I feel, all the feelings. Trying to have a new baby is a totally separate emotional process and journey from grieving from our loss earlier in the year. It makes me extra thankful for my sweet rainbow baby Aidia, and my (not-so-little) baby I had before all of this started.
There’s been a lot going on in our life. Things that aren’t necessarily right to share on this blog, but I have been sufficiently overwhelmed. And yet, still determined to keep going. It doesn’t feel right to quit yet.
The month of antibiotics twice a day was sincerely brutal. I was so incredibly sick from them, constantly. I can only hope they worked the way they were supposed to. Hope that the chronic endometritis is clear. We met with our fertility doctor a few weeks ago, and we opted out of a repeat uterine biopsy. He left it up to us, so I'm a little anxious. He said as a scientist he would repeat it again...BUT it's less than 5% of cases where someone needs a different/second antibiotic treatment, and I already did the month-long treatment to start with. Plus, we still don't have the pathology bill yet, and really can’t afford to do another biopsy unless it was totally necessary. I can only hope we made the right choice. The doctor was fine with our decision, but it's always hard. Anxiety, when it comes to the life or death of a new baby just starting out, is relentless and intense.
I think that I still refuse to accept that I have infertility (that definition being I cannot carry a child to term easily.) It hurts too much. It still seems counterintuitive that we conceive so easily, and yet can long for a child for years. I've spent basically all of my twenties either being pregnant, or getting through a loss, or planning how to try and save the life of the next baby. I got pregnant with Jack just a few months after I turned 20, giving birth at 21, and here I am a month away from my 29th birthday, having gone through 9 pregnancies, and desperately hoping to complete our family with a third child. It has not been an easy decade for us.
I feel ready, as we were given the okay from our doctor to try again. Ready for the hormones, and needles, and the crushing anxiety. All the appointments. Going off my regular meds, taking up to ten supplements a day. But I find myself crying more and more because of the very act that I am gambling my heart. I'm going to conceive a baby, even though 78% of my pregnancies have ended in a loss. It’s hard to describe the feelings I have when I see that positive test; when we monitor growth for those first several weeks. It’s like I can’t ever exhale. But our next baby may have a perfectly normal chance of survival, if we have corrected the right problem this time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, worst game of guess and check, ever.
This is the definition of being brave. But I can't not try again. I try to stay on top of the countless vitamins and therapies and everything else that, at best, might just help a little. But it's really all I have control over. You almost wish it was a surgery or something, where humans had control over a majority of the outcome. Where I had to give my fate to a skilled surgeon. Because that makes sense in my brain. But in a situation like this where it's basically all up to God, it's so much harder to understand, and to me, feels scarier, even though I should take comfort knowing that God is in charge.
I can't let myself think about how much I want it, because it hurts so much. Too good to be true. Too impossible to really happen. And yet, I look at my children that did survive, still in awe, thinking that with divine intervention there must be at least a slight chance for this future tenth pregnancy. But to say anxiety is eating me alive is an understatement.
Honestly we should have more hope then we did after the surgery, because there's more clinical evidence but I don't feel it as much as I did then. Maybe because we have experienced loss again, after our miracle.
If anyone is interested in reading the study on the treatment and success of chronic endometritis, here is a link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984485/#!po=1.02041
When I was pregnant with Vincent, for those few weeks, I felt like I was on top of the world. Empowered. Full of joy. I believed all would be well. That's why it still hurts so bad. I hear a lot of women talking about being empowered when they are child free and independent. Which, truly, is wonderful for them, but personally, I feel my most empowered when I'm able to give live and feel it grow inside of me. Perhaps because of all I’ve had to overcome to get to that point. The work and the sacrifice I’ve had to put in. It comes so easily to some. And I've given my entire decade of my 20s working to try and try and try to make it happen. I can lie to myself and say I want other dreams more or just as much, but it’s just not true. I feel like one more little person is meant to be in our family. And I don’t know how much more I can (or will have to) endure to make that happen.
Jack came to me, emotional and upset one evening. He told me how much he misses Vincent and wishes that he would have survived. He said it’s so sad whenever we have a baby die, and he wants for us to have another baby. It’s just heartbreaking to see this affect him as he gets older. The first time I miscarried, Jack was only 13 months old, and now he’s nearly 8. This has been in the background of his entire life.
I pray that God has a happy ending in mind for us, that we can complete our family soon. That Aidia can be a big sister and use all those nurturing skills she was born with. That Jack can witness a miracle at the age he is now. I ask all of you reading to join your faith with ours as we put our trust in God, despite our shaking knees and anxious hearts. Looking forward to a rainbow in our future.
