So, a new train. A new path forward.
After several rounds
of feeling pressure to work on adoption stuff, then procrastinating, then
feeling guilty, then doing something to avoid adoption stuff, then feeling
relieved for a minute, then feeling guilty again, I finally got some positive
momentum going. We made progress on our adoption profile and I started to feel
confident about moving forward with the adoption process. It felt right, really. I felt like we had
found our train. We were ready to move forward. We had done a lot of work to
grieve the potential loss of us having a biological child. There was sadness
there, but it felt more distant, like clouds on the horizon. We stepped aboard
the adoption train with clear eyes, steady feet, and hopeful hearts. I began to
envision our path forward as different and beautiful and uniquely ours.
While a large part of our journey was spent sitting on the
train platform unsure of which direction to take, there were a couple instances
of feeling like we had climbed aboard a train only to be yanked back off. As we
worked on our adoption profile, which felt like preparing a profile for a
dating website, we found ourselves abruptly and unexpectedly yanked off the
train once again. Our summoner?
Two pink lines. For the third time, two pink lines.
The Monday morning after a trip to Lake Powell with some
friends, I began to sense that I might be… late. I assumed my schedule had been
thrown off by the post-surgery meds I had been taking, but I still found myself
rummaging through the bathroom cabinet, hunting for a leftover pregnancy test.
I took it without telling Seth what I was doing, assuming my compulsion was
driven by a desire to confirm that I was not pregnant and could stop the spinup
of that thought in my mind. Yet as I watched the color move across the window,
I noticed a “blip” where there was usually a blank space. No way, I thought.
Not possible. I blinked a few times and waited for the test to “settle”. And
then I blinked some more. It was faint, but the second line was absolutely,
undeniably there. Shocked, with my heart taking temporary residence in my
throat, I heard myself utter five poetic words:
“Are you (expletive) kidding me?” (Sorry, Grandma.)
I continued to stare in disbelief. The rest of the morning
is a blur, but I remember calling Seth in and us sitting in stunned silence for
several minutes. I remember blurting out frantically, “Crap! I haven’t been
taking any prenatal vitamins!”, throwing open the cabinet door, popping a
vitamin in my mouth, and sticking my face under the faucet to swallow it, as if
I was racing against the embryo growing in my uterus. I remember going through
the motions of getting ready and walking into work in a daze. I remember
feeling several emotions at once and the most prominent one not being what
you’d expect one to feel upon finding out she was pregnant while battling
infertility.
I was mad.
I found myself in a subconscious inner dialogue, unsure if I
was talking to myself, God, or a panel of therapists I conjured in my mind. This is not cool, I said to God. I worked really hard to move past our
miscarriages and get to a place where I was ready to adopt. Now I’m pregnant
again, and I KNOW it is going to end in miscarriage like the others. No fair. To my team of therapists: Help me understand a more effective way of coping. To myself, a
Grade-A Guilt Trip: Why can’t you be more
hopeful and positive? Why do you go to worst-case scenario? Why do you have to
be so negative?
I had a hard time shaking this anger. I had little faith
this pregnancy would turn out any different than the others. I found it hard to
believe my doctor when he said there was “a chance” the surgery I had in
February would help us avoid miscarriage. I imagined that three weeks later,
I’d be sitting in an ultrasound room staring at a still and silent ultrasound
screen. I was certain I’d endure the physical and emotional pain of another
miscarriage. It felt like a cruel trick, a distraction from our goal. It had
taken a lot of time, thought, prayer, and therapy to get to a point where I
felt ready to fully embrace adoption. I had reframed and rewritten how I
imagined our family would be built. I had mourned not being able to be
pregnant, give birth, or breastfeed. I had wrestled with the thought of not
sharing any DNA with my child. I had changed my mental slideshow of the moment
I’d birth our baby to the moment Seth and I signed adoption papers so our baby
was ours forever. I had worked really
freaking hard to do these things. And it felt like someone was messing with
us. Just has we had started to settle in and get comfy on the train and pulled
out our little travel pillows, a cow had wandered in front of the track and we
were forced to get off, again.
