Because I Haven't Journaled Enough

I sort of accidentally quit journaling.  And I miss the process of writing down my thoughts, but I also miss all that spare time I had to write down my thoughts.  The days seem to be so full from morning until night, with the morning routine and work and a lunch break and work and Young Women’s activities or baking or spending time with friends or spending time with Ray.  The truth is not that I have less time, but that I have changed my priorities.

With a baby on the way, those priorities are about to be tossed in the air to land, hard, on the ground and be picked up in the pieces that truly are most important.  And I fear that journaling won’t be part of that picking up either.  So here I sit, at work, parsing through my thoughts from the past six months of being pregnant.

Six months?  Can that be true?  We got our positive pregnancy test on June 6^th (no, I don’t remember – I had to look it up; heaven bless my phone apps.)  That’s four and a half months from June 6^th to October 25^th.  I get to add a month to those numbers since pregnancy “begins” before this sweet baby was conceived.  And so, yes, we’re knocking on six months’ door.  That gives me three and a half months to prepare for baby’s arrival.  Sixteen weeks and one day if you want to be exact; though if you really want to be exact, probably at least fifteen weeks and possibly up to seventeen and a half weeks, give or take a margin of error of a few days.  Why do we have due dates?  That’s a quick way to mess with any expecting parent’s head.

I felt this little growing nubbin move for the first time sometime in August (it must have been the 12^th – I looked it up) when I was on a youth conference trip.  I was lying flat on my back across the hard bench of a picnic table, shaded from the hot sun by a tied-down parachute roof lazily flapping in occasional breezes.  I breathed slowly and deeply, meditating out to the sounds of teenagers playing Gadianton Robbers, a Mormonized version of the card game Mafia.  My mind drifted to my belly, stretched over my uterus where I knew there was a growing fetus inside.  And was it my imagination, or did I feel the slightest and gentlest bump of movement inside?  Google does say you can feel movement as early as thirteen weeks along, but what are the chances?  I guess this is to say, I THINK I felt this little growing nubbin move for the first time that August 12^th.

All other subtle popping and bumping movements in my stomach after that point, a few weeks after and rarely at that, were deemed ‘possibly the baby.’  At some point between a few weeks after August 12^th and a few weeks before now, I began to know those movements quite clearly and distinctly.  My little baby nubbin was moving and kicking and healthy and, I hope, happy.  There’s a funny thing about being pregnant – the “guarantee” of healthy baby when you feel those bumps and thuds is actually no guarantee at all, because any budding mother can make up horror stories about how maybe the baby is having seizures or is jolting from fear or absorbed too much sugar from the cupcake she just ate and is now in sugar shock.

That’s something they don’t tell you – or maybe they do and you don’t listen.  The hours before you go in to hear your baby’s heartbeat, you know the heart has slowed or stopped.  The hours before you go in to see an ultrasound, you know your baby has stopped growing or is missing a limb.  The other day, I had a nightmarish thought of my baby being born without a face, and then I happened to read a story on the internet (seriously, it just popped up in my feed without me looking) about a baby born without a face. You become obsessed with unhealthy research into abortions or horrifying birth stories or every odd symptom you feel (I mean, I obviously and absolutely had Cholestasis for a few weeks, despite what my doctor said, until I found out my sister got itchy feet during her pregnancy, too.)

But something else they don’t tell you – or maybe they do – is how much dreaming and planning you can do in the space of an hour and a day and a week.  When we found out we were having a girl, and I could begin to put a name to the dream toddler running around in my brain, so many possible futures began to unfold before me.  Futures filled with hockey games or pretty dresses or reading books or introducing her to my favorite music or watching her learn letters and numbers or just putting her to sleep.  It doesn’t matter if or when any of those futures happen, but it does matter that I can begin to see them and to hope so much for her.  We’ve already imagined the arguments we’ll make when anyone tries to push our little girl into little girl stereotypes, and we’ve already pushed our little girl into stereotypes.  And I can’t wait to see what futures she decides for herself despite, and hopefully a little bit because of, our pushing.

How do you raise an entire person?  How do you assign a name to this creature, this person who will make her own decisions and find her own place and be only who she wants to be?  Parents have this incredible task of pretending to know anything at all about exactly how a person should become the person they will become.  I almost wish I had become a parent ten years ago when I began to believe that I knew pretty much how people should be.  Now, at thirty years old and with so many experiences and assurances and questions and unfulfilled dreams and fulfilled dreams, the world seems to have more blurred lines than clear lines.  Because even those clear lines, the things I know with all of my heart, can be questioned and torn apart and stamped on or set to fly by someone else who knows a thing with all of their heart.

