life after loss

bc i am home alone with just my goobers today (N is working--we did our little mother's day celebration on friday with my folks), & i'm waiting for my tomatoes to roast for lunch (altho i have no chocolate shake, so i'm settling for chocolate milk) i actually have a minute to blog & be thoughtful, so please excuse the introspective post today.

despite the fact that i have 2 beautiful sons sleeping upstairs, & a third baby due in just a few weeks, today i find myself dwelling on the sons i never got to meet. in january 2007, i became a childless mom for the first time, and a little over a year later, when we lost our second son, my heart broke into a million pieces & i despaired of ever being a mom. i doubted whether i'd ever be a whole person again, & sunk into blackness. every day was a struggle, & even when i wore a smile i felt like every scrap of happiness i had known had disapeared with the sweet boy we never even got to hold.
after 8 months of the worst depression i'd ever felt, i finally started fighting to be happy again, & was able to snatch moments of peace & a few genuine smiles from my life, but i still felt like only part of a person. i was a mom, but without a child, totally rudderless and without any outlet for all the love & care & overwhelming emotions that come with having a baby of your own. it was then, trying to come to grips with the permanent absence of my sons, that we found out we were pregnant with con & val, & i felt hope again.
as difficult and frightening as that pregnancy was, it healed me. i don't know that i would ever have recovered without them. i would have gone on, sure, but as an incomplete version of myself. the boys brought joy back into my life, & gave me a reason to strive to be the woman i've always wanted to be. i can't put into words what motherhood means to me. this family is all i've ever wanted & i am grateful.

so today, despite having found my own happy, i find myself thinking of the moms out there still struggling to heal & those who may never heal, & i wish for them peace, & the return of joy.

if you're up to it, please share what healed you after your loss or infertility struggle, or what you still hope for, & maybe we can all find some hope in the stories. much love & happy mother's day, whether your babies are on earth, in heaven or still on their way.

why i don't tell people we used clomid. (or, shut up & mind your own business)

i'm not ashamed or embarassed that we used clomid to concieve our boys. after the loss of our second son, i had a uterine infection from retained tissue, multiple D&C's & drugs to clear things up, & no longer ovulated on my own. you can't get pregnant without ovulating & clomid did that for us. we used it responsibly & under medical supervision, & with full knowledge that it might result in multiples (especially since fraternal twins already run in my family.) i am thrilled that it worked for us, & that it helped bring us our sweet boys.
when i was pregnant, i swore i would never be one of those women who wouldn't discuss her struggles, or who'd mind talking about what we needed to do to get pregnant.

& then we had twins, & the comments started.

my biggest pet peeve is other twin moms, who didn't need help concieving & therefore view their twins as the "real thing". as though somehow i am less of a twin mom bc i was on clomid when we concieved. moms who use IVF, IUI's, or plain old fertilty drugs are no less of a mother, & i hated hearing the smug insinuations of "fertile" moms of multiples. if someone concieves a singleton while using fertility treatments, she doesn't hear "well, MY baby is the real thing bc we concieved him without drugs" so why do those of us lucky enough to have multiples have to be subjected to it?
the other reason i quit talking about clomid is just the plain insensitivity of most people. for me, our need to use clomid will be forever linked to the loss of our son & a very dark time in life. in the time since then, unfortunately i've found that most people are not sensitive to the realities of pregnancy loss. through well-meaning ignorance, or just plain callousness, they make too many cruel comments & my skin just isn't thick enough to brush them off consistently.

so i no longer discuss conception with most people. strangers get a complete brush off, bc frankly, it really is none of their business. (to me a stranger asking how we concieved our boys is akin to asking what sexual position we used. it's intrusive & rude, & will always get a polite "i don't discuss that with people i don't know.") & for most others, unless it's approached with respect, sensitivity & compassion, i simply refuse to discuss it. i NEVER ask other moms how they concieved (with the exception of fertility & TTC forums, etc, where those questions are invited), bc i assume that if they wanted me to know, they would have shared that information with me.
privacy is already too devalued in our society, & i don't understant the need to pry into the most private details of a person's life, such as conception, & then comment on that person's choices. my sons are no less my sons bc we needed help to concieve them. i am their real mom, they ARE real people (all 4 of them, my boys in heaven & my boys here on earth), & if you can't approach a fellow mother with compassion & respect, then shut up & mind your own business.

