Wednesday, December 31, 2014

It's not jealousy.

This post originally appeared on my now defunct blog on February 20, 2014, while I was waiting to for my second miscarriage to begin.  After two more miscarriages, I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with friends and family who are pregnant or have babies.  It's hard.  So hard.  I hate that I cry when I hear pregnancy announcements or simply a mention of pregnancy or babies.  I hate that I can't put my feelings aside and feel only joy for the expectant parents.  I struggle to hate only these feelings and not myself for having them, so this post was good for me to reread. The thoughts and feelings I put in this post are still as true after my fourth miscarriage as they were after my first.  

Before I got pregnant with Lucia, seeing pregnancy announcements or bump photos or babies was hard.  That was jealousy.  I wanted to have a baby and begrudged those who either were in the position to have a baby (married, out of school, stable job, whatever) when I wasn't or those who had babies even though their positions were less than desirable.  In fact, I can't say that I could even feel happy for those who were having babies while I was not.  All I could see was myself - my desires, my fears, my anger, my hurt, my jealousy.  I wanted what they had and if I couldn't have it, I didn't want them to have it either.  I don't feel good about admitting that.  Those feelings came from a less than charitable place.  That jealousy was sinful and soul-eating. 

After my miscarriages, it's often very, very hard to see pregnancy announcements or bump photos or babies.  But it's not jealousy.  In fact, my feelings have very little, if nothing, to do with the women who are making those announcements or in those pictures or holding those babies.  For them, I feel happiness.  I feel joy at the beauty of new life.  Having Lucia, I know the immense blessings of motherhood and I am so happy that other women get to experience it.  I truly wish motherhood was available to all who desired it; infertility breaks my heart and I cannot begin to imagine the pain carried by the women who suffer from it. 

The reason these things cause me pain is not because of jealousy.  No, I do not begrudge other women their babies.  And I don't want their babies for myself.  I want my babies.  The ones I lost.  The unique human beings that I carried in my womb.  They have their own souls, their own personalities.  Their own DNA.  They cannot be exchanged for another's child.  Those announcements and pictures and sweet little babies simply remind me of what I lost.  What I can never have.  Even if I get pregnant again and the child makes it to birth and I get to hold that baby in my arms and I get to hug and kiss and raise it, that baby will not replace the ones I've lost.  

And I imagine if the day does come when I get to birth another baby, that too will cause me pain.  That too will be a reminder of the moments that I'll never have with two of my children.  And it doesn't mean I'll love that child less or that that child herself will be the cause of my pain.  Again, the feeling will have little to do with her.  For her, I will feel joy and love and the million other complex emotions that come with motherhood.  But it will still be a reminder of what once was and what could have been.  

One of the most important things I've done for myself in this healing process has been to acknowledge that these feelings are not bad.  Unlike the jealousy I felt years ago, these feelings don't come from sin.  These feelings come from grief, loss, pain.  They are not cruel or angry or hurtful.  They simply are.  I know not all women who've had miscarriages struggle with pregnancy announcements or visiting new babies.  We all grieve in our own unique ways.  But I do struggle.  And that's ok.

Not all pregnancy announcements bother me, nor do all newborns.  I've had several friends announce pregnancies or have babies since my miscarriage in October and I was unaffected by the news.  The most difficult reminders have been the ones that are the most obvious reminders - those who have due dates similar to mine.  Watching their bellies grow throughout pregnancy is kind of like watching the ghost of my pregnancy.  What would have been.  What will never be.  I imagine as we near my due date and those babies are born, it will become even harder.  I often wonder if I'll see those children five, ten, fifteen years down the road and still feel sadness, still imagine what would have been, still try to imagine how my child would have been similar or different.  Only time will tell.

