Here's to Hope

Oh my goodness, we are actually having a baby!  It has hit me that this might be really happening.  You might think that sounds crazy, to be 33 weeks pregnant and just realize this, but it has been a long couple of years.  The ups and downs of pregnancy and miscarriage were rough and I find myself repeatedly astonished it is actually real.

I feel like I need to talk about the miscarriages a little bit.  I talked about the first one a lot already, because that was emotionally the hardest and required the D&C and all that.   But they are so common (roughly 30% of all pregnancies) and yet hardly anyone ever talks about them openly and I’m still not sure why they are a sort of taboo subject.  Miscarriages are a unique sort of loss.  I knew that before, professionally it is something I deal with so often, but I didn’t really understand it until I experienced it myself and found out how much suffering is involved.  I’m not saying my road was harder than anyone else’s, there are certainly people who have suffered more than I have, but 4 miscarriages in a row did stretch me to the edge of my own ability to cope. 

That sort of pain; deep heart wrenching pain that rips you up on the inside, that feels like the loss of your entire future, is so hard to handle.  Harder, even, when the loss is personal, and private, and lonely.  I wasn’t totally private about it, people around me knew what was going on, but I didn’t stop to grieve either (which in retrospect might not have been the right choice).  I went to work throughout all of it and kept everything around me as normal as possible; it was easier for me to be distracted than to think about it too much.  I also found that when I was working I completely forgot it was happening and I enjoyed taking care of my pregnant patients and delivering their babies and holding their hand through the newborn phase without harboring any resentment.  However, when I was at the grocery store and saw a newborn, or on the street and saw a pregnant woman, or heard of someone I knew having a baby it just seemed so unfair.  The pain was so sharp and searing at those moments and I had the almost constant thought of “why is this happening to me?”  I probably should have worked on letting out some of that pent up emotion but I felt I was struggling to make it day to day as it was.  Each positive pregnancy test was filled with so much hope and each time the bleeding started my hopes were more than just dashed, it felt like they were slaughtered.

Which is why we totally gave up after the 4^th one last February.  I couldn’t go through it again.  It was just too hard.  Of course in the time following that loss I wasn’t thinking all that clearly, as a physician I really should know better: that you don’t have to be “trying” to get pregnant to actually become pregnant and I was truly surprised a month later to see that positive pregnancy test, and also terrified.  My very first thought was, 5!  I can’t go through 5 miscarriages!  But there was a little glimmer of hope.  And seeing that little heartbeat on the first trimester ultrasound was so surprising.  I didn’t cry, I just sat there in awe that momentarily things were actually ok.

Since that moment every positive step forward has been individually reassuring (a normal nuchal screen, a normal first trimester screen, a normal 20 week ultrasound), but none of it has really stopped me from thinking that at some point the other shoe is going to drop.  That feeling never leaves me.  On a daily basis I run through all the bad things that could happen, which is why I think I’ve set up this barrier to believing it is actually happening.  It’s easier to think it’s not happening so that when things go bad I’m prepared.  Even though nothing really prepares you for that sort of loss.  It’s probably a defense mechanism, and probably not the most mature reaction, but I’m working on it.  And as each day goes by things seem to get more real.  Which has led me to actually start working on the nursery.  Which makes me worried I’m jinxing things.  (I haven’t taken the tags off of anything because that feels like I might really be pushing my luck).  It is sad to me, that somehow, in the process of all that loss (and maybe of not dealing with the loss) that I may have dampened my own hope and happiness for this new little one.  Feeling condemned to loss is unfair to her so I'm trying to stop that feeling; with her movements and presence becoming stronger every day I want to work to rediscover what joy that is unfettered by worry feels like.  Easier said than done.  But I want to do it for her sake, so that I will be able to give in completely to the moment I’ve been desperately hoping for; the blissful amazing moment when I watch her take that first breath of life.  Here’s to hoping and believing that miracles, even common every day ones, like a healthy baby being born in a normal way, can happen to anyone, even me.