I just hope my heart will be enough for my little girl up until she can know a thing with all of her heart, and hopefully not begrudge me too much for giving her my heart with all of its blurred lines.  I hope she will discover those blurred lines in her heart herself and grasp to the things that make the most sense despite the blurriness.  I hope that one day, she will get the experience I have now, to think about all the futures before her and the pasts behind her, and decide to give her heart, too, however that ends up looking.

And you know, maybe that’s the real reason that most of the human race feels the unquestioned need and desire to have children.  Maybe we just need to be able to give our heart to someone who will take every bit of it, even if only just until they can find their own.

In Which I Explain My Two Year Absence

It’s funny, I never meant to abandon this blog space when I posted my last musings on March 5^th, 2014.  And I could blame a million reasons for my internet silence (on this space, anyway).  Perhaps my increased use of Instagram is to blame.  Or caring for a home, taking on a church calling, growing my bakery business.  These are all valid reasons to semi-give up on long-form social media (aside from the fact that it all just begins to feel redundant when I’m posting multiple other places regularly).  But perhaps more than anything, I began to find that posting felt… dishonest.  I couldn’t, or rather, didn’t want to, talk about the thing I was thinking about most.

In January of 2014, Ray and I decided it was time for us to have a kid.  It was perfect timing – he would be finishing his undergrad soon, I was getting exhausted with my job and wanted a reason to step away, we were preparing to purchase a home.  Everything fell in to place, and mostly, we knew that we wanted to try our hand at being parents and providing a home for a sweet baby (or rather, toddler and child – babies kinda bore me, quite frankly).  I was scared and anxious, but so excited.

The first few months were disappointing, but normal.  I come from a long line of “we accidentally got pregnant and had three kids in four years,” and Ray’s parents had a semi-similar history.  I expected to get pregnant right away, and was disappointed that it took us month after month.  But I had plenty to distract me, and despite the purchase of ovulation testing strips, we did little else to increase our chances because, surely, they would come.  Six months were spent anxiously counting days and waiting.

I returned home from a girl’s camp trip late on July 11^th, fell into bed, and woke up early on the 12^th to make treats and prepare to throw a baby shower for a best friend and make a cake for another friend’s wedding.  It had been a week since my missed period.  When I finally had a moment to myself that afternoon after dropping off the cake, I stopped at a store to buy a pregnancy test and drove home with a fluttering heart.  The test came back positive.  I took two more.  They came back positive.  I was pregnant!

I couldn’t think of anything more creative to do than to walk out to Ray and just say, look.  He wasn’t even sure what to think initially.  I didn’t have a wide grin on my face, perhaps because I was still in shock.  But when the realization hit us both, we laughed and kissed and hugged and laughed some more.  We were to meet friends for dinner 15 minutes later, and spent the car ride wondering how we were ever going to hide our joy from those friends that evening.

We wanted to wait until the 9-10 week mark to tell everyone.  We wanted this to be sure.  It was planned out – our first doctor’s appointment would be at 8 ½ weeks along.  Following that appointment, we’d have a weekend to ourselves, in which we could announce to my family and our friends, and then we’d take a trip out to see Ray’s family the following week and share the happy news.  Although, I quickly found I was not going to be able to wait that long to keep the secret between Ray and I.  So I shared my news with my best friend, Kristin.  She was my confidante on mornings when I felt the tiniest possibility of morning sickness, or when I wondered if my boobs would always hurt this badly.  We waited for the appointment and talked about what life would be post-birth.  We bought some children’s books and stuffed dinosaurs.

Our doctor’s appointment was on August 8^th.  I got off work early and met Ray at home.  I began to feel nervous and my stomach hurt.  Anxiety, I guessed.  But I couldn’t wait for that moment, I hoped, of hearing our baby’s heartbeat.  We got to the doctor’s appointment, and I gave a urine sample.  My first bad sign – blood.  The tiniest bit of it.  In the exam room, our nurse told us all about my choice of the doctors at our clinic, and Dr. Hannele Laine seemed like a great option.

