Wastage

      I was at my regular doctor’s office the other day for my first physical in about 4 years. With all the time I spent at the OB/Gyn and in surgery over the past few years, I just hadn’t had it in me to go for a good ole-fashioned physical, so I was due. As we were talking and updating my medical history she asked how many pregnancies and how many children, typical questions (I had just fielded the very same question the week before from my OB/Gyn’s nurse. Um, really? That isn’t in my file? Or are you afraid I’m suffering early onset dementia and this is your test question to see if I remember things?). Anyway, it wasn’t a surprise question from my doctor because I hadn’t kept her in the loop during that whole period. When I told her 5 pregnancies and two healthy children she gasped and murmured, “Three wastage . . .” Then she apologized profusely, explaining that it was a scientific term, etc. (I told her not to worry, I had heard a lot worse, which was true), but it really got me to thinking.

                Wastage.  Is there any better term for a miscarriage? For me it certainly sums up the experience better than most of the other scientific terms. Spontaneous abortion – that one sounds like I was out shoe shopping and on a whim decided to throw in the loss of a baby. “Yeah, it was a totally spontaneous thing . . .” Incomplete abortion – oops, we ran out of time and just couldn’t finish up with this one . . . . Really. They use the same terminology as they do when it is a choice to terminate a pregnancy (a choice that I think the government should stay out of, for the record. I think that decision should be between the mother and father and their consciences. But that’s just my humble opinion).  Wastage, on the other hand, really encapsulates it into one neat little word. The waste of life. The waste of hope. The waste of dreams. The waste of love I had for these little ones that I never got to meet.  Almost three full years (and one amazing, healthy baby) later and the thought of these losses can still bring me to tears. It’s like a sucker punch to the gut, sometimes. Wastage. That’s exactly what it is.

Reframing

Today I did something very different. After I dropped T off at school I left C with a friend and spent an hour with a life coach. It was a pretty fantastic hour. Setting aside the fact that apparently C cried the entire time I was gone (Sweet! There goes the mommy-guilt into high gear!) it was an amazing experience.

One of the things I noticed during my session is just how much my past therapy, reading, and work have actually sunk in. It seems that I am pretty good at reframing my negative voice. Which is a great first step. But as I was driving to pick C up I realized something - yes, I can reframe negative thoughts well. Yes, I understand that making time for myself is actually good for everyone. But for me that knowledge has always been theoretical. Objective. I have difficulty putting it into action. Why is that?  Why do I feel like other people deserve it more than I do? I don't have an answer yet, but I'm working on it. It has only been a few hours, after all. Something else I discovered is that it seems to really help having someone else tell me that making time for myself isn't only good, but it's necessary. She had me envision what life would be like 5 years from now and 10 years from now if I don't make time, and it wasn't pretty. So I am going to try to be as mindful as possible and give less attention to my inner negative voice and more attention to my inner peaceful voice. Life is a journey. It will be interesting to see where this journey takes me!

True Story . . .

J visited Dr. Snippy on Friday. We decided that since we were thrilled with our family as it is, this would be the best solution. Our first post-procedure conversation (held as J lounged in bed with his bag of penis peas) went something like this:

J:     "My boss told me that this is the only time I can expect to get extended sympathy from you. Because of the procedure and all. It can get pretty uncomfortable down there if I don't take it easy for 48 hours."

Me:   Staring with eyebrow raised.

J:     "You know, I have to stay in bed the whole weekend so it doesn't hurt. So he said I can expect extended sympathy."

Me:   Eyebrow still raised, "Extended sympathy. Really? Try three D & Cs after miscarriages, one live birth with no epidural because it pulled out but was kind enough to leave me with a spinal headache, and one c-section. That's where they CUT YOUR ABDOMEN OPEN to remove a 10 pound baby. And you think this procedure - one that didn't even require stitches - gets you extended sympathy?"

J:     "No, no, I don't, my boss just said that."

Me:   "Yeah, well you tell your boss what I said. Extended sympathy. Hmph."

Cold as ice, cause that's how I roll.

Book review: The School of Essential Ingredients

One of the things that really makes my heart beat is reading. Seriously? Reading is like breathing for me. I have to read every day, or I get ugly. I remember before T was born people told me it would be a long time before I was able to finish a book again. Ha! I make time to read every day. Maybe at the expense of the cleanliness of our house, but whatever. I have my priorities. That said, people are always asking me for book suggestions and I hate telling other people what to read. I love talking about books, but I would rather do it in an, "I really loved this book and here's why" kind of way than in a, "you really should read this" way, if that makes sense. So periodically I will share book reviews here - hopefully you'll find something you love!

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
A beautiful novel tinged with magic realism, The School Of Essential Ingredients tells the story of nine different individuals (don't worry, it's easy to keep them straight!). Eight students gather at chef Lillian's restaurant on Monday nights for a very special cooking school. As they learn about the magic of food prepared with love, they also learn about themselves (and we learn about the somewhat mysterious Lillian). I have recommended it to several friends, and they all said it was one of their favorite books of 2010 (and I have given up hope that my copy will ever find its way back to me). The School of Essential Ingredients is Bauermeister's first published novel, and it left me hungry for more.

