Conversations With My Children: ??

Me: Hello?
??: ...
Me: Are you there?
??: Maybe.

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I always wanted to be a mother. My childhood was scattered with memories of caring for younger cousins over holidays and vacations; of diapers changed and tantrums endured; and the innate urge to pour love and adoration on these small creatures who would one day become women and men. After college graduation, I watched as, one by one, my best friends became spouses and parents while I remained resolutely single. At the time, it was easy to blame my career. The reality was that I had never sustained a relationship for longer than a month, and many a long night was spent wondering if it was just another area in which I was almost good enough but not quite there. Loneliness followed each move. I felt restless and betrayed by a God who would place such a desire on my heart without a means of fulfilling it.

It was at age thirty when I met my husband. Everything seemed to be coming together. We were married within a year, and while I wanted children right away, he insisted that we hold off for a year or so. It turned out to be wise as our apartment turned out to be structurally unsound. I was afraid that it could take a while to become pregnant once we started trying, but I held out hope that it could still happen immediately. The first month was utter disappointment. Then, on Mother's Day, the strip showed two lines instead of one.

For the next few weeks, I felt sick to my stomach, but my heart was singing. A strange craving for fruits and vegetables had me convinced that we were going to have a girl. The weeks ticked by, and I waited for my first ultrasound so that I could share the news with my coworkers. At week nine, we adopted a second cat, and I found myself filled with a sudden feeling of doom that I blamed on this badly timed life decision. Then the pregnancy symptoms began to wane.

At first, I thought that things were just improving as we neared the second trimester. I was in the middle of another shift in the Emergency Department when the bleeding began. There was a panicked call to my obstetrician, which resulted in a general advisement to take it easy and monitor. I purchased some pads and spent the next five hours of my shift convincing myself that it was just spotting and everything would be all right.

It wasn't. Two days later, I found myself hunched over the toilet as painful cramps twisted up my abdomen and clots of blood emptied into the toilet. There was a hurried trip to the hospital, followed by confirmation that my uterus was empty, and my hormone levels were dropping. The follow up appointment with my OB-GYN, the one where I had planned to see my baby for the first time, turned into a check to make sure that no tissue remained.

"At least you didn't need surgery," I told myself. "There must have been a genetic abnormality that was incompatible with life." And yet, there was this niggling doubt. After all, my progesterone levels had been a little low. Maybe the baby had been perfect, and my body hadn't been up to the task. I felt broken, and there was nothing that would make me feel better short of a successful pregnancy because then I would no longer be a failure.

My husband, bless him, tried to be supportive. "It wasn't real," he would tell me. "It was never going to be viable." He was probably right, Still, the changes in my body had been as real as the surprisingly expensive ER bill that I received to add insult to injury. Perhaps this is why "we're pregnant" is such a load of bull. I felt every minute of that pregnancy. My husband's body, however, stayed resolutely the same. Outside of an emotional wife, it was easier for him to accept and move on. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a constant state of mourning.

Months passed, along with my early thirties. I burned through ovulation strips, pregnancy tests, and apps that supposedly helped you track the best times to get pregnant. My period lost some of its regularity from the stress. As I started to stare down age 35, I dragged my husband to an OB-GYN appointment with me. I was determined to find out if we had fertility problems, starting with him--naturally. It was in that office that my provider decided to check my HCG since my period was supposedly due. It was in that same office that she confirmed that I was finally pregnant again.

There were more precautions taken this time, due to my miscarriage and my age. My progesterone level was again borderline low, and the doctor prescribed pills for the first trimester. This cemented the idea in my head that my previous pregnancy may have been okay if we had just gone in earlier and obtained the hormonal support that I needed. Even as this pregnancy progressed, the feeling of loss persisted. Lost opportunity. Lost life. I was supposed to be riddled with joy. Instead, I was perpetually anxious that this one, too, wouldn't survive.

I didn't talk about it at the time. I was supposed to be looking forward and making happy plans, after all. Yet my mind was focused on each milestone. Genetic testing. Viability. Major organ development. Reduced need for TPN. I measured my weeks by the baby's survival odds outside of the womb. In a strange way, it was reassuring because it gave me something to look towards and mark off. It was a blessing and a curse to work in pediatrics, especially when the job involved seeing all of the things that can--and do--go wrong.

As my son approaches the one year mark, I find myself dwelling on that sibling that could have been. In the lonely, mask free confines of my car, I still shed tears on seemingly random occasions as the grief suddenly resurfaces. The world sees my son as an only child. On some days, I do as well. On others, he is the little brother who missed out. So-called "rainbow babies" aren't the happy ending to a difficult tale; they are a beam of light amidst the sorrow. I suspect that the sense of loss will never truly vanish. Yet I am grateful for the life that sleeps in the nursery next door.

I always wanted to be a mother. And so I am.