We had friends in town a few weeks ago who were teaching a class at our office.  They have terrific tow truck toys, and as I was browsing their selection, I was telling April all about my best friend and her adopted son.  As I told April about the journey my friend took and how amazed I am by her decision and how happy I am for her to have a child, April summed it all up simply and emphatically, with the countenance of one speaking absolute truth, “It’s perfect: she was a mother without a child, and he was a son who needed a mother.”  April has never laid eyes on my best friend or her son, but anyone who has seen them together would have to agree – it is perfect.  I know it is not the path to motherhood that my friend imagined, but now, even after only a few months, I cannot imagine any other situation for my friend.  I know that there are things she may wish were different, but they must pale compared to the love she feels for her son and the joy I hear in her voice when she says, “my son.”  I love thinking about what kind of man he will be simply because he was adopted by my friend.

I have always thought about what kind of mother I will be – how I will be like my parents and how I will be different; how my husband and I will parent together.  Since the first pregnancy, it has been in much sharper focus, and I have thought about all of the things I would love to teach my children.  They will learn all about tow trucks and music and crafts; we will read together and sing together and dance together.  This morning, I was watching the news and thinking about one of the stories and how I would have taught our children about bullying – the story I would tell them about the one time I will never forgive myself for when I made fun of someone who needed and deserved a good friend.  She had a hard life, and I made it worse, and I would make sure that my children knew that there are some things that no apology or restitution can make right.

I have thought about how to teach my children about faith and love.  I have thought about how to teach my children to love (or at least appreciate) different kinds of music and how to draw or paint or take good pictures or write poems and tell stories.  But mostly, I keep thinking that it seems awfully sad that I have all these things to offer and no one to teach them to.  My poor niece and nephew will probably get tired of me trying to pass on the gifts of books and crochet hooks and paint brushes.  I know that there are other ways to get involved with children and pass on the things that were lovingly taught to me, but I’m not ready to be the odd neighborhood art teacher, and I’m not sure I want to work with groups of kids.  Kind of hilarious coming from someone who wanted to be a teacher, but I am woefully lacking in the patience department right now.

So, for another little while, I will wait and see what happens and make lists in my head of the things I want to teach my children, knowing that the ones we lost must surely know more than I could ever have taught them.  Christmas is more than a little bittersweet when you think of all the traditions and the stories that are passed from generation to generation.  It’s really hard not to think about what Christmas with an almost three-year-old would have been like.  But I think the hardest parts are not growing bitter over the thought that I could be a great mom and not using my lists as a bargaining chip with God: “See how much I could teach a little one?  Now don’t you think I deserve to try?”

We generally accept the word “flux” to mean flow or fluctuation.  Did you know that it is also defined as a substance that can be used to combine with impurities in metals so that they can be more easily removed?  Or that flux is necessary to make the solder stick in the joints of stained glass, and without enough flux, the solder will be unmanageable and the joints too weak or too sloppy to make a stained glass design.

I’d say flux is an apt description of my current state of being.  We had the follow-up appointment with the fertility specialist, who largely had no new news for us.  Next time we get pregnant, I will have lovenox (a blood thinner) injections, and I will be extremely closely monitored.  Although we have had no real indication of tubal pregnancies, the doctor said he is “always suspicious” of very early miscarriages actually being tubal pregnancies that stop developing before they run into complications.  If that is our problem (as opposed to a blood clotting indicator “of dubious significance”), then lovenox could be really dangerous if there is an ectopic pregnancy, as I could bleed internally if there is a complication.  So, I will be extensively poked, prodded, bled and sonographed whenever we get pregnant again.  Should the lovenox also turn out to be a non-starter, or if there is distinct evidence of a tubal pregnancy, it seems the next step will likely be IVF.  Given the stress involved in that scenario, I’m hoping we don’t have to try that route.  Although, with our previous experience, I have a feeling that we’ll end up trying and failing there, too.  I know I shouldn’t already be expecting disappointment, but I have no physical reason to hope for anything more.  I’ve actually heard therapists refer to that type of thinking as “protective pessimism,” so I’m going to indulge my self-pity for a little while longer, until I need to be hopeful and optimistic about prospective pregnancies again, which will be about three or four more months.