I was absolutely certain that first ultrasound would end
like the others. I knew it. I walked
through the next few weeks in a daze and waited for the appointment where my
assumption would be confirmed. I felt like I had to put my emotions on ice –
don’t let your feelings thaw, or you’re sure to be hurt.
Around 7 weeks, which is the typical time for a “viability
ultrasound” when you get pregnant after struggling with infertility, I found
myself in the same exam room where we found out about our first miscarriage. The
ultrasound began and I heard the typical mutterings of measurements and medical
jargon as they searched for the heartbeat. As the search continued, my heart
slowly sank. I heard my doctor say, “It could be too
early, or it could be that this pregnancy will not continue.” I knew it, I thought. I knew it would end like this. As I
began to mentally steel myself for the all-too-familiar road ahead, I heard the
medical resident say, “There it is.” I startled. “What?” I asked. “The
heartbeat. There it is.” I looked but couldn’t see the flutter they were
referring to, and remained unconvinced. They zoomed in to measure the heart
rate. There was a detectable heartbeat
before our last miscarriage as well, but it was about 60 beats per minute –
half of what it should be. My own heart
rate picked up as I waited to hear the number that would tell me the fate of
this pregnancy. “The heartbeat is…click
click click… One twenty-seven.”
One hundred twenty-seven beats per minute.
That is a viable heartbeat.
The rest of the appointment was a blur. I remember my doctor
saying, “You did it! I’m proud of you.” I remember more numbers and me asking
questions. But the memory that stands out in stark relief is when they handed
me the ultrasound picture, complete with a paper frame with the inscription Our family is growing. I held it, and
once again, I found myself crying in the same room I had cried in months ago. I
held the picture, shaking and struggling to catch my breath between big heaving
sobs. “They put it in a frame,” I choked. “The other times, they threw the
picture away. But this time, they put it in a frame.”
The drive home felt surreal and otherworldy. I started to
process that we could potentially be experiencing a new reality. This was
farther than we’d ever made it before. We were breaking trail in unchartered
territory. It was exciting, and it was
scary. I struggled to accept that it could actually be real. As the days went
by, I told Seth, “I can’t help but feel that someone is playing a dirty trick
on us.” A week went by and we had the follow-up ultrasound our doctor
recommended. I went into that appointment once again convinced that it was over
and there would be no heartbeat. But there it was, blink blink blink, a little faster than before. The embryo looked
to have doubled in size. And while I exhaled a bit, the relief didn’t extend
much past the surface. It felt like my emotions were bound in a corset, and
every positive appointment undid one lace at a time.
We were traveling back east to visit family, so while it was
early, we shared the news with our Georgia and Michigan people, one
announcement at a time. We wrapped baby onesies as presents and Grandma Foster
got a “Fourth Time’s the Charm” grandma t-shirt. We snuck ultrasound pics in family slideshows
and had friends’ kids show them to their parents and say, “Mom, what’s this?”
We cried, cheered, laughed, hugged, and high-fived with many of the people we
love most in the world. We dreamed and
joked and sat in wistful silence. It was a beautiful, sacred time.
And right next to that beauty sat uncertainty. At times, I
felt like I was watching the celebrations from the outside. Seth would ask, “But you’re happy, right?”
Yes, absolutely – happy. Excited. Grateful. Elated. And also, terrified to
fully embrace this as a reality. Still certain that at any moment I would feel
cramping or bleed and it would all be over.
It felt like everyone I loved was having a pool party, and I was
gripping the ladder, afraid to truly join the celebration.
And also – I hesitate to type this for fear of being
misunderstood – I felt like I was “reverse mourning” again. This time, I was mourning having a child
through adoption. As I type the words, they seem a little odd and foreign. But
they are true, and they are real. I – we – worked hard to paint a picture in
our minds of what a beautiful adoption story could be. I had mourned and
grieved the prospect of never having a biological child and opened my mind and
heart to embrace the amazing parts of adoption. I acknowledged that there were
parts of pregnancy and postpartum that really scared me, and I had felt a
little relief knowing I could experience being a mom but avoid some of those
things. I had taken the “The Moment I Birthed Our Child” DVD out of my
emotional DVD player and had inserted the “The Moment We Sign The Adoption
Papers” DVD instead. I had learned to love and cherish these dreams, and the
abrupt about-face left me tripping and struggling to find my balance.
