On Pregnancy After Miscarriage

This post I have wanted to write, I have felt like I should write, but I didn't know how to write it.  At least with the miscarriages the feelings were explicable.  The emotional processing that has been pregnancy after recurrent miscarriages has been confusing, really.  I, myself, don't understand some of the feelings that have been associated with this journey.  They're just the feelings that were and are.

Early April: I stopped taking all my prenatals and other suppliments, quit acupuncture, and resigned to the fact that this just was not our month.  I was well on my way to accepting that baby number three might not be a reality at all.  One evening we were sitting in McDonald's, discussing summer plans, and Brandon said, "Well, what if you get pregnant this month?"  To which I responded with absolute certainty, "I won't."  Two weeks later, the pregnancy test read positive and I stepped onto a roller coaster that I find difficult to describe.  Hence writing this post 5 months into my pregnancy.

Emotionally, the first many weeks were rough; far more difficult than the emotional recovery of my second and third miscarriages; different, but harder.  I was desperate, and very broken.  I cried constantly, and I could not bring myself to pray that we would keep the baby.  "Please bless me with the strength to get through this, whatever be Thy will."  I said this prayer over and over again.  I sometimes (very privately) hoped for miscarriage.  Not because I didn't want to keep the baby, but because miscarriage I knew and understood, and what I was doing was terrifying.  If I was going to loose the baby, which I was sure I was, I wanted it to happen sooner rather than later.

Milestones that I thought would bring peace didn't provide the solace that I was hoping for.  We saw a tiny baby with a tiny heart beat four times: six, nine, eleven, and twelve weeks.  I cried in the waiting room before my first three appointments; I was that sure that there would be nothing on the ultrasound; I felt overwhelmed by the desperation I was feeling.  (PS: It was not uncommon to see a woman crying in my RE's office waiting room) After my third visit, I "graduated" from the specialist to my regular OB.  The specialist's office sent me out the door with a gift bag, and that was the first time I felt happy about being pregnant; 11 weeks.

Slowly I cried less days, slowly the victories felt more like victories.  Twelve weeks, fourteen, tiny baby movements, a perfect 18 week ultrasound and a baby girl.

I spend a lot of time in peace now.  However, I still stress a lot more than I did with my boys' pregnancies.  My pregnant sister in law said to me a few weekends ago, "Next time we see each other, we'll both have babies!"  My words said, "Yeah!"  My mind, involuntarily, said, "At least we know you will."  My fears have turned from blood on the TP to: Has she moved today?  Could I be leaking amniotic fluid and not know it?  Is that a braxton hicks or a real contraction?

But also, there's just so much joy and gratitude.  I sometimes walk past the mirror and smile.  I hate the extra weight less than I did with my boys' pregnancies.  "Does that extra weight really matter?" I ask myself, "I'm having a baby!"  "So what that my ankles are essentially part of thighs, I'm having a baby!"  Thankles, much?  It's impossible for me to believe that we're here; 24 weeks and no reason to believe we won't have a baby in January.  A baby GIRL!  So long we prayed, hoped and obsessed over what it would mean to be here, and now we're here.  I feel overwhelmed with gratitude when it's just the four (five) of us Barnettes.  Someone said to me, "A gril!  What a perfect little family."  I cannot agree more.

What perfect blessings.