Given the approaching holidays and the challenges Christmas will provide this year, I decided I needed a break from having to worry every month about whether or not I’m pregnant.  (Should I switch to completely decaf coffee, am I working out when I should be resting, should I order my steak well done…)  So, I am going back on the pill for three months so that we don’t have to think about it for a while.  I can focus on shedding some weight, and I can drink fully caffeinated coffee without feeling guilty.  (There is a bright side to everything, and my silver linings almost always involve no small amount of coffee and/or chocolate.)  I can also enter the half marathon (most of which I will walk) coming up in February without having to back out or stop training for months at a time.  It’s nice to make a plan that I can follow through on, and the only real contingency is injury.  I don’t think I will miss the hypochondriac routine at the end of each cycle – I haven’t started my period yet, and I feel kind of nauseated, but the pregnancy test is negative…  Three months off will be nice.

It gives me time to apply flux to my mental metal and try to remove some of the dross bits.  I found a few of them Sunday, but I’m not really sure how to get rid of them yet.  Sunday was our niece’s baby dedication.  I had planned to stay for the whole service, but I couldn’t make myself stay.  My brain stopped and lasered in on a single phrase spoken by the pastor about the baby being a blessing of youth.  I couldn’t get past that point, and then I couldn’t stop crying.  There were plenty of other tears on the faces of family and church members, but they were crying out of joy, and I wasn’t.  I couldn’t stay there and sob in grief and pain and frustration and taint an otherwise joyful event for the rest of the family.  I know they wouldn’t have cared, but I didn’t know how to deal with it.  I don’t know what to do with this question – if children are the blessing of youth and righteousness (and that’s repeated more than a few times in the Bible), does that mean I’m cursed?  I’m not perfect, and there are any number of things that God for which God might curse me or punish me, but in my feebly human view, it would be enough of a curse to just not ever get pregnant.  Why go the extra mile of repeated miscarriages?  All of which runs right into the other brick wall I ran into at full speed Sunday.

We had our Christmas choir concert Sunday night, and it was beautiful (and glittery, for my fellow choir members who might be reading this :)).  Sunday afternoon, we had our final rehearsal with the guest musicians, and we opened the rehearsal with prayer.  Again, my brain lasered in on a single phrase and refused to drop it no matter how hard I tried.  One of the people praying said (this is the nutshell version) that things only happen because God wants them to.  It’s hard enough to find purpose at all in this kind of loss, but to believe that God wants me to have miscarriage after miscarriage?  It’s unfathomable.  It does not jibe with the God that I think I know, and the idea that God wants us to suffer is rather jarring.  To clarify a bit of theology here, I do believe that we must suffer because we live in a fallen world and because we are incapable of being perfect and pure apart from God.  To that end, suffering is a point of identification with Christ, and its purpose is to demonstrate our sin to us and to draw us to God.  And I also realize that I took this point slightly out of context, as the speaker was identifying that God was in control of the concert and desired for people to hear his message in the music that we were singing.  But, how can that statement (everything happens because God wants it to) apply to the proper functioning of sound equipment and voices but not to everything else?  Is it possible that nothing happens without God’s say-so, but some of those things may not be what he wants?  Is there really any difference between permissive will and perfect will?

That was what was running through my head while I was trying to sing Christmas music that is all about the birth of a baby and while there are these beautiful (baby-filled) videos playing along with the music we were singing.  More than once I cried and considered running as far and as fast as I could.  And once rehearsal was over, and I went home to rest for a while and change clothes, I wondered if I could just skip the performance.  Who needs a weepy mess on the front row, and who would really miss my voice if I wasn’t there, anyway?  But I couldn’t miss something I had committed to, and I didn’t want to miss the music and the worship and the choir.  If you have never sung in a choir, it is a wholly different experience than just listening to a group of people sing.  It is a beautiful demonstration of how a sum can be greater than all its parts.  One voice can be beautiful, but many voices singing different parts at the same time is like a musical body of Christ, or a mosaic with hundreds of tiles that only makes sense when you can see all of the pieces as a whole.  So I didn’t want to miss that experience, but I really didn’t trust myself to both sing and worship without falling apart.  In the end, I think I mostly sang and enjoyed the beauty of the music without letting myself think too much about its meaning.  I’m not sure that was the right thing to do since I wasn’t really thinking about honoring God through the music, but it was all I could manage.

