Author: mabbat

And Now Your Life Begins…

When you have a new baby, you will hear more than once, “And NOW your life REALLY begins.” This is one of the most ridiculous new baby sayings of all time. What was I doing before my daughter was born? What if I’d never had a baby? What about the rest of my life that isn’t all about the baby? Does nothing I’ve done or continue to do count unless it’s about the baby? This one is a close second: “Don’t you feel fulfilled now that you’re a mother?” Yes and no. You really don’t want me to answer that question honestly if you were the one who asked that in conversation because my answer will not be the simple “Oh, yes!” you were looking for.

My life is just continuing, and now I have an added responsibility and joy. I have a dream that was fulfilled, and it is everything I imagined it to be so far. I am not any more fulfilled as a person and follower of Christ than I was before. You may not believe me, but if you are struggling through infertility or miscarriage and think that your life will drastically improve and you will feel whole if you only had a child, it won’t and you won’t. If you haven’t dealt with all of the pain and loss you’ve been handed, it will not magically disappear when your child comes home. You will only add more work to your emotional to-do list, and you’ll probably feel guilty for still experiencing grief in spite of your bundle of joy – especially when it won’t stop crying for no apparent reason. Then you’ll feel like a bad mom on top of everything else, and the one thing that was supposed to fulfill you is creating more pain.

I’ve said more than once that I think the replacement baby mentality is a really bad idea, and I’m even more sure now that our baby is here. I look at her and love every curve of her face and every expression she makes, and I wonder at the same time what each of my angel babies look like. Each milestone she passes reminds me of what I missed every time we miscarried, and the grief is staggering if I peek over the abyss too long. Our daughter is a gift; her presence is a gift that has soothed the ache of longing to be a parent. She hasn’t erased anything that happened before her arrival, nor should we expect her to lest we force the weight of our losses onto her tiny shoulders. She is our miracle, but I already wonder how to explain that to her when she is old enough to understand without pressuring her to make up for nine angel babies.

I’ve done the work to be a whole person again, and in spite of that, the last month has been hard. Our first baby should have been five on April 1. The first few years, that day was really tough to handle. Each successive year was easier, and the distance of time allowed the open wound to scab over, to heal a bit more and sting a little less – until this year. Having our baby in my arms didn’t soften the blow; I think it may have made it more difficult. This year was incredibly painful, maybe because I’ve experienced a tiny bit of what we missed the last five years. Maybe more than anything else, the April Fool’s Day kick in the pants reminded me that my life is very definitely not just beginning, but my daughter’s is. She is brand new and baggage free, and it is my job to use my experience to teach her how to handle everything that life will throw at her, good and bad. So, my life will continue, her life has just begun, and I pray that we will both be fulfilled by being who God created us to be.

The Even Keel

In case you noticed the giant lapse in blog entries and wondered why, we had our little girl at the end of January. I actually went into labor on her due date, and our little Engelberta was born the next day. Also, in case you wondered, I am not going to use Engelberta’s real name here. If we are friends, then you have likely already seen her name and pictures on FB a few times. If you are Joe Public reading my blog, I hope you’ll understand that I’d like to give Engelberta some privacy since this isn’t her blog.
If you know me or my husband well, then you know that neither of us are overly excitable people; you know the type – they scream loudly on roller coasters, they squeal with delight upon seeing old friends, and they may actually jump up and down with glee. We, on the other hand, are not quite as demonstrative even though we may feel the same depth of emotion. I am the person who smiles (silently) on a roller coaster and who screams (on the inside) without making more than a little “ha!” noise. Through our whole pregnancy, people constantly asked us if we were excited, and most of them were squealing and/or jumping while asking the question. We always replied calmly that of course we were excited, while the interrogator looked dubiously at our lack of exuberance. I often felt like maybe I SHOULD be physically jumping for joy even though I was jumping, silently, on the inside. Our labor and delivery nurses kept remarking at how calm both of us were through delivery, but we kept laughing and saying, “You don’t go through everything we’ve been through and then freak out over delivering a baby.” You don’t freak out over much at all, actually.
I have realized that one gift the last five years’ events have given me is an extraordinarily even keel. Our circumstances can be all over the map, but my emotions don’t have to live on the peaks or in the valleys. Of course I feel the highs and lows, but my heart is anchored in the hope of Christ, and that gives me a solid place to stand no matter what life throws my direction. God gave us the lows of each miscarriage and the high of this successful pregnancy. The constant in every circumstance is that God gives us himself, and we have found our joy in his presence and not in our circumstances. That is freedom. That is certain knowledge that whatever happens, it is what it is, and it doesn’t define me; God does and what I do in the moment does.

