This month has been a lifetime of hope and prayer and building anxiety. What started slow has ended in such tremendous joy. I don't think I've ever been happier than I am with my (already) round belly and the knowledge that it has all meant something. That we are the lucky ones. That our journey gets to end in a baby. SEPTEMBER 1: Went in for a scan. Follicles are slow growers. (10) SEPTEMBER 5: Still slow. Hard day. (10) SEPTEMBER 8: We grew a little. Uterine lining looks great...follicle is still pretty slow. (13) SEPTEMBER 11: Growth! And the best uterine lining yet! (17) THEY GAVE US A TRANSFER DATE! SEPTEMBER 17: Embryo Transfer Day! SEPTEMBER 26: We're PREGNANT! cHCG is 178!! SEPTEMBER 28: Follow-up blood work: cHCG is 471.5!!!
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September 26, 2023
We got the call: We're PREGNANT! My body is beginning to form the placenta and our baby is making himself comfy in our womb. We did it! Please stay, sweet baby. We can't wait to meet you. They say, it's always darkest before the dawn. I don't know about that. But it's pretty dark, these days. It feels like my body remembers, even when I think I'm ignoring it. I often feel a sense of dread, despair, a heartache that has a kind of familiar fatalism to it. Like, yup, here it is again, never get away from this, never be enough, never feel safe.
The anniversary of the worst day was a dark cloud over everything but it lingered in my body in unexpected ways. I found myself wanting to hide, run, scream, fall apart, push myself...all at the same time. It definitely wasn't a day of the kind of comfy-grace some might imagine. I re-lived a mirror day, in the same place, at the same time, performing similar actions, and found myself waiting for pain. Afraid to use the bathroom. Taking weird, centering, breaths. But, in some ways, it was healing. I was not the same person. I was not living the same day. It was just a fun-house mirror of it. A reminder of the life lost. Lives, really. Meanwhile, we're still in limbo on the transfer front. And to be a year away from miscarriage--with no promise of more than loss--is a unique kind of purgatory. The anniversary followed the mirror day and, like everything hard, it was a lingering wave. Guilt. Pain. Sadness. Awareness. I both could not help but name it and did everything in my power to avoid it. I know there is no right way to do this. But I can't help feeling like I'm doing it wrong. Or maybe it's just that it feels so wrong. In the shadows, there's a half-life lived. This anniversary was the glaring reminder that I will be taking half-breaths and living half-full, until life feels whole again. |
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