“Well but wait, nurse, so I… found some blood when I peed…”

Our nurse got straight to work and let me know right away that more blood was to come.  I knew at that point that my earlier “stomachache” had been cramps that I was unwilling to admit to.  She did a handheld ultra sound and… no.  No heartbeat to be found.  She assured us that she’s been wrong about finding heartbeats before, and we were rushed to the hospital for a quick couple sets of full ultrasounds.  But by that point, waiting in the hospital sitting room, Ray and I were already discussing our baby in the past tense.  We knew, and held to each other, and made plans for the future.  Ray held my hand throughout the ultrasounds and stayed strong and positive.  The ultrasound tech gave us very little information.  I texted Kristin that, you know, actually March sounds like a bad time to have a baby.

After our ultrasounds, and an in-between run to Del Taco, we met Dr. Laine for the first time, and she sweetly confirmed what we already knew, that yes, this is a miscarriage.  She told us to guard our heart, to be gentle with ourselves.  I felt surprisingly calm and at peace.  Ray and I went home in a daze, not really sure how to feel.  I spent that evening between crying and hoping to laugh, and sometimes actually laughing.  We went to Pat’s BBQ, where we had planned to go regardless of whether the night would be a celebration or a consolation.  We had so hoped for a celebration.  We spent that night holding to each other and crying ourselves to sleep.

The next morning, I woke surprisingly happier than the night before.  I woke to a familiar feeling – I know how to not be pregnant; I’ve been not pregnant before, and now, today, I’m not pregnant.  It wasn’t comforting, necessarily, but it was an acknowledgement that, yes, I could do this.  I was, and am still, eternally grateful that it was a weekend. That I didn’t have to pick myself up to go to work.  That we miscarried while in the loving care of nurses and doctors – it made the process feel rather medical and less emotional.  I feel incredibly lucky that the first bleeding didn’t happen while I was at work.  I feel grateful that Ray was there with me, that I didn’t have to tell him and worry together until we could reach a doctor.  The day was filled with blessings despite the grief.  And I was able to begin recognizing those blessings that morning after.

Ray and I spent that weekend together; we went on a beautiful moonlit canoe ride down the Provo River.  We joked about how easy it would be to trump everyone else’s campfire stories that night by dropping the bomb – I’m still in the midst of a miscarriage.  Our friends found out (through internet forums and the lack of secrecy you can keep from someone that knows your typewritten voice too well.)  They gave us such sweet words of support and love.  I told my mom the news and we cried together.   I told my dad, and he gave me the warmest hug.  I told my family and my sisters all responded with, oh yeah, miscarriages are hard!, and the evening continued on.  It was nothing new for them – they had felt that grief.  There was comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone.

We spent the following week with Ray’s family, and so much enjoyed the time we all had together.  It didn’t matter that there wasn’t our own personal happy news to share – any time with family you rarely get to see is happy time.  We didn’t share what was happening because it didn’t seem necessary.  We wanted to wait to share happy news, and so we would wait, until the next time.

At first, I counted the days and weeks to follow in terms of ‘since the miscarriage’.  It was a week since.  It was a month since.  It was shocking when it had been more days ‘since the miscarriage’ than the days that numbered from July 12^th to August 9^th – the days that we were happily pregnant.  The months marched on.  And on and on.  I watched one of my best friends have a baby, and saw them experience so much joy.  My cousin had a due date nearly identical to what mine had been, and seeing photos of that sweet baby boy now causes me a pang of almost a nostalgia – what could have been.

I spent the months counting days, and we tried and counted days.  Always waiting to find out if we’d be waiting again.  But we also spent the months being busy, and happy.  Ray built us a fence, and we got our sweet Mabel.  This sweet dog-face was not a replacement for a child, but she has filled my heart with more love than I thought was possible to have toward an animal.  She gives me the opportunity to love with a nurturing heart, to kiss and hug, and post a million social media pictures.

Ray continued his undergrad studies and graduated in December.  He took another class the following semester, and then we spent one glorious summer class-free.  He continued to kill it at work.  I lost more and more interest in my job, and finally got the push I needed to step out of that company after nearly eight years.  I found a new job at a great company with people I’ve grown to love dearly.  My bakery business grew, and I’ve spent countless hours up to my elbows in flour.  I spent my time serving God and young women in my church callings.  I was called to be the young women’s president in my church ward where I get to be not a mother, but perhaps a form of big sister to so many beautiful and hilarious and strong 12-18 year olds.  We kept on counting days and waiting.

I tried to pick up books or articles about improving your chances to get pregnant.  I picked up the books, and put them down after feeling mostly helpless.  I began temping (a process of monitoring your basal body temperature and noticing changes that indicate ovulation), and that helped only if, at the very least, it was a fascinating insight into the workings of female bodies.  We kept on waiting and trying.  We kept on loving each other and finding new ways to move forward.

