When we were going through our things in preparation to move from South Dakota to New Jersey I faced the monumental task of sorting the baby items. I had saved them for 8 years at that point in the hope of using them again, but if you follow along here, you know that thus far that dream has not become reality. I sobbed in the basement as we pulled them all out of their moving boxes and built them to make sure that all the parts were there. I got rid of entire bins of baby clothes, a small child's lifetime worth. The next day I gave nearly all the baby gear to one of the movers. I kept the small stroller and the pack n play because we often have young visitors. It was so very hard to let go of that stuff, just thinking about it now makes me a little sad.
A few weeks ago one of my nephews and one of my nieces spent the day with us. The niece happens to be a baby and after church we pulled out the stroller and headed to the aquarium. The big kids ran ahead to pet sharks and stingrays while I stayed further back with a sleeping baby in the stroller. It had a bag hanging off the handles and was covered in a mountain of winter coats. With the exception of the sleeping baby, it was chaos on wheels. As I watched the big kids I was overwhelmed with grief that hit me like a sucker punch. I feel so at home pushing a stroller, it is almost as natural as breathing. Yet, my stroller pushing days are long gone. I saw for a moment the life I spent 20 years dreaming of, a family with a gaggle of children. There in the middle of the aquarium I felt the hot sting of tears welling up in my eyes. You cannot start bawling in the middle of the aquarium Rebecca! So I swallowed the tears saving them for later and I suppose this Monday morning is later.
The sadness I felt was complex. There was that moment of remembering we, for a short time, were going to have a baby about the same age, the grief of loss is real and ever present. There was the grief for the life I imagined, the one I am slowly starting to let go of, it sounds so much easier than it is. There was the grief of infertility wrapping it all together into one messy emotional package. A package that sneaks up on me in the oddest of places. Sometimes I wonder, should I live to be 80, will the grief ever hurt any less when it shows up? Will it ever stop catching in my throat unexpectedly?
Do I want it to? I mean mostly I do but this has been a very real and difficult part of my life. It has for better or worse shaped me. It has influenced how I parent. It has changed our marriage. I thought about this at the end of March as my Timehop app brought back the photos of all those positive pregnancy tests, progressively getting darker lines, day by day. Those early days when we had just a tiny bit of cautious hope. When blood work and ultrasounds were a part of our weekly routine. Two years ago already, how can that be? This year I discovered a way to block old memories from Timehop, but it only works on posts from social media, the only way for me to avoid being punched with those photos is to delete them from my phone or avoid all my other memories for the months of March-May. I can't bring myself to delete those silly pictures. They pop up every few days at this time of year. The truth is though I don't need the photos to remind me that as we drove to a St. Patrick's Day parade, I told Paul I was scared because we had just had an IUI and I was cramping too soon. When I had that first barely there line and the one all four people I shared it with could see the next day. I remember the Earth Hour sleep over that night waiting desperately for my blood work to come back. Watching my child dance at a glow party, wondering what it would be like for her to have a sibling, feeling the oddly familiar tiredness of the first trimester. Waking up on a cold gym floor at 2 am to check my online medical chart. I knew my progesterone level was too low. Stopping at Target, standing by bicycle helmets and getting the phone call, a chemical pregnancy we would have to wait it out. A week later the phone call that said surprisingly my numbers were now on track. Several weeks later as I ate lunch with friends who were also riding the fertility roller coaster and I got the panicked you have to come back now phone call. Finding the "mass" that was at one point a pregnancy. Making quick decisions. The unbearable pain that followed. The weeks of watching numbers mercilessly. Deciding I couldn't take it anymore and giving up part of my reproductive system.
It was traumatic, I have hesitated to name it as such. Yet here I am two years later writing about it again. It is as if this blog has become a place for only one thing, my adventures in navigating infertility/fertility. Nearly ten years ago I began this blog as a new mother a new mother that was tired and stressed but who remembered how much she longed for that baby in her tired arms. So at the end of each long day I sat down and I wrote what I was grateful for, because I never wanted to take for granted the living breathing baby in my arms. So as I embrace the grief or at the very least try to live with it... I am reminded of how grateful I am for that sweet baby who is quickly becoming a tween. I am grateful for the moments behind a stroller filled with a sleeping baby, even if they come like a sucker punch. I am grateful for all the kids I get to love and share life with. I am grateful for the handful of brave women who show me understanding and grace and remind me to love myself enough to allow myself to grieve every day that I need to.
