Twist

After an icy weekend, it is once again in the 30s today. I truly hope this is the last day of winter. What a long, hard winter this has been. We started 2009 off with a miscarriage - two days after New Years Day - and it's been hard to recover and regain any momentum. It's been so easy to lay low, hide in the house, coccoon myself, feel cut off from all forward progression of time while I turn inward and focus all my energy on just getting pregnant again. I wonder how different things would have been if we'd lost a baby in the summer, in a time when the world is bursting with life, when my weeks are packed with work and weekends are packed with social engagements. Maybe I would have still managed to cut myself off from life, but something tells me that beauty and bounty would have intruded on my sorrow far more than they were able to do in the relentlessly brutal cold and grayness of the winter.

It has never ceased to surprise me, how unpredictable the grieving and recovery has been. One day I feel great, the next I'm despairing. Unlike the women who somewhat logically start sobbing in the baby clothes aisle at Target, my grief has hit me sideways from unexpected and irrational sources - a bad job interview, a stumble on the stairs.

The latest surprise is that along with my disappointment of seeing a negative pregnancy test yesterday, came a strange little surge of relief. And I realize, I'm afraid to get pregnant again. Not even to miscarry again, but to have a successful pregnancy and to end up with a child. Suddenly when I think of it, anxiety comes rushing in. Will we be able to manage it, can we afford it, can I balance work and motherhood, is this going to turn out very badly - what if? Mostly I do not want this to be a busted cycle, but a little tiny part of me feels like it's been granted a temporary stay. One more month to maybe feel a little more at peace with the whole idea... to feel excited again, and not terrified.

All these twists and turns are why I sometimes freeze with empathetic concern when a new member comes to the TTCAL board and professes to be completely emotionally healed from her miscarriage and totally ready to try again. These posts reek - and I mean this in the kindest way possible - of denial and false confidence. I felt the same way at first, but that's because the human psyche often disconnects from pain in order to cope with it. However, that pain can't be pushed away indefinitely. It's liable to come galloping over you when you least expect it, and the whole process of trying again contains an infinite number of triggers to make that happen.

Trying to conceive after a loss is a balancing act. It's a delicate tightrope where you cross a cavern of fear, sorrow, and uncertainty, while carrying with you all your regrets, hopes, dreams, and anxieties. In a way I'm grateful for the delay I've had in getting across, because I feel I am working through a lot of emotions that would probably have been harder to grapple with if I had gotten pregnant again right away. These emotions would have been associated with a new baby, and not merely my own body and mind, as they should be.