Category Archives: false starts

About turn

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27

The one thing that is readily established from re-reading these posts of mine is how much of a hypocrite I am.

Well… Maybe that’s a bit harsh. Not a hypocrite exactly, but there have been some apparent swings and roundabouts in the position I’ve held as we’ve made our slow way through this. (Just shag and it’ll happen! Keep just shagging, but also do yoga, meditate, change your diet, and have acupuncture and it’ll happen! Right back to my lazy default position of just shag! Ad infinitum…) Ultimately, I’m not too bothered by this. I think it’s all par for the course when you’re dealing with so much uncertainty, while feeling so utterly powerless to make something happen. And after all, despite how unhinged it may have made me seem, the essentially reasonable core position (just shag! Whenever and however you like!) has not changed, it’s just had different trimmings added depending on the season and the state of my psyche.

However, there has been a change lately which marks more of an abrupt and absolute about turn on an issue I thought I was once pretty clear about. A revisiting of a previous value judgement. My first lesson in how much I’d better STFU about my theoretical opinions on any and everything to do with procreation, because whoo boy, things look mighty different on the other side of an experience; certainly the feelings of this 31 year old with 2 confirmed miscarriages bear little relation to those of her naively optimistic self of 18 months ago. All of which to say that we have undergone initial (in)fertility testing, requested referral to a specialist having exhausted the little expertise our GP has to offer, and have thereby started the equally slow and uncertain process of medically intervening in our attempt to reproduce. (While still shagging. Obviously.)

Oh! My words. At least they’re tasty.

___________

In a (probably very related) move, I’ve been reading topical books again. I promised you chat about Half a Wife later this month, and that will definitely be happening, but I’ve also been very enjoyably distracted by French Children Don’t Throw Food (called Bringing up Bébé in the US), and will probably be forgetting my lessons of today and happily spouting my opinions on that as well. (Thus far very positive, so if you haven’t read it yet, and fancy giving it a once-over and wading in for discussion, I strongly encourage it!)

Cringe-worthy

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28

I suppose it’s pretty obvious by now that through sheer neglect this blog has entered a respectable state of semi-retirement (and no, not just because of what Kirsty said about those who are “trying”, although, ouch), but I thought I’d more formally put it to rest anyway.

It’s been over a year now, and in the funny way life tends to circle back on itself sometimes, despite the madness and the drama, we’ve landed up not much further on than where we started - living a pretty hectic, but mostly enjoyable life, into which welcoming a baby often seems a hair’s breadth short of utter madness, but what the heck! Life is short, and it’s what we want, so we’ll go for it anyway.

Thankfully, we’re not exactly where we started. Somehow, in the midst of everything else there’s been progress, though that self-same progress has meant, and will probably continue to mean for some time, silence on this front. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret writing what I already have for one moment. It’s clearly helped me to work through some of my neuroses, leaving me, I hope, much better placed to be the relatively chilled-out mother I would very much like to be one day. And I continue to believe that it’s a conversation we should be having, cringe-worthy or not.

But while I still do very much want to find myself knocked up one happy day in the hopefully not too distant future, it finally seems that, well, I’m just not that bothered about it. It doesn’t preoccupy my thoughts as it once did, and actually, I seem to have rediscovered that I have quite a lot else to be getting on with in the meantime. Quite a lot else that I’d very much enjoy getting on with while not pregnant, to be perfectly honest. And that all that money spent on acupuncture to rebalance my chi could instead be buying a lot of very tasty shoes.

So, please excuse me while I neglect this place further, and carry on enjoying the really rather wonderful life I do have. And hopefully, there’ll one day be joyful reason enough for me to return.

Unbeliever

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35

I’m not pregnant anymore. This poppyseed was not our baby.

And… I’m OK. Admittedly, I wasn’t initially, but I’ve had some time, and done a lot of thinking, and spoken to the Boy (and cried at him), and spoken to my therapist (and cried at her), and started having acupuncture, and done some more holistic reading, and gotten back into yoga, and had some much-needed rest (what can I say, it’s been quite a week!) and… I’m as OK as I can be. I really am.

Obviously, I don’t know why I miscarried early, again, and in addition to all the tree-hugging, hippie stuff already mentioned I have seen another, more sympathetic GP, and have a scan booked for next week to check out my ladyparts, so I’m not neglecting the hard science. But, I do think the overwhelming anxiety and disbelief that I experienced as my primary response to the pregnancy (instead of, you know, unremitting JOY) probably had rather a lot to do with it. (It may be stagnant Qi, or it may be chronically high levels of cortisol, but either way it has the same result. Environments poorly conducive to flourishing poppyseeds.)

So, I’ve decided that really, I’m not ready. Not quite. Clearly, I am full of Fear that I wasn’t completely conscious of, or whose strength I hugely underestimated before. So I’m calling a bit of a time out. Taking some time to work on me. To figure out what’s going on with me physically, and try to improve that, and simultaneously figure out what on earth is going on in my headspace, and see what I can do about that as well. This is not necessarily due to an assumption on my part that there’s something ‘wrong’ with me (although, a feeling of brokenness may well be part of what I’ve got to work on), rather it’s mostly an expression of my understanding that my body and my mind are inextricably intertwined, and I can’t look at the one without considering the other.

If I’m not too embarrassed by where this all takes me (see hippy, tree-hugging way of life already mentioned, and consider that I am now, I suppose, mindfully preparing for conception in a way I might have previously mocked - my words, they are mighty tasty), I might write a bit about it, because it’s already proving rather fascinating. Then again, remaining detached enough to ‘observe’ the process might be counterproductive to being completely immersed in it. And the first thing I’m working on is my optimism, and the belief that I’ll feel whole again in two twos. So, I don’t know about sharing this part. We’ll see.