I have a feeling that will be how I get through the rest of the holiday season with any shred of sanity.  The mysterious “they” say that the time six to eight weeks after a miscarriage can be the hardest to cope with, and in my experience, they are right.  So, I am groping my way through the grief  of losing two pregnancies in two months that somehow managed to whack me on the back of the head in last few weeks, and I’m trying to sort out how I feel about Christmas in general.  I still have no idea if what I feel about my niece is jealousy or just sadness at not having my own bundle of joy to share Christmas with.  I have no idea how to process a holiday that is entirely a celebration of a baby’s birth.  And I hate the frustration and powerless feeling that leaves me with.  All my life, I’ve been taught that you have to do something – act in some way – to effect change.  But what do you do when there is nothing actionable to do?  More dross, and not enough flux to draw it out; definitely not enough flux for the solder to neatly hold a stained glass pattern together.

I have been trying to process the last week, but my brain, unlike my body, seems unable to completely grasp what happened.  I’ve mostly just been numb, or maybe intentionally blank, because it is just too hard to think about yet another loss, especially so close to the last one.  I suppose the positive thing to consider is that we’ve never gotten pregnant so quickly; this was actually the first cycle after the last miscarriage.  Maybe that’s proof positive that the baby aspirin/folate is working.  On the other hand, it’s incredibly hard to deal with the loss of a pregnancy less than two months after another loss.  Whatever progress I had made through the grief process was just obliterated.

I was finally starting to feel a little bit normal – less moody, less depressed, less angry – and now it’s starting all over again.  I don’t enjoy being an emotional wreck, and I know my husband isn’t a big fan of the mood swings and inexplicable outbursts of anger and/or frustration.  Now I feel like I’m starting a marathon with a five mile penalty and enough weight to anchor a cruise ship.  I know I have to keep running the race, but I am just so tired of starting over.  I am so tired of discovering some new reason to hope for a different outcome only to have it dashed to pieces when all of my hormone levels start dropping.

I am so tired of the inexplicable waste of life.  With all of the unwanted pregnancies in the world, with all of those unwanted pregnancies that end in abortion, it seems that God should have enough “angel babies” without the people who want children having to make more of them.  It’s hard to see any point in the continued loss; why even allow the pregnancy if we’re never going to carry one to term?  Why allow so many losses if we are ever going to carry to term?  As directive signs from God go, this is one hell of a mess.  Are we to interpret constant loss as a sign to stop trying to have our own children and either adopt or find some ministry to be a part of instead?  Are we to interpret the possible medical factors as a sign to try again since we might be able to correct the problem?  Although God does sometimes use our circumstances to speak to us, I’m pretty sure there is no such sign here – just a mile marker on the race course from which to measure the distance already run and to affirm that the race is not yet completed.

I’m not quite ready to write about what I’m feeling right now, so I’m sharing this instead.  I realized a funny thing about myself yesterday when I posted the poem.  It had to be the same feeling the emperor had the second he realized he was naked.  It’s not always easy to write, but I worry less about what I write and post now than I did when I started the blog.  It’s okay if people disagree with the way I think or feel (they are entitled to be wrong, after all ;)), and discussing it makes me think and examine my thought/belief process even harder.  But posting a poem or a story is still really hard for me.

I hover over the “Publish” button and weigh the words waiting for other eyes.  Is it too personal?  Did I reveal too much of myself?  Do I sound like a lunatic?  What if someone doesn’t like it?  I felt far more exposed posting “Flotation Device” than with anything else I have ever written.  In spite of the fact that I make a point to be honest about what I’m dealing with and how I really feel about it, it felt like my soul was a little naked yesterday.  I know that’s a little ridiculous, but such is my emotional process.  I guess the difference is that a poem is a creative act, which makes it more like sharing my actual self versus sharing about myself.