A Rare Political Moment

I am surrounded by people with very strong political beliefs, as are most people in the United States. I have friends with widely varying viewpoints, and I tend to hold my opinions close to the vest with all but my closest friends. There are family members I won’t discuss politics with, either because I might truly offend them or there’s just no point in any of us wasting our breath. I would guess that almost everyone who expresses their strongly held opinion to me thinks that I mostly agree with them.

Here’s the thing: I probably don’t. I am much more centrist and libertarian than most of the people I am around, meaning I didn’t think it was the end of the world when either W or Obama got elected, and I don’t believe either of them to be the second coming of Christ. I find that most political debates focus too narrowly along party lines, as does every important national discussion. There was a recent Huffington Post op-ed that described the role that faith plays in both major parties and how that same faith puts them at polar opposites. I can’t remember the author or the title now, but the gist of the piece was that Republicans get hung up on moral programs like the pro-life agenda while Democrats get hung up on social programs like healthcare or welfare. Both are acting on an extremely narrowly interpreted faith with no room for compromise.

In the last few weeks, the national conversation has focused on gun control. I think we’re having the wrong conversation. Guns, like money, have no moral value; they are neither good nor bad, and their influence is entirely based on the person holding them. Someone who is willing to shoot and kill another person will not be stopped by more gun control laws. If legislating morality were all it would take to make mankind better, we wouldn’t need police forces, and there wouldn’t be mass shootings. Here’s how the current conversation will go: “liberals” will argue that enough is enough, and we must ban guns altogether or restrict their sales and usage to such a degree that the average law-abiding citizen will never own a gun; “conservatives” will argue that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and mass shootings wouldn’t occur if more average law-abiding citizens were armed. No guns versus more guns. Which side is right? Neither one – they are both knee-jerk reactions to a horrible tragedy. Both sides will argue, fight dirty, and blame the other side. One side may even “win” by passing a new restrictive law or repealing an old restrictive law. The media will rehash every detail released and determine that mental illness is to blame, and dozens of people along the way missed vital clues that could have prevented the tragedy. Most of the mainstream media seems to have already decided that tighter gun laws would have prevented the Newtown tragedy.

All of the focus on gun control and mental illness are smoke and mirrors hiding the real and ugly problem our culture faces: we do not value life. We do not value individuals as unique creations of God, and until we do, no law in the world will stop another tragedy from happening. There is another op-ed that I read and greatly admired. If you haven’t seen the “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” piece, Google it. The author is a mother of a teenage son who has an undetermined mental illness, and he has had violent outbursts that are increasingly harder to control. She has been seeking help, but the best suggestion given her by professional social workers and healthcare providers is to have her teenage son arrested so that he could be “in the system” and locked up or committed more easily. More horrifying than the professional suggestions to have the kid locked away were the comments from readers that her son SHOULD be locked away either in jail or a mental institution for life or medicated into oblivion. Most of the comments were rude beyond imagination. This woman was brave enough to share her story and to ask for help, for viable ways to treat her still developing teenage son either by correctly diagnosing and treating the problem or by assisting when he acts out. The public at large condemned her for advocating for her son and is willing to throw away a life that can be saved.

