One thing I don't think I've mentioned in here is that Dan and I have been trying to have another baby. We've been trying since June, and next week I'm going to try the fertility drug Clomid. I think one of the reasons I've been avoiding writing in here is because I'm having a hard time with the constant failure to get pregnant, and Elise's role in that. I thought I was dealing with the stress of grief well, but I can't help thinking that our inability to conceive means I'm not coping well.
No less than 12 people who are either friends or acquaintances have had babies since we started trying to get pregnant again. Most of these babies are second children. If we don't manage to have another baby, I can see my relationships with two-children friends begin to deteriorate further. Not all of them: there are some who struggled with infertility before their children came along who understand, or some who are just the sensitive type. I don't begrudge them their children; I simply don't relate, and it takes effort from both sides to relate, and I'm too tired to try to help them understand me.
To get started on the Clomid, I had an exam and history with a certain OB's Physician's Assistant the other day. After the visit, I felt deflated and depressed. She treated my pregnancies, including Elise's birth, as purely clinical events. This is how part of my visit went:
"So you have one living child and one that was stillborn. How may weeks into the pregnancy?"
"Thirty-three."
"And did they find anything wrong with her?"
"Nothing. An autopsy was done, and also my placenta and the umbilical cord were fine as far as they could tell."
"No chromosomal abnormalities?"
"No. With both my son and daughter I had a nuchal translucency that showed no risk of defects."
"And was it a vaginal birth?"
"Yes."
"You were induced?"
"Yes."
"Okay...and the medications you're taking..."
"An antidepressant, Lexapro 10mg."
"Nothing else?"
"Prenatal vitamins, herbs." I've been taking the Lexapro since August, and had taken it before when my son was born and I had postpartum depression."
"Were you taking it at the time you got pregnant with your daughter?"
"No. I was off it for most of 2006, until my daughter died."
I took strange comfort in the extra notes she jotted down about these. How pathetic is that?
No "I'm sorry for your loss" or "That must have been so hard." It was as if we were talking about having my appendix out. She was a pleasant person in every other way, but perhaps hadn't much experience with traumatic events in patients' lives, and so probably didn't know how to treat Elise like a child of mine who had died.
The other day I was talking with the very nice gal who waxes my eyebrows, and after she'd talked about having her twins by C-section six years ago, she asked if I gave birth to Elise. When I said yes, she said, "God Marilyn, that must have been so hard." But I said I was glad I could give birth to her naturally because it felt like an affirmation of her life, and that I was glad to birth her in the same way I had Felix, instead of having her be just a clinical procedure.
I ask myself why I haven't written in my blog for so long, and I think it's because I haven't written about wanting another baby. Our lack of success seems tied up in my emotions over Elise, even though it's felt numerous times like I am clearer and more accepting of her death as time goes by. I know that recovery from my grief doesn't mean I'll forget her. I know and accept that the pain of her death will always be with me. I am ready to move forward, and have been for a while. I talk about her to others when I feel they will listen respectfully.
As far as I can tell, I don't feel as if our desire for another baby is a betrayal of her. But I seem to feel that our inability to conceive is connected to her. My doctor says it's probably the stress still. I've felt stuck also in not doing any creative pursuits I dream about. Some more stuff inside me needs to be expressed, emotionally and spiritually, but it's hard and it's scary.
The puttering and restless wandering around the house is just like I was feeling last year, in the first months after Elise died. I've come full circle again, revisiting those times unconsciously, which is probably what I need to do. But I really, really want to take that giant step forward and have another baby. In the meantime, I've picked up my guitar again, and last night Felix and I made our own Valentines for his schoolmates: I cut out red, purple, and pink hearts from construction paper, and had him squirt gobs of glitter glue on them and pile on the heart-shaped sparklies. It felt like an act of love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Marilyn, I know Elise wants you to have another baby if you can safely do that. I know it. Trying to have another baby is not a way to forget Elise. You and Dan will never forget your sweet baby girl. I know it's easy for me to say, but I know that if it is meant to be, you will have another baby. If it doesn't happen, you will find the strength to go on . . . from within yourself, from Elise, from Dan and Felix, and from all of us who love you all.
I'm thinking of you and sending out any fertile vibes I have left within me to you.
Love ya!
jennifer
Marilyn,
This posting disturbed me a little - ruffled my soul, I should perhaps say. I read it this morning before I went to work - you're on my iGoogle page, so I know when there's anything new - and it's been clinging to my shoulders all day. This is going to sound a little like a "be grateful for what you have!" admonition, I fear, but it's certainly not intended to be so. Just some reflections...
I need to take issue first with your wording in the first paragraph - it may just be a matter of wording, indeed, but my reaction to it was almost visceral all the same. You say you are "having a hard time with the constant failure to get pregnant." I don't think not being pregnant can be a failure, and I don't like the thought that you might be looking at it like that. If you do, and you don't get pregnant again, are you going to carry it around as a failure forever? Is an absence of something a failure, even if it's something you want?
As you know, I've been single for more years than most people can imagine. Should I think of it as a failure to have a relationship? Do I? Well, yes, in my darker moments I certainly do. But in the rational light of day it makes no sense. Getting into a relationship - as I remarked some time ago to someone I loved but who evidently didn't love me - isn't like going out to slay a dragon. If you want to slay a dragon, the dragon doesn't have to agree. You can succeed or fail on your own terms only. If you want to go out and dance with a dragon, on the other hand, success or failure is largely out of your hands. If the dragon is willing...
Do I sound like a Chinese sage yet? Anyway, even if you want to get pregnant, it's similarly not something that should be seen in terms of your own success or failure, I'd say. Or are you going to ask each sperm and egg to share their portion of the blame as individuals? If they won't take that responsibility, then there's no failure, just an absence.
When I thought about this earlier on, I also thought - what would I do if one of my students used this to justify not doing his or her homework? "It's not a failure, just an absence." I have my answer ready, though - the homework is there already, set in advance, and the failure is a failure to complete it. That's a relief...
Now, your second paragraph, which also disturbed me for similarly self-reflexive reasons. You say that you can see your relationships with friends who have two children deteriorating, and remarked that you couldn't relate to them. How strange, from my point of view. Where is my place in the world, if we're going to think like this? I wonder if you people with first children find an unusual bond - these interests and concerns at this time of life - and whether you, Marilyn, are just taking a step back towards the rest of us who never got caught up in this odd little bubble?
A few years ago I watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner while I was in Japan, and I thought it quite strange because to me the identity of the two families as Americans (and thus very foreign to me) came out much more strongly than the intended differences in identities of the white and black families. Whether my friends have one child, two children, or have the bereavement of miscarriages or stillbirths - they're all off in some group which is quite "other" to me, and the thought of differentiation within it is hard to get my head around. I hope you'll find you are wrong about your relationships, because I wouldn't like to have to imagine my differences with others as insurmountable. My in-group, after all, would be the terminally single, and as I'm the only member of it I know under 80 or so, it could be pretty lonely if I were to resign myself to living within it.
I've gone on for some time, and you can only be glad that I don't have much reason to take issue with anything else (though something else slips in. The doctor - I think I sympathize with her. Some of us just aren't touchy-feely, and notes of sympathy are apt to come out as insincere even if we mean them. If I were her, I'd probably keep things coolly clinical too just to avoid that risk). I think I can only say, ganbare, and - live your life. It's yours, and it's now.
Post a Comment