rivka

Not when accepting sympathy from horrified people who've just found out.

Not when explaining to Alex again that there isn't a baby.

Not even when sorting and packing up some baby clothes for the move.

But without warning, this morning, while waiting for the elevator to take me to the hospital blood lab for a quantitative HCG follow-up, I completely lost my composure and started to cry. Half an hour later, I'm still feeling incredibly fragile. No idea why.

I would feel less broken right now if my reactions were easier to understand. In a way, it would make more sense if I were crying all day or unable to get out of bed. Instead, 90% of the time I feel totally normal and functional. And then: not.

The other thing that set me off without warning was hearing my father-in-law's voice, when we called him to make sure they'd escaped the tornadoes that slammed through Memphis on Tuesday.

Until recently, I had never really thought about the fact that the reason Michael was adopted is that his mother had several miscarriages, ultimately ending in a hysterectomy. Michael's father has never said a word to me about it. But somehow the kindness in his voice when he says "Hi, honey" connects me to this pain of his, more than forty years old but still present.

Michael's father is aware of, and solicitous of, Michael's pain and grief in a way that no one else seems to be. (I love Michael dearly, but I am ashamed to say that my grief is pretty self-centered right now.) I'm so glad that there is someone who sees his primary job as taking care of Michael. And yet what an awful, awful connection for a father and son to share.

Just talked to my midwife's assistant. I was a little confused about my discharge instructions from the hospital, which said to follow up with my midwife in two weeks. Originally she had told me that I'd be following up with a perinatologist (an OB who specializes in high-risk pregnancies) to monitor my hormones, because if this is trophoblastic disease it will be vitally important to know whether my pregnancy-hormone level goes all the way down to zero and stays there. (If it doesn't, it means that tumor cells implanted somewhere else and are continuing to grow.)

At the hospital, apparently, someone told Michael that my hormone levels were lower than they'd expect to see with trophoblastic disease, and that they were leaning more towards thinking it was a "blighted ovum" - a fertilized egg so chromosomally damaged that it was able to produce a placenta (and therefore pregnancy hormones and symptoms) but not an actual embryo. But that's not something they can actually diagnose until the path report comes back - which won't be for two full weeks, because (among other things, apparently) they have to do a chromosomal analysis.

So it turns out that we're going to be following a middle path. I don't need to go straight to a perinatologist, but I also can't just coast until my two-week follow-up at the midwife's. Instead my midwife will be ordering weekly hormone-level tests until we figure out what the hell this was all about. That seems reasonable to me. It's somewhat of a relief that they're not just slapping me onto the full trophoblastic protocol, and yet I also really really want to know what my hormone levels are doing.

---

I am in a lot more pain today, although it's nothing 800mg of ibuprofen can't handle. I now admit that yesterday I was being a macho, irrational, self-denying idiot. So today I didn't just stay home in the morning - I stayed home, resisted the urge to do "just a little" packing or cleaning, and laid on the couch for two and a half hours watching West Wing reruns. And I asked Michael to arrange his schedule so that he could drive me to and from work.

---

Emotionally I am coming along. I am sad but not completely prostrate with grief. However, I notice that I am banking a lot on being able to get pregnant again almost immediately, and I suspect that if that doesn't, or can't, happen then I will probably fall apart in a big way. And that might well be a problem.

If this is trophoblastic, standard medical advice is that we not even try to get pregnant for a year. Which would realistically mean that we'd wind up with kids who are five years apart or more, which... feels like a family with a big hole in the middle of it, where another kid should've been. Honestly, even a four-year gap seems like too much to me, except that that ship has clearly already sailed.

It's also the case that I'm almost 35. Even if we can start trying again right away - if it's a blighted ovum, for example - there's no guarantee that it wouldn't take a year or more for me to get pregnant. And I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't handle that well.

I think I will be able to cope with a baby deferred. I don't think I'll be able to cope with maybe-not-another-baby. Or a family with a big aching hole in the middle, instead of kids close enough to play together.

