The next day my Dr. wants to do another eval, I can hear the annoyance in his voice as he talks to me again about miscarriages but wait… ‘it’s been a week and your bleeding is worse?’ ‘Your pain is worse?’ So, he rushes me off to an emergency surgery where he finally realizes that I’m 8 weeks pregnant, but the baby was growing in my fallopian tube and it ruptured, just a few more hours and I would have bled out internally. A few more hours and I would have lost my life.
A few months later and we decide we’re ready to try again, as ready as we can be. 7 months go by, is that a line? Retest, oh yeah that’s definitely a line. I excitedly call Ben because finally! Our rainbow baby! My Dr. gets me in right away for tests to monitor and make sure it’s not another ectopic, it’s not… ‘I’m so sorry, it appears you’re having a miscarriage, there is nothing we can do to prevent this, go home and rest.’ This time, I did my best not to look at Ben. I can’t handle that look on his face again. It’s not fair! God, why?! Please…
A few months later we hit the two-year mark. Together we decide that maybe it’s time to see a specialist, more tests. But now because my right fallopian tube is gone, our chances of getting pregnant are cut in half. And since I’m not ovulating from the side that my remaining fallopian tube is on, that makes it even harder. So, our specialist puts me on a medication called clomid, which we do for three cycles with no success. The trigger shots sit on the counter waiting for me, waiting to be used but it never happens. A constant reminder.
We decide to take a break, everything is too much right now. I checked out emotionally. I quit my job, because I just can’t anymore. I spend every minute of every day on the internet searching for tricks on ovulating and getting pregnant! Nothing made me happy, I don’t find it cute when Ben does those things that always used to make me laugh. I don’t want to hang out with my friends anymore because small talk is something I have somehow forgot how to do. I’m bitter, I’m hollow, I’m anxious, and I’m depressed. That’s what the doctor said when I told him how detached from myself, I felt. No one understood, I was ruining all of the important relationships in my life because I DIDN’T CARE. I didn’t care about anything. I felt like a hollow shell. I was spiraling out of control. I snapped at everyone for everything and I couldn’t make it stop. In the meantime, we lost two more babies.
Year three. We start to come to the realization that we may never have a biological child. I may never get to feel pregnancy. But damnit, isn’t it a rite of passage for women? As a woman shouldn’t I be able to carry a child, feel it kick, name it, love it. But by now, we’ve lost another baby. That’s five, five times I have felt the excitement of a positive pregnancy test and the hope of maybe this is the one. Five times of hearing those dreaded words that the baby is gone. Five times of shattered dreams.
A couple of months shy of four years since we started trying to build our family and everything is great. We are now foster parents, we are parents. And we are finally able to give our love to a child. I am on an antidepressant that makes me feel human again. I finally feel like myself for the first time in a very long time. My heart is so full with the love I have for the precious children God has placed in our home.
