Trying Again After Miscarriage

I found these words spilling out of my mouth on my first date with my husband, "Well, I'm not sure if I can even have kids at this point, since I'm in my forties."

The thought bubble over my head was saying, "Why on earth are you telling this man these things?! Not exactly fun and flirty dinner conversation!"

Another part of my brain was saying, "Oh well, if you're gonna scare him away, make it sooner rather than later, for everyone's sake."

My future husband replied thoughtfully, "I want children, but I'd rather end up with the right woman than worry about what our life should look like. I'd be happy adopting or figuring it out somehow."

Two and a half years later, Claire was born.

The perfect happy ending!

I wasn’t always so sure we would get to that happy ending. It was easy to embark on the journey of getting pregnant with my husband, when I had nothing to lose.

Then, I had a miscarriage at 13 weeks.

I experienced what it was like to want something, and have it taken away. Intellectually, I thought I was prepared. I knew all the doom and gloom statistics about conception and miscarriage for women in their 40’s. But it's one thing to know something, quite another to experience it.

The hardest choice I ever made was to try again. It meant staying open to not knowing the ending of our story, facing the possibility of miscarriage again (indeed, we had one more), and living in a state of limbo.

There were times when the easier choice seemed to close the door on having a baby entirely and to just move on with our life. It’s a double-edged sword facing the unknown with someone you love. You each have your own journey full of personal shades of trepidation and hope. Sometimes, one person can carry the other through the down times. Sometimes, both of you need a little support, but neither has the resources to give.

Ultimately, though, it was my husband’s character that gave me the strength to keep trying. His words on our first date continued to resonate in our lives. He showed me how to put relationships over goals. He helped me have faith that the journey would take us exactly where we needed to go. He taught me that hope isn't getting what you think you want, but being open to what you receive.

I’m glad I listened to my heart on our first date. Between you and me, another thought bubble over my head was “I think I could marry this man." I didn’t share that one with him either.

This post is an adaptation of another post, The Story of Us, which I wrote on the fourth anniversary of our first date. I thought it deserved being revisited in the context of Claire being born.


Photo Source: Tatiana Vdb  Flickr. This photo has been adapted and does not suggest that the licenser endorse its use or this blog. License

My Geriatric Pregnancy

I must have deserved a medal the time that I decided to try and have a baby at age 44. Or I was crazy. Well, the medical profession seemed to think so.

According to statistics, I was lucky to get pregnant in the first place. Then, once I was pregnant, I was slapped with the most laughable of terms. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know that I make fun of the fact that an OB told me I was a “geriatric pregnancy”.

I switched to a midwife.

Even at the all-natural, crunchy birthing center where we had Claire, I was told to count on going passed my due date and to be ready to be induced because of my “Advance Maternal Age” (Ah, AMA…slightly better than being a geriatric, but not much).

I didn’t help my plight much by consulting Dr. Google for reassurance. He is the king of doom and

gloom. “Higher risk” usually starts the slew of statistics peppered through the information for moms-to-be of AMA. The worst of which is the word “stillbirth”.

In a sense, I don’t envy the position of those in the medical community though. They need to prepare women for possible outcomes. But there's a fine line between a gentle heads-up, and being just plain old scary. A lot of doctors (and midwives) seem to have this way about them that makes everything that comes out of their mouths seem like a foregone conclusion.

And, really, they have nothing to lose by scaring you. If they are right, they get to say “I told you so”. If they aren’t, they can say, “Well, thank your lucky stars you had a medical provider as excellent as me”.

I can place myself in the latter category. And I am thankful, very, very thankful. While I wouldn’t describe my pregnancy, labor and delivery as a bed of roses, I think it was a good one. No gestational diabetes or preeclampsia. I gained a normal amount of weight. I delivered Claire naturally two days before her due date. My labor was eight hours long from start to finish. I pushed four times, et voila!

Not bad for an old lady, eh?!

If I sound like I’m bragging, well, maybe, a little. But I’m also trying to illustrate a point…

Individuals make up statistics. Individuals are not statistics. Neither are babies.

One of the biggest challenges I faced trying to get pregnant and during my pregnancy was counteracting the negative voices that I heard. Dr. Doom and Gloom definitely set up camp in the back of my head.

He made me scared.

He put doubts in my head about our decision to try.

He made me feel isolated.

Not things that a woman (of any age) needs to feel the first time (or any time) she is pregnant.

Do I really deserve a medal? No. Really, all women who give birth deserve medals. What’s amazing to me is that this feat of daring athleticism happens every minute of every hour of every day!

So I’m qualifying the beginning statement of this post: I deserved a medal for having a baby at 44 in the face of the medical community’s dire predictions about the fate of my baby and me.

In case this statement sounds less than humble or I'm guilty of minimizing the decided risks of pregnancy, let me tell you that I'm being slightly tongue in cheek (slightly). I also know that nothing in life is guaranteed. I know that George and I are lucky and blessed that everything went down the way that it did. I know we could have just as easily been a statistic too.