---

I also notice that I am channeling a lot more emotionally energy than I normally would to planning and organizing things for Alex. This seems reasonably healthy as long as I keep things under control practically and financially. But boy, have I ever been doing a lot of shopping for the perfect big-girl bed with the perfect accessories. And the best presents for her birthday, two months away. It's nice to be able to divert my energy towards the kid I actually have. It's nice to have a kid to divert my energy to.

Saturday morning, Michael brought Alex up to our bedroom and the two of them climbed in bed with me. She noticed my hospital bracelets right away.

"What's that?"

"That was a bracelet from the hospital. I got very sick yesterday and had to go to the hospital so doctors could take care of me. They put the bracelet on me so that everyone would know who I was."

"Did you ride in a fire truck?"

"You mean an ambulance? No. Papa drove me in the car."

"If you're sick you should ride in an ambulance," she informed me.

She asked some questions about whether different parts of my body hurt. "...What hurts, then?"

"My tummy hurts." I took a deep breath, realizing that this was the time to explain. "Do you remember that we said a baby was growing in a special place in my tummy? There is not going to be a baby. We thought a baby was growing there, but Mama was just sick. I hurt in the place where the baby was supposed to grow. Maybe someday a baby will grow there, but not for a long long time. So that's very sad."

Alex made a little sad noise.

"I know," I said. Michael and I put our arms around her. "We're all sad that there isn't going to be a baby."

"Mama, do you feel better?" she asked.

"I'm a little better, but I'm still sick. I need to rest and lie down a lot today, and I can't pick you up or have you climb on me. In a few days I'll be better."

We set up a signal: I would keep wearing my hospital bracelets to remind her to be gentle with me. When the bracelets came off, it would mean that I could pick her up again.

A couple of hours later, she looked up from playing. "There's not going to be a baby for a long long time?"

"That's right," I said. "Maybe someday, though."

I sent her and Michael off to church by themselves this morning. She turned around at the door and looked earnestly at me. "Mom, get lots and lots of rest."

"Okay, honey. I will."

---

I thought I would never ever post song lyrics in my journal, but I've had a Meg Barnhouse song on repeat play for the past three days, and it's helping more than I imagined a song possibly could. It's a conversation between her and Julian of Norwich.

( lyrics below )

I'm home. I'm reasonably well.

I know that tomorrow I will be grieving and sad again, but right now I am so profoundly relieved. It got really scary there for a while.

Thank you all, so much, for your support. It means more than you could possibly know.

Still home. Waiting for the midwife to call back.

( disturbing material, as usual )

I had to walk down the baby aisle at Rite Aid to get to the pads I need for the bleeding.

I had been doing so well, this morning. Cuddling Alex, making her a special breakfast, pressing my cheek against her hair and reading her stories. I was able to play with her and even laugh. My real live girl. I thought, I'll survive this.

And then there I was in the Rite Aid parking lot, icy rain bucketing down on my bare head, sobbing so hard I couldn't fit my car key in the lock.

I don't think this can possibly be my life.





I'm sorry. This is just going to be an awful journal to read for a while. I honestly won't mind if you don't.

There's not going to be a baby.

There was never a baby.

( disturbing material below the cut )

We've started the sorting/discarding/organizing process which will one day lead to packing. Yesterday Michael took a first load of stuff to Goodwill: five big bags of old clothes and toys, and a chair. We've also gotten rid of three 30-gallon bags' worth of trash. It's a good start... but it's also just a tiny dent in our three-story house full of stuff.

We're not precisely pack rats. We don't have emotional attachments to most of these things, or vague ideas that someday they'll turn out to be useful. It's more a problem of inertia. Things come into the house and get stowed away, and when they've outlived their usefulness we just never get around to throwing them out. We probably have more storage space than is really good for us.

