the Graves and the clotting disorder, it’s dangerous to me to try to carry). So now, on top of Emmett being gone, and figuring out how to live with GD and Factor V Leiden, I will almost definitely never carry another child.

vascular

J and I went for genetic counseling today, and the specialist there (a wonderful doctor; kind and intelligent) thinks that Emmett probably suffered from a vascular problem. Blood clots are the only thing that he can imagine having caused her particular set of abnormalities (i.e. the only thing that could have caused her intestines to form external to her body AND have kept her from growing feet, because without blood flow to those regions, they couldn’t grow properly). There’s a good chance that this was specific to her: that for whatever reason, her blood was too thick. There’s also a chance that she had vascular problems because I have an undiagnosed clotting disorder, so they took nine vials of my blood today to try to determine if that’s the case. We’ll know in a week or two. Either way, though, our girl was probably fine except for this one thing. Some rare, random vascular disorder.