Saturday, September 22, 2018

Moving Along the Track


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.



6 comments:

  1. So so so happy for you! You will be amazing parents!

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  2. My heart is so full! Congrats to our sweet friends! I can’t wait to hug you all!

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  3. You and I haven’t met, Bethany, but knowing you married Seth makes you special to me. Congrats to you both! 🙏

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  4. I saw your post on your MIL’s FB page. I went to youth with Seth knew his dad well. This post is BEAUTIFUL! I’m crying here just reading all your perfect words. Congrats to you and sending many blessings your way. -Haley Russell

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