When we arrived back home, we continued sharing our news
with our community in Utah. As we
widened the circle, my heart grew with it. I sat with my other pregnant friends
and we chatted about our kids playing together. We swapped “foods I can’t
stand” stories and those with kids shared advice and guidance. I shared my difficulties in believing this
could be real. Many shared they had the
same struggles. One wise friend said to
me, “You know – it’s totally normal and understandable that you would be
feeling this way. And also… when you began dating Seth, you didn’t enter that
relationship assuming it would end soon. You enjoyed each moment for what it
was, and eventually it grew into what it is now. I wonder if there is any joy
that could be found in looking at your pregnancy in a similar way.” I let the
words settle for a bit; part of me wanted to push them away and retreat into my
fears, but deep down, I knew she was right.
Caution was understandable, but I couldn’t let my fears and anxieties
stay in the driver’s seat forever. At
some point, I was going to need to take the wheel.
At nearly 11 weeks, we arrived at the OB office we had
selected. It was another surreal moment
– in the infertility community, there is a feeling of “graduating” when your
reproductive endocrinologist (fertility doc) passes you off to an OB. It means
you have overcome several hurdles are ready for Next Level Baby Growing. And
again, intermixed with the excitement was fear. I sat in the office waiting for
the doctor to arrive with tears slowly streaming down my face. At first I didn’t even realize I was crying,
but I couldn’t stop the tears. They trickled out like a broken faucet that just
wouldn’t tighten. Seth would ask what
was wrong, and all I could do was shrug: “I guess I’m just really scared.”
Our doctor arrived, and seeing my emotional state, she
hurried through the preliminary questions so we could get to the ultrasound. As
the images appeared on the screen, I was shocked to see the changes in a few
short weeks. I could see the outline of a head and a body. Our doctor quickly
found and measured a viable heartbeat. And then, I heard Seth say: “Is that an
arm?” And there it was, an unmistakable arm moving back and forth across the
screen. “It’s waving!” I exclaimed. Now, in many ways I’m a very logic-oriented
person. I like data and science and I can’t stand cheesy, scientifically
inaccurate quotes like Shoot for the
moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. And the logical parts
of my brain knew that our child wasn’t actually saying hello to us. I mean, I
KNOW that. But my limbic system was driving the bus at this point, and I smiled
as I thought, My baby’s waving. My baby’s
waving. My baby’s waving.
My baby.
There was a noticeable, discernable shift inside me at that
moment, like I had been trying to pick a lock for weeks and finally heard a click. My baby. That was the first time
I had dared use personal verbiage; prior to that, I mostly spoke abstractly or
used scientific terms. For the first
time, I felt a connection, and I began to warm up to the idea that this might
be real, like I was opening the front door just wide enough to peer through the
crack to see who was there. Seth and I walked out of that appointment with our
arms around each other, a bounce in our step. It was the first time I had ever
left a doctor’s appointment feeling true joy.
And from there – the weeks have progressed. Aside from one
more terrifying appointment where it took several minutes to find the
heartbeat, checkups have been relatively uneventful. My belly has grown and I
have a new wardrobe of hand-me-down maternity clothes. We have had every
genetic test that can be safely done, and thus far everything has checked out
clear. As I type this, the four baby apps I have on my phone say 19 weeks, 1
day. There are still fears, worries, anxieties.
Currently, we wait with equal parts anticipation and anxiousness for
“The Big One” – our twenty week ultrasound.
At times, the thought “What if this is all some dirty trick and it ends
tomorrow?” creep back into my head. The thoughts come, and then they go, and
then some time later they come back again. And that’s okay, because I’m slowly
opening the door wide enough to let some light in; some Hope that maybe, just
maybe, this train will take us to our baby.
So, it is with excitement, nervousness, hope, and great joy
that we announce:
Baby Foster, due to arrive February 14, 2019. Our Valentine.
