All posts filed under: Infertility

Waiting Mamas

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“Waiting Mamas” We are hard to spot. We stand with empty arms, wear thick sweaters to cover the bruises of wounded hearts, stretch smiles over our faces to hide the pain. We send gifts for Mother’s Day, and spend the night sewing heart-shaped pieces back together again. We take numbers, find stiff-backed seats, avoid the eyes of strangers. We flip through magazines, chat with uncomfortable husbands. Doctor visits and web pages, tests and tea leaves, tinctures and time, we diagnose, test, hypothesize. We try, we try, we try. We wait. Written April 28, 2014, seven months before our number was finally, FINALLY called.

Slash and Burn

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As I write this, it is my birthday. I am 32 years old. I’m not sure what it is about these milestones that pulls out of me the vestiges of sadness that live in the crevices of my life. My children would be two this year, in October (2014). They never made it to their birth day, so instead, I silently mark time on mine. Perhaps it makes sense; they were a part of my body and now are a part of me forever. We took a trip over the weekend to beautiful places. We spent long days and fell into bed at night, our legs entwined. The time was filled with laughter and conversation, dreams and aspirations for the future. We didn’t talk about them; we never do. But, they are always with us. They live in the spaces in between our words, and in the instant that a sad song comes on and he taps the right arrow to skip it. They are in the far off look in his eyes, and the …

Acceptance

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“I think I’ve accepted it.” He told me this on the day that the great Maya Angelous passed. His voice was a rumble against my left ear, as we lay on top of the covers watching the day fade to twilight. “Accepted what?” I asked, my hand resting on his heart. “We’re not going to have biological children,” he said. “What brought you to that?” My voice was scarcely a whisper. I willed my body not to tense. Relax. Deep breathe. This isn’t just about me. “It’s just … true,” he said, finally. Not over-dramatizing, always careful, he considered his words before they crossed his lips. He didn’t want to hurt me. I loved him for it. I loved him for loving me. I loved him for making the decision he’d always pretended wasn’t a decision at all: to stay with me, even if it meant never having the biological children he so desperately wanted. In the same moment I loved him, I hated myself for not being able to walk away and give him …

Reconciling Happiness

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On February 24, 2012, I lost everything. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like as I miscarried the twin pregnancy my husband and I had for so long waited. In the five years we’ve been trying to conceive, it’s been our only pregnancy. In the days and weeks after, I lived a simple fork-to-mouth existence, engaging in the normal comings and goings, but not really engaging with anything at all. Washing dishes, going to work, talking on the phone to my mother… These were all backdrops to what felt like my new life, a life spent mentally calculating the days since our loss and in pondering the many to come that would never include our twins. It was at this time that I took up my on-again, off-again hobby of making jewelry. Wrapping stones and hammering metal were an unexpected relief for me. Keeping my hands so busy kept my mind at bay. My jewelry studio was my solitary refuge that first year after, and I spent nearly every spare moment there well into …