My Gavin

My sweet boy, you should be turning one today.  My grief has faded somewhat but you are always in my heart.  Today your father, brothers, and I will spend the day doing fun things together.  In your memory we will build memories together.  I do not forget you.  I love you.

"You are my angel, my darling, my star...and my love will find you, wherever you are.

You are loved."

Waves of grief

"Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim."  - Vicki Harrison

Sometimes I feel guilty for how well I'm handling things.  We lost our daughter less than two months ago yet I am able to laugh, smile, and look towards the future with excitement.  I should be a mess, right?  I'm a horrible person for not grieving her more obviously.  Then a wave of grief hits me, hard.  It knocks my feet out from under me and I struggle to breathe.  The tears are there, a stinging presence, ready to be unleashed at the most inopportune times.  In those moments I feel like a terrible wife, mom, daughter, friend, employee...I struggle to put a cap on the overwhelming emotions and squash them back under the surface.  To gain control again.

What conflicting ideas!  I feel like a terrible person for not more openly grieving, then when a strong wave hits I feel like a terrible person for feeling it so strongly.  I think to myself that I should be thankful for what I have: Two amazing, loving, bright boys who light up my world.  That's more than many of my friends have.  I should be satisfied with the blessings I have, right?  And yet I grieve.  

We should have a child turning one next month, a child turning four the month after, and I should be securely in second trimester right now.  Grieving them does not make me less thankful for our boys.  But I feel the judgment of a good portion of our society.  At the park a new friend asks if we will have another and I struggle with how to answer.  Do I answer openly and fight the taboo or do I lie?  It's a hard decision and I make it in the moment, I tell her we have been trying for two years with two additional losses.  Instantly I can feel the awkwardness in the air.  What had been an invitation for our children to play soon hastily turns in to them needing to get home.  Now.  I know most people, thankfully, haven't been through this journey.  They don't know what to say and are afraid of saying the wrong things.  So they shut down, they run away from the grief.  

Loss and infertility are isolating experiences.  I'm an awkward person anyways, these experiences have just amplified it.  I try so hard to relate to others but I can't and I know most others struggle to relate to me.  When I am having a good day, when the grief ocean is calm, I can smile and get along with anyone.  But these stormy days are tough.

Where will I be?

We're considering donor eggs.  It's a huge step and not one I am fully ready to even consider right now.  My grief is still fresh and I need time to heal mentally.  But no matter what we choose I know that I will never have another biological link to a child.  It's difficult to process.  Before we lost our girl we had given up on trying, but since we weren't protecting it was still a possibility.  Now I'm back on birth control pills.

My grief over a biological child and our girl is so linked, I don't know how to separate it.  I see a little girl playing outside and I wonder what it would have been like to raise our girl.  Cute girls clothing stands out to me at the store, I should be buying them.  Then I look at S and see the way his eyes squint when he grins, just like mine do.  I will never have another child that "gets that" from me.  J is so much like me in his determination.  It's complicated trying to wrap my brain around possibly having another child who doesn't get any of their genes from me.

I would love to adopt if it was a sure thing and not so complicated in it's own way.  I know I could love an adopted child just as much as I love J and S.  I also know that I would love any child that resulted from donor eggs just as much.  But there is still feelings of grief over the genetic link.  When I take the boys out I always get so many comments about how J looks like me and S must look like Andy.  It will be different if we have another.  Different isn't a bad thing, but I'm not ready to fully go there yet.  I'm not sure I ever will be.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a part of who I am, it's always present, the degree just fluctuates.  Usually I can manage it reasonably well, and when I can't I have a prescription for Xanax.  But today I find myself spiraling down the rabbit hole of anxiety with no ladder to help me out.  I woke up this morning with a feeling of doom.  I know it's irrational, but it's there.

Every one of my losses has come hand in hand with another loss.  Our first child and my grandpa.  My beloved dog, Gavin, and one of our cats.  Now our precious girl.  I can't stop my brain from tumbling end over end with the question "who is next?".  Rationally I know that's not the way things work.  But tell that to my anxiety.