This is how we treat people asking for help, and then we blame the parents and anyone else in contact with a “problem child” when the child does something truly horrific. Why didn’t the parents see the signs? How could all of their teachers have missed the problem? We can’t have it both ways. Either we value each life and support those in need, or we deal with tragedy after tragedy. Either every life is valuable or none are.

The current political climate isn’t just a reflection of polar extremes in philosophies or theology – the hatred and vitriol apparent in virtually every debate demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect. There are at least three topics I avoid discussing with almost everyone because I can’t stand to hear either extreme side of the argument and because I know my opinions will not make anyone happy: healthcare, abortion, and gay marriage. As Christians, we are charged with loving one another and caring for the needs around us – to borrow from my pastor, we should be Jesus until he comes back. None of the extremes in any of these topics reflect the love of Christ.

How can anyone who thinks that the church’s job is to take care of those in need be violently opposed to a program to provide healthcare? From the other side of the argument, how can anyone who wants to accomplish such a noble task be so irresponsible that they would establish a program without reforming the system that is so bloated and corrupted that it caused most of the problem of unaffordable healthcare?

How can anyone who cares so much about being pro-life turn a blind eye to everything involved in a woman’s decision to have an abortion? Are you willing to provide childcare and post-natal support for as long as it takes for mother and child to live healthy lives? Are you willing to provide family counseling for families that are unwilling to allow adoption of the unplanned child and/or are unwilling to provide a loving and stable home situation for mother and baby? Are you willing to love the mother even if she chooses abortion? And if you have no qualms about abortion for any reason, how can you find such a waste of life acceptable in any but the most extreme situations? How does the use of abortion as a late form of birth control demonstrate anything except extreme disregard for human life and a fundamental lack of respect?

How can any Christian look me in the eye and say with a straight face that gay marriage will destroy the sanctity of marriage? I think the divorce rate among churched straight couples makes that a moot point. This argument garners about as much sympathy from me as the “Keep Christ in Christmas” hullabaloo. No law or government on earth can remove Christ from Christmas if you believe in Jesus as the savior, just as no law or government on earth can destroy the sanctity of a marriage commitment made before God.

What do we gain by constantly shouting out the extremes? I can tell you what we lose. We lose relationship, dialogue, and respect for one another. What do we lose by actually listening to one another without trying change the other party? What do we lose by occasionally compromising with the other side (a la healthcare) or by admitting we don’t really have all the answers?

If you are a careful reader, you’ll realize that I still haven’t really shared my personal view of any of the topics I presented as problematic; you may even think I’m dodging, and I guess I am to some extent. I’ll happily discuss anything I believe with anyone who is open to honest and respectful conversation. I freely admit that I have no simple answers to any of the national debates, but most of the simple answers involve the same hateful and uncompromising sound bytes that form both major party platforms. At some point, we have to learn to respect each other – to respect and love each individual life for what it is – or we will face more national tragedies, more unresolvable fiscal cliffs, and even more polarization. If you tend towards either extreme conservatism or extreme liberalism, take a long and hard look at how you react to the other side – if it’s automatic outrage or condemnation based on faith, consider that the other side feels the same way about you, and you both believe you’re doing what Jesus would do. It’s possible both sides are wrong and neither side truly represents what Jesus would do.

Adventures in Baby Shopping

Shopping for me is always some sort of adventure, either because I have inexplicable OCD issues with my buggy or because I seem to attract the most special people to assist me. For example, while shoe shopping, I asked a clerk where to find the footies you try on shoes with. She replied, “Oh, I’ll be glad to get some for you,” which she did. As she handed over the requested footies, she said, “I brought you two – just in case.” Just in case? Just in case I want to try on both shoes – at the same time? Just in case I actually have two feet? Things like this happen to me all the time, so baby shopping should be no exception, right?