I filled a 30-gallon trash bag just with things that were in my desk, on my desk, or stacked behind my desk in the little space between my chair and the wall. The black cardboard folder I used when I was planning our wedding, with rough drafts of the guest list, extra invitations, and sample menus from the restaurant where we held the reception. Cartoons one of my old housemates drew of my ex. The Lesbian Avengers handbook. Every single card we received when Alex was born. A highlighted guide to the competitive races in the 2006 election. A list of books I read in March of last year. Old Mac-formatted backup disks with my college senior thesis on them. Back issues of Mouth magazine. Printed-out drafts of academic papers. Posters I once presented at conferences. Manuals for electronics I no longer own. A 56k modem card which, if I recall correctly, doesn't even work, and which belonged to a laptop I got rid of in, um, 2002?

It's kind of exhiliarating to get this stuff cleared away. And it feels so good to imagine moving only needed, useful, appreciated things into our new house. The new house will have vast quantities of storage - there's a full basement - but we will not just move our junk.

Keeping the new house decluttered is going to be a different story, though. Anyone have good decluttering or clutter-prevention resources to recommend? Anything that's actually, you know, follow-able?

Our landlord called tonight - the first time we've spoken to them since they gave us notice. Ostensibly the call was about the BGE guy who came out to check some faulty radiators on Monday. But then he segued.

"So, uh, I got a call from someone named Rosemary, asking for a tenant reference for you guys."

"Yeah," I said. (Rosemary is the agent for the owner of the house next door, the one we really, really want.) "I hope you told her we were acceptable tenants."

"Oh, I told her you were just great! ...Have you signed with her? Because my brother is thinking about buying our house, and he would use it as an investment property, so, um, he'd be renting it out. But we won't have an answer from him for about a week." And it would be a lot more convenient for him if he could get the house with renters pre-installed, plus then I wouldn't have to do the renovations I would need to do to sell the house to strangers, he didn't add.

I told him that, given that we've found a house we really like, we would now prefer to move. Then I went on to let him know how shocked we were to have our lease terminated so abruptly, and how we hadn't budgeted for a move so early in the spring, and what a difficult situation this was for us. I told him that we would appreciate it if they could cut us a break on the last month's rent.

"I guess we, uh, I guess we had a misunderstanding," he said, "because even though we'd originally asked you to stay an extra year, we told you last fall that we hoped to sell the house in the spring."

"Our lease would've been up May 31st," I said. "That's still the spring, so that's what we thought you meant."

"Oh." He told me he'd have to discuss it with his wife, and they'd be in touch.

Five minutes later, the phone rang again. It was his wife. Who had no idea that we were unhappy about receiving notice! Why didn't we call her right away? She feels awful! She doesn't want there to be any problems or hard feelings. ...When am I due? Would it be helpful to stay out the original rental term? "...And are you really, really sure you don't want to buy our house yourselves? Did you talk to your bank?"

I explained why we don't want to buy. I explained again that, having found a house we like, we think we'd better go ahead and move. But we don't really want to pay double rent for the month of March, given that we weren't expecting to have to budget for a move just then... could they help us out?

The final arrangement: we're going to move the bulk of our things as early in March as is practical for us, and they're not going to charge us anything for the couple of weeks it takes us to move and clean. And she swears that we'll be getting our full security deposit back. And she's very, very sorry for having caused us even a moment's distress.

Feeling somewhat better about the landlords now. But I'll still be happy to get into a different place. And it's really looking like the house next door will be ours - Rosemary said that all she was planning to do was check our landlord references, and if our current landlords gave us a good one we should be in the clear.

I just quoted a science fiction author to a client, for what I think was probably the first time in my career. Lois McMaster Bujold: "The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."

I don't tend to use quotes or aphorisms much in general, but then again, it isn't often that a quote perfectly sums up a client's entire therapeutic journey of several years' duration. And comes to mind at precisely the moment when she can receive it as an apt phrasing of what she has already come to know in her heart, and not as a lesson or lecture.

She was really moved. I am really pleased. I like to think that Lois would be, too.