Yesterday, I loaded my three babies (ages 5, 3, and 8 months) up in the good ol’ minivan and drove just a little over thirty minutes to a farmer’s market where I was meeting my parents and aunt for a strawberry milkshake. As I waited impatiently in the hot Florida sun for the sliding door to auto-open, my gaze drifted across the street, to a giant sign above a dingy little building that read, “BABY.” Instantly, my mind and my memories were transported back to two years ago exactly, to a very different October in my world.
I’m going to make it brief because I don’t really like to talk about it, and I’m still working through parts of it, but because October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month, I felt compelled to jot down at least some of my story here. Two summers ago, my husband and I felt happy and blessed with our son and daughter, but we always knew we’d like to grow our family even more if possible. So, we started trying, and in August we got a positive home pregnancy test, but even as I was staring at the results, something- maternal instinct, maybe- in me, knew that everything was not okay. Because of issues with the ridiculous cost of health insurance, I found myself without an OB/GYN, and I spent that whole day crying, making phone calls, begging any doctor to see me, someone who had a positive home result, but also had other symptoms that did not add up. Gratitude washed over me when an uknown-to-me office finally agreed to see me- that day- and I found myself driving to that very same “BABY” billboard clinic.
It took about six more weeks….and many, many repeated ultrasounds and blood tests, driving to that clinic every other day for weeks, to confirm what I already knew- it wasn’t a viable pregnancy. At every appointment, I saw a different doctor, and I grew tired of telling them my story each time someone new walked through the door…yes, the stick and the blood results show that I’m pregnant, no, the ultrasound can’t confirm it…no, I don’t feel that everything is alright. To make a long story short, one day in October, I found myself in a hospital undergoing a D&C while my husband sat in the waiting room and my parents watched my two children at home. Analysis of the D&C didn’t yield what they were looking for, and before I was released from the hospital, I was given a shot of methatrexate, a very strong medicine meant to destroy quickly-multiplying cells (such as those in a developing fetus), assuming the pregnancy was ectopic and couldn’t be found via the ultrasounds I’d had so far. Several more weeks of follow ups watched as my HCG count returned to zero, and my case was closed.
What will never leave me, about that October, though- is not just the emotional wreckage of losing something I never truly had, but the other tolls, as well. The metha left me feeling so sick for a couple weeks, and with it, I had to cold-turkey stop nursing my 16 month old daughter with absolutely no warning. I can still close my eyes and hear her screaming for mommy milk from her crib that first night…myself sitting on the couch, my chest leaking, tears streaming down my face. I feel incredible guilt over that, and I know I always will. Nursing has always been beautiful to me, and special…a private bond between mother and child that just the two of them can relish in, and I hate that the result of my wanting “more”…to expand the family….took that away from my precious baby girl. Oh, the guilt.
A few months later, once the drug was cleared from my body, we tried again…and suffered a natural miscarriage. And then, a few months after that, I got pregnant one more time…and that pregnancy resulted in the beautiful baby boy who is now my third and final child.
So, yesterday, as I stood in the parking lot, looking across the street at that sign, and that building, my mind took me, as it always does when I pass by, to those memories from two years ago. But then I looked away from that side of the street, and into the van, where my three happy, brown-eyed babies sat waiting for me to unbuckle them, lift them gently from their seats, and bring them in for some ice-cream. And that’s exactly what I did, my heart slightly more grateful than ever before, to be entrusted with these three amazing kiddos who have changed my life for the better in every, single way.
travelingmamabear 