Heartbeats

           Mother’s Day 2009. It wasn’t my first Mother’s Day.  As a matter of fact, I had been a mother for well over two years, but this Mother’s Day in particular was a turning point for me.  When I had given birth to my daughter, Tess, in 2006 I was 33.  You might expect that her birth would have clued me in to the fact that yes, indeed, I was an adult, but it did not.  In fact, I used to think (and this is the stuff of fantasies . . .) that people seeing me with Tess would assume that I was her babysitter.  Right.  If I happened to be out with both my daughter and my mother, I was absolutely certain that people believed I was the older sister and my mother was just one of those “older” mothers.  After all, I looked far too young to be a mother.  At 33.  At 33 with a small child, which equals very little sleep.  Delusional?  Maybe just a little.  Did I mention the lack of sleep?  Regardless, I was thrilled to be a mother (even if I couldn’t fully believe I was a mother – I mean really, they trust me to raise this amazing, perfect little person?  Are they crazy?)and fully convinced that when we decided to have a second child it would be easy and I’d continue to amaze people with my youthful vitality.

All of this started to change when my husband and I began trying to expand our family.  We assumed that since getting pregnant with Tess had been so easy (within a month of trying, I was knocked up.  John was torn between pride in his masculinity and grief for all of the “practice” he no longer needed to be having) having number two would be a breeze.  At first, it seemed that it would be so simple the second time.  Again, I was pregnant almost immediately.  After the miscarriage, I told myself that it was a random fluke and I focused on getting pregnant again as quickly as safely possible.  Again, fertility was not an issue.  After the second miscarriage, I had all the tests done and was told that there was no medical reason why we couldn’t have another healthy child.  Bad luck, I told myself.  A second random fluke.  And yet I suddenly realized that not only did I feel every one of my (then) 35 years, I looked them too.  Sometimes more.  I was a mother of a toddler, after all.  But was I really an adult?

Mother’s Day 2009.  Pregnant for the third time in ten months, bleeding regularly, living in hope and fear for the little life inside me.  This time we had seen the heartbeat, evidence that this baby was strong and might outlive the unexplained uterine bleeding I was experiencing.  We had been in and out of the doctor’s office so many times in the past ten days, always hearing the same: “We have to wait and see; this could go either way.  Don’t lift anything heavy, and come in if things change dramatically.”  I was feeling regular morning sickness, a good sign (who would have thought that I would ever welcome nausea, but I did!) and the bleeding seemed to be letting up, all of which made me think that the past weeks of being unable to pick up my daughter were going to pay off.  Then, as I read bed time stories to my beloved girl (who had been hastily moved into her big girl bed in her big girl room due to my condition), I felt it happen.  I was losing the baby.

With the first two miscarriages, even though the babies were never viable, my body held on and I needed a D & C.  With this little one, the only one that had ever had a heartbeat, the only one that had ever really had any chance, my body was betraying me and rejecting the baby I so desperately wanted.  I left my daughter’s room mid-story to run to the bathroom, where I passed her baby brother or sister into the cup from her potty chair.  I was devastated.  My baby had such perfect, such tiny little hands.  I cried as I passed more clots, but realized that I was still a mother and I had a job to finish.  So, I pulled myself together, washed my face and hands, stilled my tears, and went back to my daughter to finish putting her to bed.  In that moment, a moment of profound loss and grief, I put aside my needs to care for my daughter.  Since then, I find my heart breaking regularly for women everywhere who have to deal with the loss of a child.  My heart especially breaks for those women who suffer these losses without the consolation of a healthy, living child.  My heart breaks for my own three losses, my three stars in the night sky.  It was in that moment of loss and pain that I truly became an adult.  Being a mother was not enough to make me feel like an adult, but putting my motherhood above my own devastating grief made me an adult in a heartbeat.

I wrote this essay for a magazine contest. It was the first time I put on paper any of what I went through during those devastating 10 months, and it was raw. It still is raw. I really felt like this essay was something that other women needed to read, so when the winner turned out to be something about bowling (or riding a bike, something along those lines. Yes, it was a metaphor for something bigger like no longer worrying about mommy and daddy’s approval or something like that, but still. It was about a sport. And not a particularly challenging one at that) I felt betrayed. Silly? Maybe. But grief and pain isn’t rational. So I bottled up my emotions all over again and tried to still the voice in my head that kept whispering that I needed to be trying to reach others with my story.  But that voice won’t be silenced. Will anyone ever read my words? Will they be the lifeline I want them to be? I have no control over that. But I truly, deeply feel like I need to be putting them out into the universe.  And maybe someday, someone who needs to hear them will. And will for just a moment feel a little less alone.