Road Trip Time

i think i'm going up north tomorrow. (my folks have a place 3 hrs north of here, right by lake huron. that's one of the big lakes, for those of you not familiar with michigan.) with the dudes. by myself. we aren't going to chicago now bc of the pending layoff, & i'm just getting antsy of hanging around ypsi. not that there's tons to do up north in the fall, but at least it's a change of scene. so if i still feel brave enough to make the 3 hr drive solo with 2 teething babies tomorrow, i'll be MIA for a while.
N is so super excited at the prospect of being a bachelor for a week that i'm almost jealous. i was really looking forward to our night in chicago without babies or critters. i doubt i'd be happy being solo for a whole week, i know i'd pine away for my boys, but one night with no one to take care of would have been nice. instead, i'm settling for a change of locale & twice the work, hoping that the new scenery is enough to recharge me.

sat is also the 1st birthday party for my friend's little boy. i'm looking forward to seeing her & her son, but it's also a little bittersweet for me, since the son we lost would have been turning 1 this fall too. all of her boy's milestones remind me of him; they would have been so close in age. i love our twins, but i still miss the babies we didn't get to keep here with us. i'm just feeling kind of blue today, i guess.

boys are napping, so i should get packing. i have class tonight, so i won't have much time later. this will be N's first time putting the boys to bed by himself. hahahahaha!!! (evil laugh)

Regrets

i remember when we were trying to get pg, before the guys were born, i was so jealous of women who already had kids. even if we were in the same boat-- trying to conceive after pregnancy loss, when i'd see them talk about how badly they wanted to be pg, i'd think to myself "but at least you already HAVE a child" & feel extra sorry for myself that we had none.
i feel horrible about that now. we'd like to start trying again when the guys are about a year old, & lately i've been wondering if i'd be ok if the boys were the only kids we ever had. of course i wouldn't love them any less, but i so want a 3rd child i think it would be very hard to come to terms with the fact that it might never happen for us. & then suddenly i had insight into how those women must have felt-- longing for a LO that might never come & trying to make peace with the fact that you must be content with the children you have. funny (in a not very humorous way) how short sighted we become when dealing with our own grief.
another blog i read has been dealing with the loss of their little girl while still be a wonderful mommy to her other 3 kids, & i understand the depth of her feelings now in awaythat wouldn't have been possible for me a year ago. i so regret those horribly selfish thoughts i had when we were trying to conceive. loss is loss, no matter what stage of life you're in, or what size or shape your family takes. i hope i kept those thoughts to myself, but if i inadvertently hurt some one, i'm so sorry,i didn't know how it felt & couldn't understand what it felt like to face the fact that your family may forever feel incomplete. i know better now, & i apologize.

Infertility vs. Recurrent Miscarriage

I realized when going through my blog reader this morning that we seem to be separated into 2 groups-- the infertiles & those of us who've suffered losses. Even among women who've experienced both, we seem to pick a "home" & stay there, identifying ourselves either as infertile or someone who's suffered a loss. My insurance even separates the two (infertility treatments are not covered, but treatment for recurrent pregnancy loss is.) So why the division?
Do we identify with the experience that affected us most profoundly? After 2 losses, N & I were technically infertile since I didn't ovulate on my own. (I won't pretend that our experience with infertility was anywhere near as extreme as so many other's & I do not mean to compare us with couples who've gone through injectables or IVF, I'm just making a point.) I still identified most with other women who'd suffered losses & didn't feel I belonged in the community of infertiles.
Even though our bout with "infertility" was technically brief, I felt it was compounded by the 2 years of losses, and yet I heard all the time from well-meaning folks (including some infertiles) that "at least we could get pregnant" as though 2 failed pregnancies in 2 years somehow made us one of the "fertiles." While I know that some women who consider themselves infertile yearn for the ability to get pregnant without meds, I also know women who can get pregnant who wish just as hard for the ability to STAY pregnant & would gladly use any meds available if it meant they could keep their child.
I'm not sure exactly where I'm headed with all this, other than to say that to my thinking at least, recurrent pregnancy loss IS a form of infertility. Does a women who goes through 2 years of medical treatments that result in one healthy pregnancy suffer any more than the woman who experiences repeated losses for 2 years before finally achieving a healthy pregnancy, or the woman who goes through 2 years of waiting on an adoptive parent list? I don't think so. & yet there remains a divide in the community. Why?