But women like me deserve to have hope despite the odds. We deserve to be supported along an often daunting, lonely and unpredictable path. We deserve to remember that doctors aren't always right. They are not God, even though they sometimes like to pretend that they are.

Claire and I are living, breathing proof!

To this point, wanna know what I learned after my pregnancy? The statistic about how a woman’s fertility drops like a stone after 35 is based on French birth records from 1670-1830. Yes, you read that correctly. The author of this captivating and eye-opening Atlantic article goes on to say that  "surprisingly few well-designed studies of female age and natural fertility include women born in the 20th century".

Makes you wonder about all the other statistics as well, especially, given this country's stellar record of focusing research dollars on women’s health (dripping sarcasm here, in case you were wondering).

But, whatever the facts may be, I’m happy that I kept my eye on the prize and did my best to ignore Dr. Doom.

Claire is my prize. She is better than any medal!


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Photo Source: David Rosenbergy, Wikipedia Commons, this photo has been altered, which does not suggest that the licensor endorses me, this blog or its use.

Linking up with Finish The Sentence Friday. Come join in: "I deserve a medal for the time I..."

In the Scheme of Things

Sharing a post written when Claire was an infant:

I told George that our baby, Claire, was born carrying all her eggs inside her tiny body. He asked in amazement, “So you’re telling me she has our grandchildren inside her already?” I said, “Well, if she has children, yes."

Right now, it’s all beautiful potential.

Claire was a promise for me for a long time as well. Nine months in my belly, yet the possibility of her has been inside of me for my whole life. That must say something about the psychic bond between mother and child. For Claire and me, it’s been a particularly long journey. Forty-four years together, then George joined the mix and she became her own separate person. I like to believe that she was born wise, because she lived forty-four years as part of me before she started her own life.

It’s a wonder she or any of us are born at all. Remember when they used to give a prize to the thousandth customer to walk through the department store doors? It’s kind of like that. One lucky somebody gets to be the thousandth customer, but many, many more need to make up the nine hundred ninety-nine who go before.

And that’s just the half of it, literally. You get one shot to swim better than 300 million others or so.

Right from the start, the male and female impulse seem so contrary – on the feminine side, hanging out patiently and waiting for just the right moment to take the plunge, on the male, jumping from the gate and enduring the race. With each, there’s an indefinable measure of grace.

As I look at her sleeping, she is so substantially her, so uniquely Claire. The seeming randomness of it all makes me shiver.


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Views from a Passenger

I've been encouraging my husband to write a guest post for my blog for awhile. He would come up with one topic about Claire, another one about fatherhood. I would say, "Great! Can't wait to read it." Then, he wouldn't write it. So I was more than a little surprised when I woke up to find that he had written this piece while Claire and I were asleep. I was blown away that he chose this topic and wrote these words. I am lucky to be his wife.

I want to remark on the religious path of motherhood from the point of view of a father and a husband. By religious, I'm talking about the Latin root of the word, re legio: to reunite with things.

In giving birth, I've seen my wife, Rachel, reunite with parts of herself that were far away from her, or at least, parts that had been safely transposed into the intellectual archives of her past.

But when Claire arrived, I saw and heard Rachel touch base with things long gone: clarification of distant, vague moments that she knew had affected her. I saw her reach back to connect with the early experiences of her life, making religious connections.

I have made religious connections, too, but Rachel was the boxer, and I was the trainer in the corner with the spit pail. That's not a cop-out, but a fact: women take it on the chin, no matter how "involved" a father is. Claire passed through Rachel's body, not mine, and the echoes of that intimacy will always keep her a shade closer than I will ever be to Claire.

For Rachel, pregnancy was hard, and exhilarating, as religious journeys are. She suffered, got to know herself, and was transfigured. She got to know disappointment, and joy. She got to know midnight, as well as high noon. And I got to love her more deeply as I watched her take this ride, this scary ride, that she took partly for the love of me. What to say? I am thankful for my wife's courage to have a baby at 44. For her to have a baby at all.

And I am thankful my wife writes. Puts it into words. The "word" surrounding this religious experience. I love her writing, and I think, one day, Claire will treasure it as well.

And when Claire has branched off into her own life years from now, not needing us so much, Rachel and I will sit on the couch, hold hands, and leaf through her blog. We will read aloud the words she has put down about this incredible journey we took together. And it will be better than any photograph or home movie ever recorded.

- By George Demas

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Grieving the Unknown

I was eight weeks pregnant when George and I were married. I had a miscarriage at 13 weeks. At the time, I wrote this piece to mourn and heal.

I thought there was no grieving without knowing

I thought mourning was fueled by

Lost relationships and experiences shared

Losing you is a different thing

Potential uncoils,

Missing the change in the curve of my waist

The place I touched to remind me that you were there, oh, so, barely there

Letting go a shift in consciousness that readied to make room for you

Getting used to no morning sickness, for Pete's sake!