Since Christmas, we’ve been able to actually set up the nursery, and over the last few weeks, I’ve been making sure that all the necessities are covered. I made my list of things we needed from each of the two big stores where we registered, compared prices and coupons, and set out to get baby girl pants and sheets and an actual mattress for the crib. So, after a rather nice expedition through Buy Buy Baby, I headed to the other store the next night armed with my registry printout and my coupons.

I wandered the aisles for a bit with my list, matching item code numbers so that I could be sure that my registry completion coupon would apply. After a few minutes perusing the crib mattress item numbers, I realized that I was being stalked by a clerk who must have just been waiting for me to look up. Apparently there was a breastfeeding class beginning, and my rotund belly made me an easy (and slow) target. “Hi, there!” Keep in mind that the same woman greeted me a few minutes before when I came in the door but was now greeting me as if she’d never seen me before. “How are you this evening? Are you here for the breastfeeding class? Were you aware we have a breastfeeding class starting in just a few minutes?” I politely declined and explained that I had already attended a class at the hospital. “Well, good for you. If you change your mind, you’re welcome to come.” Fortunately, she left me and began following the only man in the store shopping without female supervision – an odd choice, but then, you should never assume… After running down my list while still wondering if the clerk’s next stalking victim would attend the class, I was finally ready to check out.

I am a grammar fanatic, and I try to remember in public settings that the average Joe just doesn’t care. In spite of my attempts to ignore really awful or ridiculously stupid mistakes, this one still caught me off-guard. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to scan the barcode on the registry list I had printed, the checkout clerk still couldn’t pull up our registry; she tried typing in the name several times before asking, “Do you spell your name with the extra ‘s’ on the end?” There is no “s” anywhere in any part of my name, so I was a bit baffled. The clerk held out the registry list with her finger pointing at our last name with an expression that implied I was more than a bit daft for not knowing how to spell my own last name. Her finger was highlighting “WEIL’s” at the top of the page, as in our last name in all capitals with a possessive apostrophe -s combination. I managed to only say that she should type what was in all capitals and skip the apostrophe -s. “Well, there it is!”

Having handled the business of locating our registry, the clerk turned to small talk while she tried to scan my items. This started innocently enough with the standard questions about whether we were having a boy or a girl, what her name will be, and when we’re due. Then she added that her first grand baby was due in April. I congratulated her, but then the conversation took an awkward turn. “Yeah, my daughter doesn’t talk to me, so she didn’t even want to tell me if it’s a girl or boy, but she doesn’t know that I’m still friends with her best friend that she’s living with now because she moved out when she found out she was pregnant since she didn’t want to tell me about it.” How does one appropriately respond to that? “And THEN I found out that the baby daddy got busted for drugs right after he got my daughter pregnant, and THAT’s why my daughter won’t talk to me. But I don’t want to have to go see my grand baby in prison, so she BETTER get away from that guy.” By that point there was a line behind me, and I had been waiting for a total for a few minutes. I was also at a loss on how to respond; a glance behind me told me that so were the mother and daughter waiting next in line. I expressed sympathy for her plight and wondered if she really even wanted me to say anything. Either she needed to vent, and I looked friendly enough, or she was bitter enough about the situation that she told everyone she could when she had a captive audience. She finally wound up the story and gave me a total, so I again congratulated her and wished her luck mending the relationship with her daughter. The women behind me in line looked worried as they approached the register. I probably should have wished them luck, too.

As I headed out to the parking lot, I allowed myself to gloat that I had another few weeks to park in the expectant mother parking spaces near the front of the store, even though at this store the front spaces were still about a city block from the actual doors. My glory was short-lived once I realized that the only buggy corrals were in the very back of the parking lot. At least that fit with the overall absurdist tone of this particular foray into retail. See what you miss when you shop online?