At any rate, I caught myself doing this hover dance for a good ten minutes yesterday, and it made me laugh at how worried I was about it.  99% of the people reading my blog are my friends, and you guys are great.  I appreciate that you will share some of your responses with me, and I know that very few of you would ever tell me if you hated a poem.  (And I know the odds are that you will not like everything I write.)  I do love when you let me know if I’m on the right track or not, so keep it up!  And I will endeaver to be less neurotic about publishing in the future…

This is a post I would usually call family and close friends about first.  If you are among that number and become offended after reading this that you are reading the news instead of hearing it, I’m sorry; I just didn’t have it in me to call anyone.  In fact, I only called my mother and my mother-in-law.

Sunday night, we had a positive home pregnancy test.  Monday morning, I went in for blood work at the specialist’s office.  The results showed a faint positive, with the progesterone and hcg levels extremely low unless we were extremely early in the pregnancy (realistically, both numbers should have been at least 5 times higher than they were).  The repeat hcg level on Wednesday showed that it had dropped (in half) from Monday instead of doubling.  The repeat blood work was unnecessary: by Tuesday I was cramping and by Wednesday I had started bleeding.  It was too early to do a d&c, which means there is no pathology to perform.  Next Wednesday, I go back for another blood draw to ensure that the hcg level has dropped back to zero, and then I will go in for a follow-up with the doctor.

I am so tired – tired of the process; tired of the loss; tired of knowing that every time I think the depths of my disappointment have been exhausted, there is some new and horrifying loss to prove me wrong.  It is beyond bleak to realize that, with the exception of our first pregnancy, we have never made it past week six, which makes pathology impossible/futile.  It is a wordless frustration to know that in six pregnancies, I have accumulated less than a trimester in total actual weeks pregnant.  I am tired of hope and the certain disappointment that will follow; I am tired of feeling ridiculous for hoping that somehow each new pregnancy will follow a different route than the previous ones.  I am tired of the disappointment each loss causes my husband and my family and the friends who have buoyed me through the last several years.

It would be so much easier to know, to have a definitive answer.  It would be a relief to know that either way, I wouldn’t have to have another miscarriage.  Regardless of the anticipated reward for doing so, it does feel remarkably good to quit beating one’s head against the proverbial brick wall.  That said, I don’t know if this is the time to beg God for a reprieve or not.  Jacob wrestled the Angel of the Lord and refused to quit until God blessed him and gave him a new name.  I don’t know if this situation counts as wrestling with the divine, but if I give up too soon, what will I miss?  I am not so laser-focused on having a baby that I think a baby could be the only blessing in this situation.  And the new name references in the Bible have always fascinated me – what beautiful name might I miss if I quit wrestling now?  In my heart I want to ask, “How much more of this can I take?”  But the millisecond I ask, I already know God’s answer: “As much as I give you.”  My human being wishes there were another answer; my eternal being glories in the knowledge of God’s abiding peace.

We had a sign up over the sewing machines in the college costume shop that read: “The Devil’s in the details, AND CURVED SEAMS!”  If you sew, you likely know why that sign was terribly accurate and why I remember that sign so vividly.  But I’ve always wondered at the old saying that inspired our little sign.  Why is it that the Devil lives in the details and not the Lord?  After my uninspired attempt to clean out and clean up my house, I think I know why.

I might be the worst housekeeper on earth: I really, really hate to clean or fold laundry or sort through and throw out piles of junk mail.  My poor, dear husband lived with a laundry fairy and cleaning fairy until we got married.  Sadly, neither fairy chose to follow him into marriage; I think they took one look at our apartment and ran for the hills.  I try to enjoy cleaning, and when that fails, I try to inspire myself to clean anyway, employing verses such as 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So…whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”  When it becomes apparent that my housekeeping skills are not glorifying God, I resort to Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” in an attempt to power through it.  It’s not that any of the tasks at hand is terribly difficult, I just procrastinate until I can plant flowers in the dust or perform weird science experiments on unknown life forms living in my refrigerator.  I don’t want to live in a dirty house, but I don’t want to clean it, and I lack the discipline to keep it up once I do get it clean.  In this case, the Devil certainly is in the details.