We booked and went on a life changing trip to Iceland.  We found great open silent spaces, and joy surpassing anything I’d felt before.  I came to understand how truly big and unknowable God is, how small I am; how a little fog is scary but when it lifts, you find that it concealed a great magnificence that was only just beyond sight.  I ate Icelandic cheese and lobster and we slept under a midnight sun and I found that this world holds magic that we can’t grasp or capture, and that magic is accessible and real.  I learned that Ray is the best person in the world to share that magic with.

I had planned a youth conference for our Church youth, and it happened to land over the weekend that marked one year since the miscarriage.  I was an anxious mess due to the stress of parading thirty teenagers around a large city and trying to provide opportunities to feel the spirit of God; I was an emotional mess anytime I contemplated one entire year ‘since the miscarriage’. I barely held myself together when one of our advisors announced her own pregnancy; I crumbled to the ground when the plans for youth conference fell apart mere hours before they were to take place.  It was one of the more difficult moments in my life ‘since the miscarriage’.  But I also had to plan a lesson on what it means to love God with all your might, and I also had Jack’s Mannequin’s “Swim” on repeat in my car.  And I had hope.

Ray began his Master’s program in August 2015 and the next phase of adult life began.  I contemplated how difficult it would be to have a child in the midst of his Master’s program.  We still wanted a child.  We kept trying and waiting.

My wildest hopes suggested that I might be pregnant in September.  I ordered an oviraptor and a massive egg from Amazon just in case.  I took out one of the pregnancy tests that had been waiting under the bathroom cupboard, and on September 13^th at 6 am, the test came back positive.  I was shaking with joy, and did my best to go back to sleep (Ray would stay asleep for the next three hours, I knew).  I rested with a smile on my face.  By 7 am, I got out of bed again.  I placed the test in the massive egg, covered it with a scrap of paper detailing our estimated due date in May 2016.  I placed the oviraptor figure on top, and wrapped it all nicely.  By 8 am, I couldn’t wait any longer, and woke Ray to tell him I got him a present.  The oviraptor by itself would have been enough, but our excitement spilled out the moment he saw the positive test.  He wondered, ‘is this a joke?!’ and I wondered how he’d ever think I could play that kind of cruel joke.  We laughed and kissed and our hope grew brighter.  We were pregnant again, after twelve long months of waiting.

The next few weeks were spent with cautious optimism.  I repeated positive mantras to the cells growing in my stomach – affirmations that sometimes caused my breath to catch in realization of how much I feared them to not be true.  I meditated and sent down good thoughts.  I told the baby there was so much joy in the world, and so much I would introduce him or her to, if only she or he could make it out.  I prayed and prayed, God, please let this one stay.  I know you can let this one stay, so please let this one stay.  And then, as I’ve been taught to do, but God… Thy will be done.  I realized one car ride home, while sending positive thoughts the baby cells’ way that, if we shouldn’t get to have this baby, I would be fine.  I would live through it.  We would still make our way in life.  And then I prayed, but God, no, let this one be real!  I’d be fine, but don’t make me have to be fine!

I spent the weeks getting blood drawn to test for HCG levels.  They were growing as they ought to, and I took comfort in that.  My hormones were insane, and I knew I was being crazy and unreasonable with Ray about pretty much everything and I couldn’t stop it.  I remembered that I felt that way while I was on birth control the first year of our marriage, and I vowed to never be on birth control again.  We got an ultrasound where we hoped to see our baby’s heartbeat, and unfortunately, the baby had not yet developed past an egg sack.  My longer period cycles pushed our baby’s due date back a week than what we’d expected.  Not a concern, just a bit longer to wait until we’d get to see our baby.  I bought the softest, cutest onesie at Carter’s.

And then, on October 2^nd, my temperature dropped.  I’d been monitoring my basal temperature, and it remained high throughout the pregnancy.  But there, on the 2^nd, a drop of six degrees.  I prayed it was a fluke, and continued my positive affirmations.  The temperatures remained lower than usual, but climbed by one degree on the 3^rd and on the 4^th.  And then, late Sunday night on the 4^th, blood.  The tiniest bit of it.  It all added up, and I couldn’t stop the tears that began.  I went out to Ray who was lying in bed.  One of our favorite songs was playing on his phone.  I asked him to please turn it off.

