My Heart Hurts

I am sad for Cali at "Creating Motherhood" (http://steinbockfrau.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/there-is-no-off-switch).

The randomness of TTC has never made sense to me. It is so unfair. And it is a big bunch of crazymaking. We are taught that if you do X Y & Z then you will get A B & C. For some TTC just doesn't work like that.

When we first started - well over 3 years ago - we knew a couple who got pregnant on their first try. Boom! They conceived baby#2 (boom! first try!) before we even got baby #1. And we were happy for them - for one thing it gave us hope and for another they are good people and babies are what they wanted... but I will never understand why some people get pregnant first try and for others it takes years.

We lost a baby. It is like Cali says. There is so much guilt it isn't even funny nor fair. It hurts to watch the beta rise and then fall and never really be enough. It hurts to hear, "there is nothing we can do, you just have to wait." The waiting sucks. All the while having pregnancy symptoms because there is some HcG in your system. Talk about a mindf**k. Cali calls it being unpregnant.

When we found out we were "unpregnant" last October we went to the bookstore. I wanted to see where we were - almost 6 weeks along - so we looked at one of those books that shows the various week by week photos of the developing embryo/ fetus. I personally needed a visual of what I was about to lose.

Partner A was looking through a baby name book, turned to a page and said "look" and she started to point to a name on the page. My eye went to it before her finger did. The name was Micah. We both saw the name and knew that that was the name of the little one we were losing.

A few days later I woke up early in the morning. I felt crampy. I woke A. We went into the bathroom together. I felt my uterus contract and expel the contents. I actually caught the blob of blood and cells in my hand. We looked at it. Cried. And then flushed it. It was an awful feeling. But I really needed to see what I was losing.

I took almost a week off work. I spent that week in bed. It rained the entire week. I remember the house being dark all day because of the clouds covering the sun.

It was a huge loss. I e-mailed my therapist telling her that "I've lost faith." I think I'd begun to lose faith way before the miscarriage. TTC was part of what had me feeling as though I'd lost faith. The sad thing is I don't know if I ever got it back. TTC is about loss. Pieces of me - hope, faith - went with every negative test. [I won't even get into what TTC does to a relationship].

Honestly, though, I wouldn't trade our TTC journey for anything. [I can say this now because we conceived]. I am grateful for Micah - I felt blessed to carry him for those few weeks. [Even then I felt blessed].

And then there is baby C in the other room sleeping. I look at her sometimes and my heart just bursts and I can't hold back the tears. She was well worth the wait.

Right now my heart hurts for Cali. I will light a candle for her.