In addition to acknowledging that these feelings are ok, I've also allowed myself to block the reminders that have caused me pain, at least for a time.  I've unfollowed the blogs of women who are due within a month of my due date and hidden friends from my Facebook newsfeed for the same reason.  I've left groups where pregnancy talk was too difficult to bear.  At times, I've left Facebook and stopped reading blogs altogether for a period.  At first, I felt that I was allowing myself to be weak.  Or letting my weakness rule me.  Now I'm starting to realize that we need to honor our feelings and protect ourselves.  Maybe it is weak to not be able to see cute bump photos.  Weak or not, right now, that's what I need.  I know it won't be forever.  

I'm coming up on a difficult time - one of the pains of miscarrying so early in a pregnancy is that as a general rule, people don't announce pregnancies that early.  So in a few weeks, I'll start seeing announcements that correspond to my due date.  And not long after that, the due date of my first miscarriage will be here.  And if it ends up being too much, I'm not going to force myself to be strong.  I'm going to turn off my computer and let myself cry.



Right now, I'm facing my first close friend/family member with a due date close to mine and the feeling are even more raw and the pregnancy impossible to ignore (and I don't want to ignore it anyway). I can't just turn off my computer anymore. The pregnancy is right in front of me as will be the baby. I'm struggling to not let the sadness of our loss overwhelm the joy I feel for our new little family member. 

On top of that, with the number of losses mounting, it seems like there is a difficult date around every corner. February - first anniversary of our second miscarriage; May - first anniversary of our first miscarried child's due date (when our Francis would be turning one!); June - due date of our third miscarried child, Adrienne; July - due date of our fourth miscarried child, Christian; September - first anniversary of our second miscarried child's due date (when Julian would be turning one). There are other dates in there too - dates we conceived and when we got positive pregnancy tests and, for two of our babies, the days we found out they were no longer alive in an ultrasound. Those dates are imprinted in my mind, but for now, I'm trying to only remember miscarriage and due dates. It's too much of a burden when I'm trying so very, very hard to focus on the future in a positive way and stop longing for the What Might Have Beens.


4 comments:

  1. A few of my close friends were pregnant when I lost Levi, and even 5 years later I often look at their kids (all boys, of course) and try to picture how Levi would look now, playing with the rest of them. But I will say that it's not as sad to think about that as it used to be...

    Praying for you, Mandi.

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  2. Thank you for this post! I have been struggling to put into words how I feel as I am grieving my first miscarriage. We lost our little girl at 14wks, (we found out it was a girl through some testing before we lost her). My SIL happens to be due the day after our little girl was due, and we even announced our pregnancies together at 11weeks. Now we are about to face Christmas together, and while I am so excited for them to have their first baby and I want so badly to be supportive and involved, I'm still grieving my baby. So how do you get through this? Seeing a 30week belly that should also be your own? All I can do is pray for God take me through it. This post helped me tremendously, I can now name my feelings and even help my husband and family to understand what I'm going through. I need them to know I love them, I'm just hurting too. Thank you

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  3. Thank you for your post, we lost our little one at 7 weeks and my brother and his girlfriend are due to have their baby in a week or two. Just wrapping up the little clothes for her for when she's born broke my heart. My family are also arranging a holiday abroad for my nan's 70th which I was really looking forward too it would of been our first holiday with our little baby. Now I cant bare the thought of going watching my brother and his girlfriend with their little one, knowing ours should of been there but isn't. Tonight it was like someone just turned on the taps and I cried and just felt overwhelming sadness. It occurred to me that no matter what I do I will never wake up one day and just be ok with this. No baby could every replace the one I lost, though I hope so much to be a mother one day. People just say "it will be ok" but how will it ever be ok to have something you love so much die inside of you. My pregnancy test is still positive and i'm still in the process of loosing my baby, it's just one of the most difficult things I have ever been through.

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  4. I lost my first pregnancy just a week after finding out, its now been 2 months and we are trying again, but i still can't get over the last one 'oh we would have been 12 weeks today we would have been telling people about you' just milestones of pregnancy i will never get to have :( and my brother & his partner just recently had a baby they didnt want, and she did drugs the whole time and here i am unable to carry :(

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