I don’t want this song to have a bad memory and I, um… I’m not sure, but… I think… I think I’m probably having a miscarriage.  He jumped out of bed.  We hugged, and I cried and held to him tight.  He asked if I was sure and I said that spotting sometimes happens while you’re pregnant, but my temperature dropped, too.   We agreed to call our doctor in the morning, and Ray read me a talk from one of our dear apostles about gratitude.  At moments, the words felt hollow.  How could I ever convince myself to be grateful for this moment?  And yet, there were words, too, that held hope, moments during that reading that I knew I might be able to be grateful again, even if not tonight.

In the morning, October 5^th, there was no need to call the doctor.  The blood confirmed my fears from the night before.  I stepped into the shower to begin my day, and sobbed.  I gasped for breath and prayed for help and asked God why, and then stopped asking why and asked for help. I begged that God would help me find ways to be happy as we moved forward again.  And then I got out of the shower and went to work.

I spent the day feeling empty.  I went in for a blood draw on my lunch break.  I texted my family and friends because I couldn’t bear saying the words out loud yet.  My mom called me to express her love and support.  I got an outpouring of love from my family and friends.  They weren’t sure what to say.  There was nothing right to say, but there was love.  And that’s what I needed.  And I felt hope and peace.

I didn’t count the days after the miscarriage this time.  I just wanted to forget about it.  I just wanted to move forward.  We met with my doctor, and she assured us that technically, we’re still considered fertile and without problems.  It’s normal to have a miscarriage.  It’s not as normal to have two in a row, but it’s not yet a ‘concern’.  It’s normal to have to wait up to a year to get pregnant.  It’s not normal to go over a year, but we had gone just barely over a year, so it’s not yet a ‘concern’.  I felt aimless.  How could I wait possibly another year to get pregnant again?  How could I move forward if it was another miscarriage after that?  How could the doctor say that we were normal when we’d been trying to get pregnant for nearly two years now with no results?

Our doctor recommended a reproductive endocrinologist.  We began to do testing.  We’re in the middle of testing.  We’ve spent hundreds of dollars beginning the process with blood draws and semen analyses and hysterosalpingograms and endometrial biopsys.  We have follow-up appointments in the coming weeks.  Our first meeting with our kind RE, Dr. Gurtcheff, was calming and comforting.  I feel like we have a path forward, I feel like we’re doing something.  Nothing and everything explains why we’ve had problems.  There are little issues, things that we’ve been assured can be treated.  Nothing implies that we can’t get pregnant.  We have gotten pregnant.  Dr. Gurtcheff assures us that she fully expects that our next pregnancy, in every likelihood, will happen and it will result in a beautiful baby, and that we will do everything we can in the meantime to assure that that happens.

I don’t know if I’ll find that I’m pregnant tomorrow, or if I’ll find that I’m pregnant in six months or twelve months, or longer.  I don’t know if that pregnancy will be viable.  I don’t know when I’ll ever hold a child of my own in my arms, when Ray will get to hold his baby in his arms.  I don’t know and I’m scared, but I have hope.  I have faith in the process we’ve been through, and I have faith in the knowledge of doctors who assure us that we have a path forward.  I have gratitude that we’ve gotten pregnant before – that we have learned so much over the past two years.

I see Ray’s oviraptor, the indication of our second pregnancy, on a daily basis.  I feel sadness when I see it.  Sometimes I feel anger at that mother dinosaur protectively guarding her children without guarding my own promise of a child.  But I feel grateful for that moment Ray and I shared when he first opened that box.  I am grateful for that little reminder, even when it’s painful.

I have a bag of items hidden away, the books and stuffed animals and onesies we purchased during the hopes of both our pregnancies.  I don’t mind keeping those hidden away.  I want the happiness they held when they were purchased to be preserved; I want to feel that happiness the next time we have the hope to pull them out again.

I’m happy.  I have peace in my life.  I laugh on a daily basis.  Ray and I get to hold hands and go out together often.  We’ve been to the movies together more times than I can count.  We take Mabel for walks and hikes.  We have faith in each other, and support each other through the journeys we can take right now.  We regularly count the blessings we have at this stage in life, being together and having this time to grow.  There are too many blessings to count.

Sadness is inevitable.  It shows up at moments I expect and don’t expect.  I say hello and acknowledge this old friend.  I give it a place in my heart, and introduce it to the other friends in my heart, the joy and the anger and the hope and the fear and the peace.  This is quickly turning into a scene of Disney’s Inside Out, which I think is appropriate.  Without sadness, the joy wouldn’t feel as sweet.  And I have a lot of each right now, but honestly?  I have more joy.