Hellobee

In the days that followed my miscarriage, I found that my emotional reaction was muted.  For a month I had suspected that a miscarriage was imminent, and this helped mitigate the shock when it actually happened.  And although I know many women don’t feel this way, I did find some small comfort in the idea that the pregnancy was not meant to be, that the journey of our baby-t0-be had ended in perfect peace. What I didn’t realize was that grief was sabotaging me in an entirely different way: it was playing havoc with my self-esteem.

We are TTC  for many reasons. We want Scribble to have a sibling. We want to nuzzle a newborn again. I want to experience birth again. I want to do it all again without those pesky mistakes (which I’ve heard are impossible to make with a second child, correct?). Mostly we want to make a new friend.

But choosing to add another person to our family also provides me with the decisive forward trajectory that is lacking in other areas of my life. For a long time I’ve debated whether or not to continue on as a stay-at-home-mom, or to go back to work. Becoming pregnant put that difficult decision on the back burner, and gave me something exciting in its place.

But after my miscarriage, that forward trajectory stalled and my self-esteem plummeted. One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about grief is that it upends everything. The miscarriage put a magnifying glass on all the parts of my life that caused me headache and heartache. I’d find myself thinking lots of ugly, exaggerated, self-defeating thoughts: Your birthday is coming up; soon you’ll be too old to have more children or to jumpstart your career. You only have one child; you’ll never be a “real” parent, like those who have multiple children.  And who will ever hire you at your age?  All of your friends are outpacing you.

What these thoughts revealed to me was the extent to which I had constructed my identity around my family planning goals and fertility. I started by “leaning out” a few years ago so that we could focus on starting a family.  I worked part-time during my pregnancy so that I could leave my job without a fuss as soon as my son was born. By his first birthday, I knew I didn’t want to be a stay-at-home parent forever, but I never pursued change because I knew we wanted more than one child. I thought it would be easier to fast track another pregnancy rather than to take maternity leave while trying to dig into a new position.

The miscarriage helped me acknowledge that I felt entitled to a second pregnancy because I’d put my life on hold in order to facilitate one. Recognizing this was sobering and more than a little embarrassing.

I said in a previous post that my son is a balm to my soul. Aside from the miscarriage, I’ve had an easy experience trying to conceive. This is a comfort that so many people do not have, and it is not lost on me. I’d like to believe that my limited experience with loss has made me more aware of my privilege in this area of life (this is very much a work in progress). And yet this experience has taught me not to take my fertility for granted, and not to play fast and loose with my future in order to accommodate a pregnancy. I realized that I needed to do what made me happy now, regardless of how that fits into my fertility plans.

About a week after my miscarriage, I attended a graduation. I was feeling pretty low, so it was emotional just seeing all the regalia and the hopeful faces of young people. I paid careful attention to the speech. It was a meandering talk by an artist.  At one point he told the graduates that “if they didn’t have dreams that made their parents uncomfortable, their dreams weren’t big enough.” Yes, it is cheesy, but it was a “light bulb moment” for me. For so long I have been following a plan, and in doing so I had given up on dreaming big. The whole thing made me feel that speeches should be addressed to people who are in the middle of their lives, waiting for the courage to make a change.

So I’m making changes. Parenthood in general has reorganized my career priorities, and being a stay-at-home mother has given me ample time for self-reflection. I’ve had the chance to experiment with part-time work and to figure out what I really want to do. So I accepted daytime work at the place where I currently work nights, and enrolled my son in daycare for the fall. I’m also applying to school with hope of making a career change.

But in addition to that, I’m spending more time with myself. I’m paying more attention to my inner voices and am learning how to distinguish the constructive ones from the damaging ones. I’m trying to reduce the plurality of outside voices that I expose myself to every day. In particular I have curbed my social media use. I’m also trying to uncover the parts of myself that I unconsciously put away when I decided to become a parent. I find myself taking a renewed interest in art, literature, and music. The internet world is full of image crafting, but art offers characters who are navigating crisis. Right now that rings true to me, and it brings me back into communion with a younger version of myself.

I’m also TTC.  But I’m working to keep my plate full so that the process cannot consume me, and to derive energy from the unknown, instead of being paralyzed by it.  I’m trying to get to a place where I recognize the joy in all things.