i've been struggling
for awhile with what to continue writing about here regarding my personal journey, mainly because i had
no real conclusions. that's a
problem; this blog has always been about life in process. at the same time, because it dealt with
what i now think of as one of the more publicly asked-about intensely private
decisions ("so when are you going to have another one?"), i wanted just a little more clarity about what constitutes a
"complete family." and how that definition can either continue to be a
carefully-constructed faux reality, or an acceptance of the actual story.
get to the point, i
hear you saying. ok, well, even
choosing the verb for how to say this is awkward: we've chosen? decided?
accepted? come to an understanding? embraced?
fine, then. we have, in our own ways, and together,
(fill in the verb from above list here) that L will most likely be our only living child.
looking back on the
pendulum swing of a journey that got me here, i know that it started with the
blueprint i always had for "family:" 2 bio parents, 2 bio
children. this is what i lived;
this is what my husband lived.
i never questioned my personal idea of "family" -- while i am
very familiar with all the permutations of other people's families, my family
was four people. and thus, i think,
i absorbed that this number is what would make our family complete.
i remember driving
home from one of L's earliest post-birth checkups, his impossibly tiny, freshly-hatched
infant body asleep in the back, and me with my body still healing from the birth
and milk newly come in, saying to my husband, "so...i guess we're going to
start trying again as soon as possible?". one of the nurses had made a passing comment about how
ideally a new mother needs a solid year to heal/adjust to motherhood/go back to
being an unpregnant body before another pregnancy, and my first reaction was
mentally screaming "I DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF TIME, LADY!" i was looking down the barrel of 40,
coming out of three miscarriages and years of infertility, and i thought: we
gotta get going on this next kid.
despite exclusively
breastfeeding my ridiculously hungry baby, my cycle came back when he was just
4 months old. my OB/GYN, whom i
love, called it "a particularly adventurous egg." then, 28 days later, i had another
period. and then, another 28 days...another period. inwardly, i rejoiced.
this obviously meant my reproductive bits were back online, and we were
ready to have another baby!
only those 28 days
kept coming and going, like clockwork.
they didn't stop. at first,
i was too sleep-deprived and overwhelmed by new mommyhood to really care too
much; it was only after L's 1st birthday that i started to worry. no, actually, it wasn't worry. it was more like the slow decay of of a
bouquet of cut flowers: my hope was wilting, being replaced by the "oh no,
here we go again" dread.
secondary infertility is defined as when you can't conceive or carry to term in a given period of time following
the birth of your biological child without assisted reproductive
techniques or fertility meds. it is a very real and common thing, and it's talked
about even less than the "silent corrosion" that is primary infertility. even medical professionals are known to
downplay it, along with well-meaning friends and family ("just keep
trying!" "relax!"). the problem is,
the toxic emotional cocktail of sadness, anger, frustration, despair, self-blame,
etc. that usually accompanies infertility now comes in a big tall highball
glass of guilt and criticism.
having an existing child (or children) means you have their welfare to
consider, and other people (and maybe even your own internal voices) can be
astonishingly vocal about the perceived selfishness of wanting to increase your
family. the emotional duality of
being grateful for your child while still mourning the ones you didn't have, i
have found, extends not just to babies lost in pregnancy, but also babies not
conceived. both situations mean
facing and grieving the lost future that you hoped for that will not come to
pass.
over time, the answer
to the very common question, "so when will you/are you going to have
another one?" has shifted.
it's gone through a lot of permutations, listed here in all their wilting-flower chronology:
"hopefully
soon!"
...
"we're 'leaving
the gate unlatched' and hoping for the best."
...
"we're so
grateful for this one, and we do hope there will be another."
...
"we're trying to
be patient -- it was a long journey to have this one and we're grateful just for him."
...
"we didn't even
think we could have him, so who knows?"
...
"we don't know if
we can or will. we're just grateful to have
him."
...
and now, the current
one: "he IS our another
one."
the pendulum has
reached the other side, and i don't think it's going to swing back. it shouldn't -- because the resolution of saying
goodbye to our previous imagined incarnation of family (2 parents, 2 children)
and instead fully, mindfully accepting and rejoicing in our actual family (2 parents, 1
living child), means that we can also move forward in our story being the best
family we can be.
after the first two
miscarriages, our wise long-time family therapist told me: you must take your
circumstances and choose a direction. either you can stay defined as the grieving mother with
empty arms, or you can be Yourself, and that weeping childless mother is a
component of Who You Are. he
reminded me of this during our last visit, when my husband and I went to seek his
counsel on this very difficult decision.
we can mourn this piece of our family story, but it is not who we
are. we are not a family with Not
Enough Children. we must be a
family with One Child, who is even more than we may have at one time hoped
for. we are a family of three, and
that is, for us, abundance.
No comments:
Post a Comment