When your friends are pregnant and you’re not

One of the hardest things about not knowing if you are ever going to have a baby, is trying to be unselfishly happy for friends who, in a snap, SNAP got pregnant.

The first time I was pregnant, a good friend of mine was also pregnant and a month further along than me. She did it the natural way and it happened the first month they really tried. Just the way it is supposed, huh? When I had the first miscarriage she was the only one of my friends who did not immediately call or write. Look, I know her and avoidance is way of coping. Kind of like Marge Simpson, she puts a smile on her face even when she is completely uncomfortable and upset. It got a little better between us as her pregnancy progressed and I did the right things (generally from a distance — mail and email are helpful tools that way) when her daughter was born.

Tomorrow night I will see a very good friend of mine who also lucked out with a pregnancy. She actually was unknowingly about three weeks or so when she got married in late May. So probably very close to the time her pregnancy began, my second pregnancy was ending the same devestating way as the first. Now she will just about be showing a baby bump.

She told me via email in July. A few of our friends were together the night before and she shared her early good news with some trepidation (she was 9 weeks along after all) and lots of hope and excitement. It was well placed as she has sailed through the first trimester.

It may seem strange she sent it by email. Not very personal. But she knows me and as she said in the email, she wanted me to process and absorb this on my own time. I can’t fault that — although the timing sucked. Not a good way to start the work day especially right before a meeting.

Like before, I know this is hurting or at least interrupting our friendship. My happiness for her is tempered by my own sadness. Any excitement I might feel is tainted by my own anger. Why did she get pregnant right away when I need to cope and deal with infertility, drugs and needles? Why has it been so smooth for her when I had my heart wrenched, not once but twice by miscarriage? Why can’t I be a mom?

I asked my husband the other week if he felt like we were being punished. I know that I am a generally decent person. I try to do good and be good on a regular basis. So why is this happening to us when we want to be parents so bad? Logically, I know karma or some sick deity are not out to get me. At the same end, I also know there is at least a sliver of me deep inside that feels like I must have done something horribly wrong and this is my punishment.

And now, to make things even tougher, my good friend is going through a wonderful exciting time and I can not be there to feel pure joy and support for her. It will drive a wedge — and that means another important part of my life is on hold, crumpled. 

I would like to be the brave, selfless friend who puts aside her own hurts and pain to embrace fully the happiness of others. I hope to be in that emotional place someday. But I can not be there now. It is too soon and I am in this weird netherland where I don’t know if I will be able to have baby. Or if I never will.

Babies can change everything, right? I have heard — first hand and otherwise– that it’s hard for a mom to relate to her non parent friends. Her life revolves around this bright shiny being. What if you feel like a parent deep in your heart? What makes a mom? Someone who has hoped all of her life for a baby? Someone who went through tests and expensive drugs and miscarriages just to have one? Someone who felt twinges, puked if she didn’t eat breakfast and her body change as the new embryo, new life took hold? 

I don’t have baby to hold or care for. Technically and on every logical count I am not a mom. Outside nothing has changed. Inside everything has.

Cleaning up that nest

Ah, there is something so virtuous about (figuratively) rolling up my sleeves and cleaning. It may not work off the Ben & Jerry’s or beat a healthy heart pumping run but it got me off the couch and away from the TV. It’s Saturday. Really, what possibly could I be missing. 

M, the pup and me moved into a new-to-us house this year and the upgrade projects continue. We are now tackling the kitchen with a mini ie cheap makeover. First up is a clean coat of white paint for the cupboards and the dingy melamine needed a scrub. 

We started the house hunting process during the first pregnancy. Three (including pup) of us in a one bedroom condo was bearable in a cozy, newlywed way. But as a friend pointed out, a new baby would need to sleep in a dresser drawer thus triggering our house hunt. We signed the papers to sell the condo fairly soon after miscarriage #1. I was feeling hopeful that it was just bad luck and we would have our extended family soon, so it seemed logical to keep going and create that maybe forever family home.

I will never underestimate the emotional tie of your own home. I bought the condo 4-5 years ago, just before M came into my life. Quickly, the condo attracted interest and a mini bidding war. We got a good price giving us greater options than we thought for buying a house. I was crying though, signing over the papers. I didn’t realize just how much it meant to me. And to M. It was there we built our relationship and fell in love. He proposed to me in front of the couch. Now we uprooting with no new place to call home yet.

Probably after more than 100 house viewings and five competitive bids, we finally got our wee house. The housing market here is brutal and just cooling off. Each time we didn’t get a house, it was another blow and another worry. If I could throw out a helpful recommendation out to the world, don’t try to sell, buy and move just after a miscarriage. Too much. Plus a stressful job on top of it. And did I mention we had to live in M’s parents’ place for a month in between residences? Yeah.