Then I started down the crazy train tracks of googling hereditary premature ovarian failure and recurrent triploidy.  I feel like there HAS to be a hereditary issue at work and it terrifies me for the boys.  My mom had issues similar to mine, although no known miscarriages.  Her and I have so much in common, including other health issues.  So there has to be a link.  My infertility and our losses are not an independent, out of the blue issue.  So what does this mean for my biological children?  I spent the better part of an hour searching, searching, searching for answers.  I found none.

Anxiety is a bitch.

Triploidy again

Our baby had triploidy 69 XXX.  Same exact cause for our loss, just this time we lost a girl.  We now know for sure we have a son and a daughter in heaven.  It hurts more than words can express.  I'm so angry.  Triploidy is supposed to occur in 1% of pregnancies and the odds of recurrent triploidy is less than 1%.  So once again we are on the wrong side of odds.  Our RE confirmed today that it would be unwise to continue with my eggs.  I knew it was coming but it still majorly sucks to hear from a doctor that I will not have any more biological children.  Genetics are only a teeny tiny part of what makes up a family but it will still be a grieving process of it's own.  I'm not sure where we go from here.  We're not permanently closing the door on possibilities but we will be taking some time to make decisions.

Band aids don't fix bullet holes

Forgive me for using a Taylor Swift lyric as my title, but it stuck out to me on my drive in to work this morning.  Right now I feel like I have a huge, gaping wound in the middle of my chest and a sign that points to my uterus that reads "vacant".  I remember this feeling from before: Trying to walk around with a plastered on fake smile, trying to pretend our baby and my grief doesn't exist.  We're being extremely open about this loss but it doesn't make the day to day any easier.   The world moves on quickly but I can't.  So I have to put that smile on my face and pretend.  Fake it to make it.  The truly terrible thing is that I know the smile will become easier to maintain, it will even become genuine again.  It's not fair that I know this, it's not fair that this is my third time walking this stupid path.  I want a new path.

The problem with our society

After a truly awful weekend of light bleeding and bad cramps I had my follow up ultrasound at 8am this morning.  It confirmed our baby passed away but that I had not yet officially miscarried.  Andy squeezed my hand as we chose another D&C.  I will forever be grateful to my new RE.  He went above and beyond for us so many times, including today when he rushed to schedule my surgery for 12:30pm.  We had time to run to the lab to get a CBC taken and time to run home to our boys for an hour, then it was time to get to the surgery center for preop.

Thank God for my parents and for my father in law.  They have been by our side through everything but especially in the past two days.  I am forever grateful for them willingly stepping in to care for the boys when I have been unable to.

The surgery went well.  They blew just one vein this time when trying to get the IV in.  It's an improvement so I will take it.  Only two bad things happened, besides the obvious, and I think they reflect exactly what is wrong with our society right now.

The first was that I had to sign off and agree that losing my baby was a "missed abortion" and an "incomplete abortion".  This is part of the stigma, folks.  Seriously.  This was NOT an abortion. I did not choose to end the life of my precious child, but in medical jargon it is lumped together with ending the life of an unwanted baby.  I am pro choice in theory, although I hate with all my heart that people would make that choice for their own good over adoption.  But I believe a woman has the right to doing with their own body as they see fit.  But lumping one loss in with another like this is so wrong.  No wonder women and families are ashamed to speak out when they suffer the loss of a wanted child.  Who wouldn't fear judgment when they are medically labeled an aborter, or better yet a "chronic aborter" like me.  Beautiful language.

Secondly, a nurse who meant well hugged me and told me that this is God's way of getting rid of the imperfect and He has promised that next time things will be perfect.  I'm religious, and although I can't help but want to yell "WHY?!" at the top of my lungs at Him, I mostly manage not to.  I know there is a purpose I don't yet, and may not ever understand.  But He did not take this life from me due to it being imperfect.  All life is imperfect.  This baby, no matter their chromosomes, was perfect.  He also has not promised that next time will be perfect, if there even is a next time.  It's been almost a year and a half since we lost Gavin due to triploidy XXY.  According to this women that means THIS baby should have been perfect, but they weren't.  I know she means well, but this is another example of what is wrong with our society.

