For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

Miscarriage.  Let’s talk about it.  I will freely admit I am terrified of this, and yet I know the odds of having this experience for someone my age is shockingly high.  Most women I know have had at least one; some several.  According to some interesting facts I’ve read, apparently many women miscarry early in the process and don’t even know it.  I have a friend who keeps having pregnancy symptoms and then a very heavy period and then the symptoms vanish; we both think she keeps miscarrying.  Now that I know a lot about charting, basal body temperatures, etc, I know that you can see if this has happened to you just by taking your temperature first thing in the morning (I’ve been doing this since November, and it’s how I know I have low progesterone) – if you have a bunch of high temperatures followed by a missed period and then a sudden drop, odds are you’ve had an early miscarriage. 

But the early miscarriage (or “chemical pregnancy” as the industry likes to call it) is not what scares me.  It’s the late ones.  The ones months into the process, after you’ve told everyone, after you’re showing, after your whole life has been turned upside down and you’ve spent months reveling in the thought that you did it, you pulled it off, you’re going to be a mommy.  I don’t take change of plans well, nor disappointment (does anyone?).  I’m terrified I’ll have one of these and then my body will be so jacked up I won’t be able to try again for months, or ever.  I’m terrified having this happen will send me into a pit of depression I won’t be able to pull out of.  And I’ll be honest – I’m terrified of having to go through that alone.

Still, this is a common experience.  And people get through it.  They can be happy again.  And even have healthy babies.  And I’ve said all along hey, if it’s not in the cards for me to have a biological child, it’s not in the cards, and I can still pursue motherhood in lots of ways, all of which are awesome – fostering, foster-to-adopt, international adoption, US adoption.  But being as the whole genesis of this “project” was to give my family a little biological gift of continuance after a sad loss, it does make me sad to think I wouldn’t be able to realize this goal.  Still, as my friend V once said, “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up faster.”

Some years ago I read a stunning article in the New Yorker written by a man who held his wife’s hand through the death of their unborn baby who then had to be born.  The author mentioned the old writer’s chestnut about how Hemmingway was made a bet that he couldn’t write a novel in six words.  He came up with “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”  He won the bet.