I want more than anything to be a good wife – the kind of wife that Proverbs 31 describes – but, I apparently haven’t wanted it badly enough to change my habits.  I’d like to say that the bad habits end here, and from now on, I will be an excellent housekeeper.  I know that I won’t stick to it.  I am a perfectionist at heart, and I tend not to do things that I’m not sure I can master (immediately).  So, if I know I can’t get the entire house clean in a day, I will drag it out so that it takes a week instead.  Of course this makes no sense, and I’m working on it a little every day.  I have actually been somewhat successful, cleaning out all but one crazy room in the house over the last week.  (I’m currently procrastinating that room, sitting in it while typing this blog entry.  Not to worry, I’m headed right back to work on it after this break.)  Also in an attempt to conquer the psycho perfectionism (I think a little bit is good – too much is just nuts), I have been tinkering with learning to play my mom’s old guitar.  I have learned to play three notes so badly that my dogs will not stop barking until I put down the guitar.  It frustrates me to learn so slowly and to play (my three notes) so badly, but I’m learning to laugh at my complete lack of coordination.  I’m also learning how to accept taking the little steps that I can take to reach the larger goals.

In that respect, I’m trying to change the old saying in my life so that Christ is in the details.  He’s often in our big goals or our dreams, but he’s not often found in the preparation required to accomplish those dreams he’s given us.  We’re often willing to make dramatic gestures or grand sacrifices, but (at least in my case) we’re often unwilling to perform the inglorious daily grind with the same gusto.  It will be a miracle if I ever get my whole house clean, but the bigger miracle will be the daily discipline required to both accomplish and maintain that goal for more than a week.  The greatest miracle will be finding God in every detail every day.  To that end, I am trying just a little bit harder or doing just one extra task each day so that I might build up to the total discipline required to follow God with all my strength, all my mind, and all my heart.

I feel like I should apologize for neglecting the blog for the last week, so: I’m sorry that I have been neglectful.  There are two very good reasons, though.  First, I have been working more at the office, which is good, but it is far busier than working at home; and I have been busier at church, helping with our Christmas play and getting back into choir.  Second, the last week was much easier emotionally, which means that I tend to forget to write as I have fewer issues to resolve.  It’s nice to be able to focus on something other than merely surviving for a while.

After finding that I am a mutant a few weeks ago, last week we had the follow-up visit with the specialist to review the whole panel of blood tests.  Everything except one gene mutation was normal.  The short version of the mutation report is that I have a homozygous A1298C mutation of the MTHFR gene.  (I will admit that the first thing I thought of when I saw the name of the gene printed on the report was, “I’d like to buy a vowel…”)  There are five variations of this mutation, and I have the next-to-least serious of them, and one of the two versions that generally isn’t ever symptomatic.  Also generally speaking, most doctors would not test for or even treat this mutation, and specifically not this variation of it.  My doc says we are “way out there” in treating this, and we will not do heparin or anything stronger than baby aspirin unless we have another miscarriage while we’re on this course of action.  According to the published research, we are no more or less likely to miscarry because of the treatment.  However, any homozygous (just a fancy word for duplicate) mutation of the MTHFR gene has been linked to recurrent pregnancy loss, and it appears that the reasons are not completely clear.

I was a little frustrated after the doctor’s visit because it felt like I had been so excited about having an answer, and it turns out that it may just be a whole lot of nothing.  On the other hand, anecdotally, it seems that there are quite a few women who have been able to carry to term after treating the very same variation of the mutation.  And, since I’ve been taking the baby aspirin and folic acid, I have noticed some differences in how I feel, so maybe there’s something to the mutant thing, after all.  I’m really not sure how that leaves me feeling about getting pregnant again, but I’ll keep you posted…

On a brighter note, I have started running again (it probably appears to anyone watching that I am merely limping at a quick pace) a few times a week, and that has helped ease my normal stress and the extra depression tremendously.  And perpetually singing the Christmas music I need to learn for choir and ensemble in the car every day makes everything better; I think it’s a scientifically proven fact that one cannot both sing a Jingle Bell medley and be depressed at the same time.  The biggest challenge for me right now is balance; this is the point at which I will bite off far more than I can chew because I finally feel better, and doing things (acts of service, if you will) make me feel useful, which makes me feel happy, which renews my vicious cycle of finding my value in the things I can accomplish or the ways I can serve others.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever been aware of that as a problem for me, so I think I’m finally heading in the right direction, at least until the next mutation is discovered.