Hope Deferred

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 NLT

One of my favorite people on the planet has a child who will turn five in a month or so. This friend is the type of person who makes you glad to know that God created someone like that and then blessed them with a child to carry on all their best qualities. I found out that my friend and his wife were expecting their now soon-to-be five-year-old not long after I found out about my first pregnancy, and I couldn’t have been more excited to know that we would be parents within a few months of each other. Even after we lost our baby, I loved keeping up with my friend and his baby through the old college grapevine and then through Facebook. Every picture I see of his family is a little snapshot that tells the ongoing story of his dream fulfilled. Every post about the cute things his almost five-year-old says tells me that he is the amazing dad I knew he would be, and his wife is probably one of the coolest people in the world.

A recent post about the impending birthday was both fantastic and jarring – fantastic that they are celebrating five years of life with their little one, and jarring to realize that my first baby would have been five in April. I know we’ve been deferring our hope for a while, but I tend to think of our waiting through the losses in terms of just a few years, not half a decade. We have waited and mourned through five years to reach this point. We have lived with the sick and heavy heart of hope deferred. In that time I have learned that hope deferred really does make your heart sick – no matter how healthy it was to begin with, no matter how well you cope, no matter how much you heal – and a piece of that sickness will stay with you for the rest of your earthly life.

No matter how much joy our daughter’s existence brings – it is after all our dream fulfilled – it will never erase the past or undo all the heartache. Her life is a new tree of life in our lives, both figuratively and literally, and that new joy is all the richer and deeper because of our deferred hope. I have never been a fan of the replacement baby mentality – when people have a baby immediately on the heels of a loss to replace the pregnancy or child they lost – because it isn’t a healthy way to deal with the loss. There are moments when I feel our daughter moving around or hiccuping, and I feel overwhelmed by grief that I never felt any of our other babies do the same thing. What we lost over the last five years can never be replaced on earth; what we are gaining will not erase that pain, but we will appreciate our tree of life all the more because of it.

At first glance, you might think the proverb I opened with implies that hope deferred brings sadness while a dream fulfilled replaces that sadness with joy and a tree of life. Maybe superficially that’s true, but in reality, we aren’t really wired that way. I’d rather think of the hope deferred as fertilizer for the dreams that do get fulfilled. It takes a lot of manure to make the prettiest flowers.

The Bump and I

At just over seven months pregnant, I realize that I am entering the stage of pregnancy where the second trimester glow has come to an end, and the rotund and swollen days of the home stretch are beginning. So it is with great joy that I note that I am still pretty comfortable and not very puffy. I do, however, find myself in hilarious awkward pregnant moments all the time.
Even though I haven’t seen my lap or my belly button in quite some time without the aid of a mirror, I am constantly forgetting that I have a rather large belly to account for. I can no longer perform three point turns with a buggy in grocery store aisles without also doing some goofy doh-si-doh maneuver. Bathroom stalls should come with a “cue laugh track” note in my daily script. Perhaps the funniest is the belly slap, which happens to my husband every time I try to leave the kitchen table at the office before he does. Note: the belly slap is similar to a dope slap but much more awkward for all parties involved. Stated awkwardness is magnified when the slappee is a stranger or mere acquaintance.
We have also reached the point where the number of weeks left is down to single digit range, meaning she’ll be home in a few short months. It’s easy to forget that pregnancy must end at some point, and your new tiny human is going to need a place to sleep and clothes and diapers… I have never mocked the nesting stage, and now I completely understand it. Nesting is a great stage of preparation, and every pregnancy guide will tell you to take advantage of it so you’ll be ready to bring home your baby. I’m sure that there are plenty of hormones at work and other physical explanations, but I am staring at the psychological cause of nesting every day now: it gives you the appearance of some measure of control.
The fact is you can never really be ready for the instant and radical change of adding a child to your family. Of course you know things will change, but it’s virtually impossible to prepare for that shift in your life. This is also the most useless advice that experienced parents give new parents, “Get ready, because everything is going to change.” If you’ve told me this, or if you’ve thought about telling me this, know that I stifle the urge to call you Captain Obvious. At any rate, I’m also stifling the “there’s no way I’m ready for this” panic mode whenever I think about how much will change when our baby girl arrives, so nesting will be great busy work in the interim. But even though I’m peeking over the edge of the panic precipice, as long as I slow down and breathe, I’m not that worried. We have everything we need physically, and God brought us this far – I don’t think he’s going anywhere when the bump gets her birth certificate.