The only acceptable things to say are "I am so sorry", "this isn't fair", "what can I do to help?", "I'm here for you", and "you and your family are in my thoughts and prayers".  Support is what a family needs, not anything that brings judgment on them, their loss, or potential future plans.

I'm sure I will make many people uncomfortable, but I'm not going to hide that this happened.  I need to focus on myself and my immediate family right now.  I can't worry about making others uncomfortable.  We lost a child.  Again.  We need to be allowed to grieve however we need to and that begins by ignoring the stigma that comes with miscarriage.  We did nothing wrong.

The stigma

I just read this and it really hit home, "I then realized that for me, the only thing worse than losing something that meant the world to me is pretending that I lost nothing."  I hate the stigma of miscarriage and I hate that society expects me to put on a happy face and pretend my baby hasn't died.  My baby lived and I refuse to act like they never existed.  

It's over

My RE fit me in for an ultrasound and it was confirmed that I am miscarrying.  Baby measured 6w3d, a growth of two days and still had a heartbeat but it was very very slow.  It's torture knowing my baby is still alive but will for sure pass away.  Either I will miscarry naturally over this long weekend or I will have a D&C on Tuesday.  I'm praying I don't have to miscarry naturally.  I want the certainty of the D&C as well as the genetic results.  There are no words for how terrible this is.

I hate this

I woke up to bright red blood this morning.  It's Saturday so I'm probably going to have to suffer the unknown until Monday.  But bleeding has never been good for me.  I'm having flashbacks to our first loss, having to lay in the shower while the worst of it happened.  I don't want another D&C, but I prefer it to miscarrying on my own.  At least then I could know if this precious baby is a boy or girl and WHY the fuck this happened.  God, I know you have a plan but I really don't know why breaking our hearts is part of it.

I fully realize I shouldn't jump to thinking I'm miscarrying, but it's self preservation.  This was all too good to be true.  People like us don't get to be infertility cliches.  We were blessed doubly once before and apparently that's it for us.

Limbo Land

Here we are again, the place I desperately hate: Limbo.  Baby measured 6w1d and has a heartbeat of 113 bpm.  I should be thrilled and part of me is.  But part of me feels like this is déjà vu.  Our baby is measuring a few days behind my LMP (and further from my guess O date) and the gestational sac looked small to me.  The radiographer and nurse were both cautiously optimistic so I am trying to be too.  Logically I know that our past experiences do not determine our current, but it's so hard.  We will know more in two weeks.  Please please please grow, little one!  Please be strong and healthy!

Good news!

1,425 which is a doubling time of 38.76 hours!  I'm in shock and so thrilled.  And terrified.  Grow baby, grow!

Well

256.  It's not a bad number at all!  I go back Monday for a repeat.  Deep breaths and lots of prayers.

Reality

I'm flip flopping on if I want to get betas this go around.  Yesterday I was firmly decided that I did not want them.  I had them with Gavin and at first they showed everything was good.  So I don't think they would truly offer me any relief, just more worry if the number didn't feel right.  But what if this is a CP and getting a beta is my only chance to truly document that this baby existed, that s/he was here even if it was only for a short time?  This baby matters.  I want them to be real, not just a memory of a line on a pregnancy test.  But then again, what difference will it make?  Betas don't show you much of anything and I wouldn't do anything differently at this point anyway.   I wish I could be blissfully ignorant right now.

Here we go again

Just when I had reached the point of being okay with being done, we're pregnant.  No interventions and no trying.  We are an infertility cliche and I'm in shock and terrified.  I want to be excited and happy, but it's so hard.  This is my third time conceiving naturally and we all know what happened the first two times.  We know I have shitty eggs and that my RE wasn't optimistic for us conceiving a healthy baby again even with interventions.  So I know how this will likely end.  But today I am pregnant and I love this baby SO much.  Please, God.  Please.