Dear little one,
It’s always hard starting something new. Just goes to
show... I’ve restarted this first blog post 3 times now.
Do I start with how when I was in college, I wondered if
maybe I should never have children?
Do I start when how I met your dad, and without even
realizing it, I changed my mind about having children?
Do I start with how just before I started my first job, I
cried because I thought I was pregnant, and then cried when I realized I
wasn’t?
In these first few years being married, your dad and I knew
we wouldn’t be good parents right away. We haven’t had much money. I had to
teach to repay my college scholarship. Your dad needed to finish seminary. But
last summer, I was fed up with the migraines that seemed to follow my birth
control pills and was tired tired tired of waiting for you. We will never have
much money anyway. So, we stopped trying to keep you from coming. But it was
another few months before we started hoping for you.
If you know anything about me at this point, you know that I
am not a patient person. Hopefully I’ve been patient with you. I think I’m very
patient with people and situations. I am NOT patient in waiting for events. For
birthdays. For holidays. For dessert. For the weekend. For you to show up. So I
wasn’t even patient those first months, but kept hoping I’d get to start
counting down even when I knew the odds weren’t really in our favor.
But since November, when we were officially “trying,” every
period results in a week of crisis. Depression. Fighting for hope. Because I was so hoping there wouldn’t
be a period, that I’d finally get to start my nine-month countdown to you.
Now it’s March. Exactly a week ago was the dreaded 30th
day of my cycle... aka, Doomsday. I was actually having a really great day with
my students at school; nothing special about the day, but they were just making
me laugh and I was loving that I got to love on them. I went to the bathroom at
lunch and found that my period was starting. I just sighed, but wasn’t too
upset immediately... I already was pessimistic about my chances this time since
I’d, for the first time, taken ovulation tests that month. From day 13 to 21,
all negative negative negative. So many negative tests that look exactly like
negative pregnancy tests. Then I gave up for the month. And then immediately
wondered if I should’ve kept testing...
My students keep me busy and the daily tasks as a teacher
keep my mind overwhelmed with the immediate tasks at hand, so I was fine for
the rest of that particular day. That Day 30, wait, no, Day 1 of Cycle 9. I
didn’t even cry this time. But that night, as I sat next to my bed reading my
Bible, I just ached. The hardest thing is fighting the despair that I will
never get to meet you. Part of me
feels so foolish, because medically, I haven’t officially been waiting for you
for very long. My friend right now is waiting to see if she’ll be able to have
an IVF treatment this month, and today is her birthday. Tomorrow she’ll get the
news if she has enough viable eggs for the treatment. Another friend has
already tried that—twice. Other beautiful, wonderful, good women have lost
babies before they were born. Even after they were born. Who am I to lament? I
do not dare to claim that I know their pain.
I do feel alone. I haven’t heard from other women exactly in
my place—waiting for the next cycle to maybe not come, waiting for the 12
months mark to wait for a diagnosis of why the cycle never stopped coming, wondering
how long the waiting will last?
If this waiting lasts forever, I’m afraid I might let go. Yeah, I’m afraid I might let go.["Reason to Sing," by All Sons and Daughters]
So I stay busy, because then I don’t watch the clock and the
calendar so closely, especially when I’m preoccupied with school, where time
runs backward--I can never get enough time to get everything done!
But even at school, the Geometry teacher announced her
pregnancy a couple months ago and now has this cute little baby bump.
I have a hard time talking to her lately.
The EC teacher I work with announced her pregnancy about a
month ago, and also has a little swelling belly. We haven’t had many
conversations, either.
Oh, what a selfish, covetous heart I have! Dear little one,
I pray you have not seen it much.
My students several times a week ask when I’ll have a baby.
They mean well—they only ask because they like me and they know instinctively
that you’ll be a blessing. But they say unfair things, like if only your dad
will get on board (he’s waiting for you too!). or they’ll just tell me that I
“should have a baby,” as if that’s something I can just add to my to-do list
this weekend and as long as I don’t forget that or the laundry, all those
chores will get done. So I smile
or laugh it off, sometimes I fling something sarcastic back because it’s easier
than trying to explain how much that hurts to hear. Just today, I was waiting
in line for free lunch (!) when a co-worker that I don’t see often was asking
how my husband was doing, and how much of seminary was left for him, will we
have to move, are we thinking of babies?
What do I say while
we’re in this noisy line, waiting for our turn to assemble tacos? I know she
means well—she’s taken a liking to my story. and I know that most people, namely
women, just have this love for babies and women having babies.
Dear little one, I hope you are a stranger to the feeling of
being left out, but I so feel left out. Motherhood is this exclusive club that
doesn’t have fair entrance exams. So when the math teacher with her cute bump
is microwaving lunch in the teachers’ lounge and the other women are asking how
she’s feeling and sharing how they felt at that point too, I decide that I can
wait to make my copies until they leave. Because when you’re pregnant, even strangers suddenly want to
know how you’re feeling and if you hope for a boy or a girl and what you’ll do
if it’s twins.
But when you’re not, and especially if you’ve never been,
you slip in unnoticed and no one seems to mind that you keep your head bowed to
make a quick cup of tea. If they do notice, hopefully they don’t find you rude when
you don’t join in the morning
sickness questions. Do they notice
you don’t join in? Do they realize there’s nothing you can say other than the quintessential
“Congratulations, by the way. When are you due?”
I hope in all this, dear little one, wherever you are or
however far out you’ll be, that you will see how much you are wanted and you
are loved before we even knew you and before you knew me.