Engelberta!

Naming a child is a great responsibility.  You are choosing the word that will identify your child and frame the first impression people will have with or without ever meeting the person behind the name.  And every name has a meaning, some nicer than others; in fact, a name that I love turns out to mean “heifer” and another “she who welcomes you in.”  While I’d like for my daughter to be hospitable and welcoming, by the time she’s a teenager, I think I’d be regretting that name; my husband and I both nixed that one instantly.  Perhaps as a writer and avid reader I am keenly aware that every word, therefore every name, has a meaning.  It’s one of the things I love about Old Testament Bible stories, particularly the book of Hosea; every character is named for their position in the story.  So what story are we creating by the name we choose?

Right now, it’s Engelberta.  Before anyone panics, we are not going to name our little girl Engelberta, especially given that with our last name she’ll look like a German fairy tale character on paper.  Not that our girl couldn’t pull it off, but a girl named Engelberta in the southern U.S. is not unlike the “Boy Named Sue.”  I keep calling her Engelberta anyway, though – partly because I love watching the rather horrified expressions on the faces of our friends who can’t really decide if we’re joking or not – but mostly because the name means “bright angel” in old German, which is a really nice nickname if you ask me.

We’ve had all the obligatory suggestions, including lots of cute and popular names, and we’ve ignored them all.  I have refused to share the potential list of names with anyone but my husband until we’ve made our final decision.  We won’t be waiting to the last minute and naming her at the hospital because we tend to be very literal when naming animals (Bear looks like a bear, Brook came from Brookside, Max was found in the wheel of a Nissan Maxima…), and as weird as Engelberta might sound to southern English speakers, imagine what would come of St. Vincent’s Hospital or Birmingham or Alabama…  So, we’re working on the name, but for now (and maybe always on the interwebs) Engelberta is it. 🙂

Second Trimester and More Things I Never Thought I’d Get to Say…

We are now well into the second trimester, and each report from the doctor is great!  I know I’ve been strangely quiet on the blog about the pregnancy, but I’ve been weirdly protective of everything related to this baby.  (Okay, maybe not so weird given our history…)  I’ve yet to post ultrasound pictures anywhere, and I’m stingy about who I share them with.  I’ll post pictures at some point soon because I just know everyone wants to see our little alien. 🙂  She does look pretty human now, though, so we’ve outgrown the early stages of “What is that thing?” and “I’m just going to take your word for it…” on the ultrasound pictures.

Yes, that was SHE, in case you haven’t seen it on FB.  We’ll have a little girl joining us at the end of January.  And, no, we haven’t picked out a name yet.  We’re still perusing the name book and waiting to see what fits.  It’s tempting to choose a name that reflects the magnitude of what this little one means to us, but that’s a lot of pressure to saddle a kid with.  “You have to be brilliant and special because we’ve lost so much to get to this point.”  If that won’t create a host of neurotic breakdowns, I don’t know what will.

So while this child is more than we could have hoped for already, I think it’s best for her to be just a normal kid with goofy parents who are sure to embarrass her at every turn.  We’re already set to be the old farts in home room; when our little girl turns sixteen, we’ll be fifty.  That’s a little daunting.  But it’s also a tremendous asset.  I hate that we won’t be young parents, but we don’t have any crazy expectations that parenthood is some sort of magical domestic bliss.  We’re well aware that it is hard work, and we’ve both reached a point in our lives where we choose our battles carefully.  We’ve had to let go of so much already that rolling with the punches is just what you do.