It’s worth it now. Our 70 year old house needs work (the bathroom for example is done in 80’s sauna style and there is a huge tub with jet streams in the bedroom. Yep, basically at the foot of the bed). It’s ours though. With a yard, three bedrooms, stairs, a big kitchen and a sense of well worn and loved history. All worth it and ready for nesting.

Hanging out with the hormones on a Saturday night

Forget about me stalking. Hormones are stalking me today, and judging by the tears and just how low I feel today, they’ve found me, tied me up and are conducting some mind freak experiments on me. My period started today, the first since the miscarriage in May. Actually given just how irregular I am, the miscarriage must have kick started them back almost to normalcy. Two months timeframe is almost record breaking. I did wonder if this was coming because the hormones have been popping up their ugly, hyperactive heads on the last few days and giving me a painful nudge. A little “hi, feeling ok are you? huh? huh? screw that, we’re back…” And two pregnancy tests said no go.

I have some experience with less sunny side of life. You could say I have dabbled in depression, gotten down with feeling down. Today I feel especially emotionally tender, like a big walking bruise. It is hard for M, I know. The dark side is fairly foreign to his nature. But he knows me now, especially after this last year. He’s good about encouraging me to keep moving and I have learned that generally does a lot more for me than curling back to bed for the afternoon. So we went to the farmer’s market, had brunch and did a few home-decor related shopping.

A nice, easy going day to gently rev me up for tonight. It’s my friend’s stagette. C is a good friend, one who also ventured on the dark side too many times, and I wanted to be there for her and join the debaucherous fun. (Plus I can drink now, right?) Just as we found a frame store to re do a watercolour painted by my late Nana, I hit some kind of do-not-pass-go wall and burst into tears. I wanted home, my couch, my bed, my dog, something. This time, it was not gonna work to keep moving, or shopping, or sniffing the frigging flowers at the farmer’s market. 

Tonight, instead of learning to pole dance (boa optional), drinking cocktails and toasting my friend, I am embracing the cliche of emotionally wrought woman everywhere. It’s me, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, a couch, lame Saturday TV and maybe, if I feel like totally living the life, all while in some pjs. 

A couple of Sundays ago, I helped with C’s bridal shower. It was an effort, for various reasons, but I made a lemon-rose cake, put on a dress and even a slap of perfume and make-up, and helped to create a special party for her. It felt to be there with a job. You know, I had a role. I had busy hands that hid to a certain extent, a heavy heart. I felt like an imposter, or a pseudo Stepford wife with a fake smile going through hostess motions, without really feeling the part. It was an odd, disjointed feeling. I want to feel normal again.

Two close encounters of the pregnancy kind

Why right here, right now?

It’s been just over two months since miscarriage #2. And I am waiting for the pain to ebb instead of flow.

Almost a year ago, my husband M and I started this whole infertility and miscarriage thing. Ah a year ago, when I was excited and optimistic about the treatments, a regular infertility Bambi. Doe-eyed about the power of modern medicine and confident in my body to give me what I wanted most in the world. And really, our naivety was well founded. The first month on Clomid, one pregnancy test two weeks later and we were pregnant. So lucky. So happy just touched a tiny bit with the nervousness any wannabe mom would feel. It’s amazing how much my knowledge and vocabulary has expanded since I saw that faint positive sign on the “most advanced technology I ever peed on” almost a year ago.  

I thought a miscarriage was a messy, painful affair. At first the early pregnancy twinges and tugs freaked me out. Could this be the rumbling, tumbling start of a miscarriage? No, no, no. 

But I learned that miscarriage can creep on you silently. You can be thinking about paint colours for baby or puking in the bushes on your way to work and deep inside something is growing twisty and wrong. I learned a new phrase, missed miscarriage, when I went for an ultrasound and there was no more heartbeat. Somewhere along the way it slowed, stopped. Ended. Very missed. 

Months later we got pregnant again. Is it weird to think that the two ultrasounds I had were some of the most terrifying times I can remember. Shivering, laying on the table, waiting to read the actions and words of the ultrasound lady. My knees were literally knocking together, the trembling was so strong. (Of course not wearing any pants didn’t help matters.)  So it was almost with relief when I heard after u/s 2 the heartbeat was too slow and it was too small. Cause the worst thing that could happen, what I was dreading the most had actually happened. Perverse, right?   

Despite the infertility troubles, we seemed to have conquered the whole getting pregnant step with relative medically- assisted ease. Who cares when you still can’t make it past the first trimester? Really, who the fuck cares? 

So right here, right now, I write because I am not sure what else to try to help myself. I write because the words of other women similar to me have made me cry, know that I am not crazy, nod my head in recognition and even laugh. Even if not a single, barren soul reads these words, I hope pulling these thoughts out of my head and onto a screen will flick some kind of channel in my brain and give me some peace.