There is one thing that is actually quite comforting about everything that’s happened. (And no, it really isn’t, ‘At least you know you can get pregnant!’ That might get you punched in the face, no matter how zen I become.) Because now I am fully consciously aware of this Fear of mine, so it’s out in the open, where it can be held up to the light, examined and understood. In the bright spring sunlight, so promising of regeneration and renewal, where hopefully one day quite soon, I can look it full it in the face and tell it to fuck right off.

Status quo

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19

So.

I’ve been somewhat inadvertently practising that conception aid widely touted by a certain breed of pregnant women, as evidenced by my absence from this place. You know the one; the if you stop thinking/stressing about it, you’ll magically get pregnant method. Well, I haven’t really been stressing about it at all (although, to be fair, and honest, that’s most likely because I’ve had plenty else to stress about), and… I’m still not pregnant. Seems that method is just about as useful as a chocolate teapot, although all that practising has been rather more tasty.

I can’t stop being self-observant, though, and an obvious pattern has emerged. It appears that I am able to get pregnant, but am not able to stay that way for any significant length of time. I’m not going to weird you out by sharing exactly how I know that, or how it is that I know (or hope) that it’s likely to be a transient phenomenon, since talking publicly about my cycles crosses a vaguely defined but immutable line for me, but intellectually knowing that this too is incredibly likely to pass, somehow doesn’t necessarily make it that much easier to cope with emotionally. It doesn’t make the hope that arises despite my attempts to not get excited, and not care, go away any more quickly, and it doesn’t make the disappointment that takes the place of those dashed hopes any less acute, dulling though the overall effect of time may be.

So, indeed.

Don’t cry for me, though. I’m OK. I’m much more OK than I feared I might be in this situation. I’ve been trying my best to view it as a valuable lesson in letting go, not needing to be in control or working to a plan all the time, and realising that this will probably be the first time of many where I will just have to wing it and hope for the best.

I don’t actually know how much that zen approach has been helping, but what has been extremely helpful is the promise of Christmas at the in-laws, which will apparently be epic, and boozy beyond belief. In which case, it’s probably for the best that my future offspring hasn’t had to spend the first little bit of its life being viciously resented, because mommy wasn’t allowed to get lashed, and was instead forced to spend the entire holiday season with her in-laws stone cold sober now, isn’t it?

The only way out is through

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16

First, there were tears. Stormy, wrenching sobs that didn’t last long. They were quickly brushed-off, and replaced by all-too-comfortable denial, strengthened by a powerful suppression of feeling, because, you know, one must go on.

One didn’t. Instead, there was a meltdown triggered by trivia. Unavoidable understanding of the underlying cause led to withdrawal and retreat. Time out to lick wounds and heal, albeit superficially.

And so went the body as did the mind, laid waste by an ailment that rendered it completely silent for days on end. So long that I wondered whether I’d ever speak again, the darkly superstitious parts of me fearing that here was an unmistakeable sign from the universe telling me in no uncertain terms to shut the fuck up you useless neurotic cunt for good. And I lay indoors and I listened to the universe and I flayed myself, body and soul, all under the guise of recovery.

But then, there was inadvertent and unexpected therapy, of all things. Ten hours of it. And try as I might I could not suppress my feelings any longer, but had to form them into words, and speak of them, bringing my grief over my loss out into the open. Where I could look at it, and acknowledge that I did have reason to mourn. And allow myself to fully do so at last.

Finally, there was much-needed rest, true recovery. A week of feeding my body and my mind wholesomely and well. A week of early nights in which there were hours of genuinely restorative sleep. A week that eventually saw the full return of much-missed, unalloyed joy.

So, here I am again, restored to myself at last. Fairly certain that I’m not pregnant – I tried to make sure of that this month, thinking that a child didn’t deserve to be conceived by a woman who still harboured hostile feelings to her uterus. (Although equally, it has seemed at times as though my uterus has retained hostile feelings of its own towards me.) But I am finally back, sense of humour and potty-mouth fully intact, and still looking askance at all things purposefully planned conception-wise.

As for this, I did not intend to write of this; it seemed easier to forget the darkness that has already lingered too long and skip lightly on. But had anyone told me previously that it would take me three full weeks to recover from the loss of a pregnancy whose existence was only proven 48 hours before it was reabsorbed into the ether from whence it came, and of whose demise I was already dreadfully certain 24 hours into that 48, I would never have believed them.

Believe me.

Blink and you miss it

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35

Last week I was pregnant. This week I am not. It really is that simple, that straightforward, that speedily dissolved. Who knew? 

I didn’t. Not really.

So, now I miscarry. Although I remain unsure of whether what I am experiencing really deserves that term this early on. Maybe this is just an ordinary period after one of the many, common, usually unrecognised ‘chemical pregnancies’, a term that I have never liked. For one thing, that long, silent pause, as at the end of a deep inspiration, did not go unnoticed, I felt it altering my own chemistry. But, the term makes it easy to dismiss, as if it never really existed to begin with. As if it was all in my mind from the start.

The indelible plus sign that remains is the only way I have of knowing that it wasn’t.

Then again, is ‘failed conception’ any better? Because who failed? The embryo, to navigate the infinitely complicated processes of cell division and growth, invasion and implantation of itself into another host being? Or me, to adequately nurture and protect it through those crucially vulnerable early stages?

It hardly matters, now. Done is done.

So we go on into the world as if nothing more than the ordinary and the banal happened this weekend. And we tell each other platitudes – at least it can happen for us, this time it just wasn’t meant to be, our time will come. And we tell each other the truth, over and over again, so that we can be sure of it – life is fucking unfair, but that’s OK, so long as there is more laughter than tears, and so long as we know that we two are essentially enough.