Not pregnant, not happy, not convinced that there's a reason to hope

Just how much we want to have another baby is impossible to put into words. We have been so ready to be parents for such a long time now. We were so bloody close. I can't get over that. I can't get over how my darling Max just slipped through my fingers. I can't believe that I ever was pregnant in the first place now. So much of what happened seems to belong in the realm of dreams, or more accurately, nightmares.

I didn't want to be an 'older' mum, but I will be, if indeed I do get the chance to bring home a living baby, which at this stage is from a certainty. But I didn't want to be the mother of a dead baby, either, so maybe I just don't get the things I want. That's how it seems. There's a lot of self-defeating emotions that go along with those thoughts that destroy any hope I might have that things will one day be different. It's hard to keep believing when you've had everything you previously believed in taken away from you. Yes, it's hard to hope in the absence of any evidence that the hope is not just an elaborate self-delusion.

We have been trying to get pregnant for three months now. For two of those three months I have experienced very convincing phantom pregnancies. You hear about these things but you don't know how real they can be. You don't know how your mind can trick your body into manifesting all types of signs and symptoms, from stinging nipples to fluttering baby kicks in your abdomen. My psychiatrist says I'm not going mad; that phantom pregnancy symptoms are very common in bereaved mothers, and in women who have desperate desires to be pregnant. You might not be going mad, but you sure as hell go through a number of significantly distressing states when you realise you can't trust your body, your intuition, or anything you think or feel, as all of them were telling you that you were pregnant and all of them were wrong.

I know that three months is not a very long time to try for a baby. I know that I'm doing an absolute disservice to couples who have been trying for years to conceive by complaining that I'm not pregnant after three measly cycles. But when you consider that each month that passes gets racked up as evidence in my brain that Max was a fluke, that he was my only chance at motherhood, and that the end of each cycle brings on a grief response as intense and distressing as if I've just lost him all over again, then three months begins to sound like a very long time after all.

I got pregnant with Max almost straight away. I couldn't believe it at the time. And now, of course, I just assume that this is how it should be, and that because it is taking longer there must be something Seriously Wrong. And, I know, that what I am going through right now is only the beginning of a long list of fears and uncertainties that I will have to face along my journey to bringing a baby home. This scares me. It scares me so much. I can only barely cope with the trying to conceive part - how many other steps will there be upon which I might falter?

The realisation that there are not necessarily better times ahead, but tougher times, is enough to send me scuttling off to bed, never to get up again.

I read a wonderful book last week: Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination (thanks to Sally for recommending it, I got so much from it). Elizabeth's baby died. He was stillborn in the picturesque, romantic French countryside. I want to write more about this book in a separate post later on, but right now I want to talk about it's 'happy' ending. Elizabeth and her husband went on to have two living children after the death of their son. Of course those children were not a happy ending to their tragedy, as there is no such thing in those circumstances, but they were a different ending, and one that got them to the place they wanted to be despite their tragic beginnings. They are parents to living, breathing children. It doesn't make what happened to their son OK, but does it make it even the slightest bit better? Even by a little bit? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I want to know. I want to have the chance to find out.

Every story I've read about dead or dying babies has ended with the grieving parents conceiving again and bringing home the baby. I know from reading blogs that this is, so sadly, not always the case. But the stories with the 'happy' endings are the ones getting published and mailed well-meaningly to desperately grieving parents in the days after their baby's death as a way of reminding them to hope, to remember that everything always works out alright in the end.

But it bloody well doesn't always work out in the end, does it? I hope and I pray, though I have no deity to pray to, that we are able to have another baby. But there's a chance we will not. There's always the chance that we will not. And I can't mitigate those feelings of despair that we'll always be the poor couple whose tragedy is being talked about over brunch in between mouthfuls of organic eggs by smug families with disgustingly expensive prams. I hate smug families, but at the same time I want the chance to be smug and happy. I feel like a very unattractive, tantrum-throwing toddler: when is it my turn? What about me?

Well, what about me? I don't want to turn into one of those conception nazis that is decreeing on a military schedule when it is time to get down to business. I don't want to spend all month sitting at home doing nothing but obsessing over why I'm not pregnant yet, which is pretty much what my life currently entails. That level of stress can't be good for conception, but HOW CAN I NOT BE STRESSED?

I consulted with my GP. She is so compassionate and so understanding. She knows this must be hard, but she assures us that three months is nothing. None of the tests I had after Max died showed that there'd be a reason why I could not get pregnant again. But how can I believe them? Everyone was wrong about everything! They could have just as easily been wrong about this.

I want to control this situation. Oh, yes I do. I have learned to sit with a great deal of uncertainty over the last eight and a half months. It's been hard, but I am learning. But I see uncertainty in every single direction I look right now and I'm finding it really hard to accept that. Surely there's only so much uncertainty that you can be expected to manage at once? Ah, but that's not true either. There's no such thing as a 'fair' amount of anything. Shit comes to you whether you can cope with it or not.

I've told Leslie to keep a close eye on my activities. I've often laughed uproariously at women professing to consult crystals and spiritual healers to aid conception. But I'm one step away from becoming them, I tell you. Who am I to say that their magic doesn't work? I don't know anything anymore, remember? People get desperate when they are searching for answers that can't be found. I don't want to be the lady wearing rose quartz and moonstone in her bra. I want to be the one who gets pregnant this month despite all her fears to the contrary. The one who can sit back and say 'what was I ever worried about?' and laugh, smugly.

I want the wind to change.

I want another chance.

I'll do it better this time, I promise. I won't let this one get away.

I won't let another baby get away.

Just give me a chance.