I really want to see “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”  I won’t watch it for another year or so because I can’t watch the trailer without crying.  They show part of a scene where the parents who have tried desperately to have a child on their own give up.  They write down all of the things that their child would be – funny, smart, kind – and bury it in a box in their garden.  Maybe the rest of the movie is horrible, but that scene is such a great snapshot of what our last five years have been like.  For a week or two at a time, we could dream about what our kid would be like before we had to bury the dream again.  That’s another reason I’ve been oddly quiet: for so long, loss has been our story that it’s hard to write about this amazing gift without feeling like I’m losing sight of where we came from.  I honestly hate that I am one of those stories being bandied about to other women who are struggling with infertility or losses of their own.  “If you just hold on and keep trying, things will work out for you just like they have for my friend…”  There is a time for hope, and there is a time for grief, and I hope that if you feel tempted to use me as an example for a struggling friend that you pause and consider what your friend needs most.  Usually, it’s not the miracle story.

I am under no illusions that this is nothing short of a miracle; we still have no medical explanation for our miscarriages, and there is no reason that this pregnancy has continued where every other one failed except that this is God’s plan.  I still don’t understand it, and I still don’t like most of it, and it certainly wasn’t MY plan.  But this baby is coming at this time in our lives for some reason that only God knows and we will likely never discover on this side of the veil.  If you really must share my story with someone struggling through their own infertility/pregnancy loss hell, I hope that this is what you share: we won’t always understand God’s plan, and we don’t have to understand it or even like it.  We do have to submit our plans and dreams to him and trust him to work out the details in a way that will honor him.  You may not get what you want, but you will always get what you need.  It will never be easy to lay down your own dreams and wait for God to give you new ones, but it’s worth the work and the pain.  I can honestly say that we would have been happy even if God hadn’t blessed us with this pregnancy because we learned to be content and useful where we were no matter what.  I really never thought I would be registering for baby clothes and strollers and toys after IVF didn’t work.  I never imagined that I would ever hear a heartbeat that isn’t my own coming from somewhere inside my belly.  I never thought I’d get to count down the weeks and measure my belly by the things I can no longer see when I look down.  I still have a hard time believing that we are actually telling people, “It’s a girl!”  And she is a miracle; she is a gift that I didn’t expect, but her impending arrival isn’t the greatest gift that this journey has given me – the knowledge that I really can and do trust God no matter what is greater still.

It’s Just God’s Way of Showing You…

Consider this a fair warning type of post. It’s a rare complaint/whine from me, actually. The only comment I’m not fielding very gracefully is, “God is just showing you that he didn’t need you do IVF.” Here’s the fair warning part of the post: I will respond less than tactfully that God didn’t need us to do IVF the first eight times we got pregnant, either, and look how those turned out. Then I will smile and change the subject. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

I have heard this well-intentioned statement from a lot of people, and most of them are people that I love dearly. When I told one of my favorite people on the planet about how I was reacting to this, her response was exactly what I tend to think: “No, I almost think you had to do IVF; you had to be willing to do everything. I think that God is showing us he has a tremendous sense of humor and irony.” I love that my friend isn’t afraid to admit that God clearly has a sense of humor (he created me, after all), and he seems to have a flair for the ironic as well. I actually think God laughs when we attribute grander meanings to our circumstances. “That’s just God’s way of saying you’re going to have a boy.” “That’s just God showing you that you should be nice to short people.” “That’s how God shows us that artichokes are the perfect food.”

Of course those are ridiculous examples, and of course there is grander meaning to our circumstances, but I don’t think we know what that grander meaning is most of the time. I think that we rarely guess correctly when we try to guess how every circumstance fits into God’s plan. I think we might even be frustrated to know the answers most of the time; we’d probably be disappointed to know that our suffering wasn’t used as directly as we hoped. God has yet to tell me directly exactly why we had to have nine miscarriages to get to this point. I have no doubt that he has used our circumstances for his glory, but I don’t know why we had to endure all of what we’ve endured. No one does. We may never know.

