Still, it got me thinking. I'm pregnant now, apparently successfully, with my second child. I've been through fertility treatment for both pregnancies, and it has taken an average of 3 years each time to get to a pregnancy that made it past 12 weeks. There were many many months of sadness and feelings of hopelessness (and a fair dose of bitterness at all the pregnancies around me) - something like 50-60 rounds of "Maybe I'm finally pregnant this month. Did it work? Shhh, don't hope too much. I'll just assume I'm not until I can take a pregnancy test. Why not just wait until after my period is supposed to come? But what if that was a pang of something other than cramps coming? Shit - no....there it is, I'm not pregnant. Again."
And after a miscarriage at 10 weeks a few years ago, most of my early pregnancy excitement got wiped away. We had told many people we were pregnant, and then, we had to go tell them we weren't. We had to un-imagine the due date and all those thing that went with it. I finally stopped thinking about the due date and what could have been, about 6 months after friends' babies conceived around the same time were born.
I am extremely lucky to be where I am right now, with one child here and one on the way. But it is luck, fortune. There is no greater purpose or reason I got pregnant and it stayed this time, but didn't 2 years ago. Or that the first time worked. I approach pregnancy in a very different way than some who have easily gotten (and stayed pregnant) without help from the medical community. But I am not more or less deserving (because of God, or because of what kind of person I am, or anything like that) of what I have gotten.
And the book I just finished, a memoir about going through the inability to have children (Silent Sorority by Pam Tsigdinos) got me thinking, once again, how going through pregnancy difficulties changes you. I found the author's writing to be extremely powerful, and helpful, for clarifying a sense of loss. In her case, the loss is of never having children. And there is nothing she can do that will erase that loss. She will have a different life now. It will not be all sadness, but Mother's Day will always be bittersweet for her, because there are things that happen to us in life (inability to bear children) that are not erasable by other, not quite same, things (being an aunt, an adoptive mother, etc.). What I appreciated most about her writing was the willingness to just acknowledge this fact - you don't erase monumental losses from life. It isn't fun, it is hard to know how to sit with someone who goes through them, it is scary, but it is authentic.
So anyway, here, at the end of a kind of meandering, not-so-well-written post, is my point. I've been thinking about pregnancy loss these last few weeks, and reading about how often it is a silent condition - to be not pregnant but really really want to be and have been trying. There are no un-baby showers, or cards, or such. And yet, infertility is a very real part of some women's (and couples') lives. And the lighting of a candle at 7pm last Tuesday was a beatiful gesture. But it struck me as still too silent - for me. This, then, is my add-on.
An empty womb, where no pregnancy has ever been but has been hoped and prayed and wept for. A womb that held a being, but only for a while, not long enough to be born. And a being that survived for long enough to be a baby, but only for a while. Each situation is different, and people have gone through each have gone through unique processes. And this is meant to recognize the feelings of loss.
It will be going up on my Facebook profile for a few weeks. Because even though I'm pregnant right now, seemingly successfully, my miscarriage has defined how I approach this pregnancy - with caution, and with reserve. And it has helped me in the past to know that others have gone through this, too.
If you've been through a lost pregnancy or baby, and want to put it up, too, feel free to grab the image.