Such elusive things seem to add up to knowing you

Well, you will remain in a million wedding pictures and I will remember the proverbial twinkle in your dad’s eye

He wondered if you had thoughts before this

He would talk to you, just in case

We had so many questions, my mystery and my hope

I have them now too,

I want to know could I have saved you

Did I do something wrong?

I want to know if you knew us, if you will remember us

I fear the answer is no

But I’ll never know

Something else to grieve

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Post-Baby Body

The other day at the gym, I found myself on the middle bike between two single ladies on my left and two on the right. I didn't know for sure they were single. I just had a feeling born out of years of being single myself.

Let's just say they were young, energetic and one other thing that I was not…I was not wearing an outfit like theirs. Their outfits seemed designed for the gym. The clothes were put together with consideration for fit, performance and appearance. They each had shoes that matched their shorts, shorts that matched their shirt, etc. Their outfits suggested thought about the lift of the backside and the poof of the pony-tail.

I used to have gym outfits like theirs. Since becoming a mom, it's become hard to distinguish between the clothes that I wear at home and ones for the gym. My outer wear is likely to reflect my internal harried state. My gym clothes are sure to symbolize my lack of free time and the nature of my 24/7 job.

Frankly, I just don't care what I look like at the gym. I feel like a bad-ass dressing like a slob. I want my clothes to say, "I pushed a baby out of this body without drugs; I've earned the right to dress however I want!"

If this posture sounds obnoxious, please hear me out. It's not lost on me that not caring about clothing this vociferously seems oddly related to caring about it. Still, there's something empowering in this stance for me. My choice in clothes (or lack thereof) reflects the fact that my workouts have become more about taking care of myself and being healthy than using exercise to pursue a body that conforms to a standard of beauty dictated by others.

I'm not implying that woman with nicer outfits than me or women who are single and/or without kids are ill-intended in their workouts either. I don't know their intentions.

What I do know is that they remind me of pre-baby me. I spent too much time worrying about how I looked before I had Claire. Like many women, I've struggled to gain acceptance of my body.

Having a baby has been a rite of passage for me, in this respect. I've learned that my body is so much more than its appearance. I grew a baby with this body. That's a revelation. Some women do it more than once. I am in awe of them.

Of course, I still have days when I wish I had flatter abs or I worry about fitting into my skinny jeans.

On other days, I experience my body as bountiful. I look at my daughter, and it isn't possible for me to believe otherwise. She exists regardless of my physical appearance or what clothes I wear.

I feel grateful for the body that made her. I feel its power and its wonder. I deserve to feel this way more often.

We all do.


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Not Bringing Sexy Back

NOTE: This image marginally fits the post. But how could I resist?

The low point in my pregnancy was when I would sit alone in front of the television each night at 3AM and watch late night poker, because nothing better was on and I had nothing better to do.

Insomnia set in during my third trimester, at which time my nose decided to shut down operation between the hours of Midnight and 6AM. The instant I fell asleep, I would wake up with the sensation of being suffocated. I also felt like an invertebrate. An overabundance of the pregnancy hormone Relaxin made my body conform to whatever surface I was lying on, rendering sleep extremely uncomfortable.

Thinking back on it now, there isn't much about pregnancy that I would care to retain -- not the sleeplessness, nor the forty pound weight gain that went entirely to my backside, nor the ill-fitting, over-priced, and unfashionable clothes. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved feeling Claire grow in my body and getting to the other side of pregnancy. I would endure such suffering again in a heartbeat to have her.

But when I hear someone say, "I just loved being pregnant", I want to punch them in the face (apologies ahead of time if you are one of these women).

One remnant of pregnancy remains, however. My choice in underwear. I was ignorant of the splendor of granny panties before I was pregnant. Now, it's hard to imagine abandoning their comfort. Sure, Natori, Victoria Secret and the occasional La Perla have a place in my underwear drawer. But they sit at the back of the drawer neglected. Really, I contemplate going back to them, breaking my new habit.

But who knew large swaths of cotton fabric could be too comfortable to give up?

I feel a little funny picking up a pack at Walmart. I mean, come on, a pack? Men's underwear come in a pack, not a lady's lingerie. Even the brand names aren't sexy for women. Hanes and Fruit of the Loom scream out man shorts and tighty whities to me. They're even called "briefs" to add insult to injury! 

But by the time I get to the register, I want to tell the checkout lady or anyone who will listen that there's no reason to  be ashamed of feeling comfortable. After all, I wouldn't endure the pain of a brazilian wax in the name of sexiness. Why should my philosophy about undergarments be any different?

Plus, I sacrificed enough comfort during pregnancy and labor to earn the right to wear whatever the hell underwear I want!

On the home front, I feel a little less sure of myself. I haven't been able to bring myself to ask my husband what he thinks of this turn of events. I'd love to think that he'd tell me he finds me sexy in a potato sack (I mean my man looks pretty hot in long underwear, to my eye). Unfortunately, even if he did give me a compelling argument about why I should bring sexy back, I doubt I'd listen to him. 

To repeat, granny panties are just too comfortable to give up. 

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