What I do know is that to claim that this pregnancy is evidence that God didn’t need us to do an IVF cycle or didn’t use our IVF cycle for some part of his plan is malarky. It also trivializes our loss, not just the IVF pregnancy, but each of the eight miscarriages preceding that one. While that is certainly not the intention of my personal prophets, it is the emotional effect of their proclamation. Obviously, God didn’t need for us to do IVF to have a successful pregnancy; just as obviously, it wasn’t God’s plan for us to keep the previous pregnancies. Beyond that, I have yet to meet anyone who has the details about why those things happened the way they did except to say that God has a plan that we can’t always see or understand. That’s just God’s way of showing me that I have to trust him through every trial and every circumstance.

And Baby Makes Three

I haven’t blogged in a few weeks (or three…). The main reason for the blog void has nothing to do with being busy since I’ve mostly been holding the couch down. My blogging is as much a means for me to process my thoughts and emotions as it is a means to communicate, and I have avoided processing anything for almost a month, which is exactly how long I’ve known that I’m pregnant.

The first week was perfect, with great hcg levels that more than doubled. The second week brought cramping and spotting which was painful and scary and frustrating, but the numbers were still good, and our first ultrasound showed all the right pieces and parts in the right places. Last week we got to see the heartbeat, and this week we got to see the heartbeat again and see that our baby is growing just like it should be. I have avoided thinking through most of this process, which probably sounds as unbelievable to you as it is to me.

As introspective as I am, I haven’t let myself think much at all. Over-thinking the spotting in the face of such good test results would have discouraged me, and I might have given up. Over-thinking the heartbeat would have encouraged me to start planning nursery themes and looking forward to baby registries and showers, and I wasn’t ready to throw caution to the wind. I think the psychological term for that is protective pessimism. As much as I haven’t given up, I haven’t felt safe in my hope yet either. Baby steps are in order. (Pun intended…) I realize that saying I can’t abandon all fear of disappointment in the face of God’s new plan for us probably indicates a lack of trust. Instead of running full-tilt into the joys of pregnancy, I’m creeping into it – trying it on for size, testing for each step like a first-time high rope walker.

I trust that God is at work and that there is a plan here (as there has been all along), but I also feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop as if I’m conditioned to expect the worst. I suppose physically, I am. Spiritually, though, I know that there’s really not another shoe. No matter what, God is God, and God is good. So what keeps me from doing cheers and signing up for the weekly baby update app and zapping things at Buy Buy Baby? As much as I truly believe this baby is sticking around, I have a world of experience in loss, so I may not really believe it until a week after the baby is delivered. I suppose I wouldn’t need to dig very deeply to find that there’s a fine layer of guilt not too far beneath the pain. To dive whole hog into pregnancy joy feels like a small betrayal of the babies we’ve lost, as if there was no joy in their presence or as if I might forget them. I know it’s an irrational thought, but grief is not rational.

One of my favorite poems we studied in a lit class I took my senior year in college is “Surprised by Joy” by William Wordsworth. You can find the full text very easily if you search for the title. The theme of the poem is moving on from grief, and the writer is surprised and more than a little guilty to be feeling joy in place of the sorrow and separation. It’s a beautiful poem – I’ve always thought Wordsworth was the most aptly named poet in history – and it much more beautifully than I can sums up the feelings I have about this pregnancy, especially a pregnancy following so closely after our latest miscarriage. If you’re disappointed that I haven’t been more enthusiastic about such great news, give me some time. I’m not much of a squealer to begin with, but I’m sure in a few more weeks I’ll be driving you nuts with baby updates and using lots of exclamation points!!!

For now, to answer a few of the questions I get a lot, we are right at 8 weeks, and our due date right now is January 31, 2013. Although our very first pregnancy technically lasted longer than where we are now, it was a blighted ovum, so having seen the fetal pole and now the heartbeat means that we know this isn’t a blighted ovum. This is the first time we’ve ever been able to see a baby; this is the first time I won’t just be wishing to see a heartbeat – now I can’t wait to hear it!