Five

This was my submission to the Five Community Expressions Wall. It's part of an art exhibit on babyloss. You can read more about it here and here.

I couldn't get a very good picture of the card I made, and I was too lazy to scan it in. The smudges are hearts with wings, one for each of my dream babies, with their names written underneath.

Poppy's Due Date

Poppy would have been due today. I haven't thought much over the past months, about where I would have been in my pregnancy with her. With Astin and Ember, I was very aware of how far along I would have been, but I think that was a function of not having a plan in place for how and when to try again for most of that time. With my last 3 pregnancies (Poppy, Echo, and Raven) we've jumped right back into figuring out what else could wrong (or straight into trying again). So my mental focus has been more on what we're going to do next and less on what would have been.

Still, the grief sometimes pops up and surprises me, especially as my reader fills with more and more people who are moving from Trying to Pregnant, from Pregnant to Parenting. I'm happy for all of those people, but I still miss my babies and my missed opportunities.

I really hope that these immune treatments are successful the first time around and that our next pregnancy goes to full term. I have some fall-back plans in my mind if it doesn't, but I don't want to have to use them.

October 15th

Honoring all the mothers and fathers with aching, empty arms.

Remembering the babies who left too soon.

The never-forgotten angels.

 Thinking of yours.

Missing mine.

Astin

Ember

Poppy

Echo

Raven

Waiting for my rainbow baby.

Praying for a miracle the next time we try.

Aching for the day when I will be the parent of a living child.

Grieving for Ember

This week has been hard. I was blaming it on some frustrations with the end-of-year performance I have to put on with my music class, but last night I realized, that's not really it. It's Ember. I'm grieving for her. Today marks one year since she slipped out of my life. Yesterday was hard because I miscarried on a Wednesday. I spent the day in a fog, not aware of being sad, just numb. It wasn't until the end of the day that I figured out why I couldn't function.

Finally, this morning, the tears came. At home, and later at therapy, I cried my heart out. I miss my baby. Ember is the only one of my angles that I spent enough time really imagining for the ghostly presence of her loss to really haunt me. It was her phantom pregnancy that I mentally tracked all last year, and she is the one I imagine when I think of the baby I might have had by now. She would be 4 months old. I cannot forget that, but that's not the whole story.

Losing Ember was bad enough, but that miscarriage was the turning point. My whole life shifted course that day. I couldn't see it at the time, but now I do. It wasn't just the death of my baby, it was the death of so many of my hopes and dreams and plans. I have changed my very view of the world and myself, not to mention changes in diet, lifestyle, etc. This past year has been full of transitions and paradigm shifts and internal earthquakes. I have made choices that feel very close to selling out on my previous values. I have learned to better accept my powerlessness to chose my fate. Certain things are irrevocably outside my control.

I have also learned that I do not want to be bitter and angry forever. I have learned that hope is stubborn and keeps returning. I have learned that I can choose to feed either bitterness or hope. I am trying to learn to feed hope. I want to embrace my present life, and reach for my future through hope. I want to find a way to fully live again.

I think that Ember would not want me to become stuck in her memory, in the phantom image of what might have been. I will always miss her and all she symbolizes, but pining over lost hopes will only make me bitter. Although the smooth pregnancy and easy home birth I anticipated will probably never happen for me, I do have a very good chance of having a full term pregnancy with the help of modern medicine. I will take that chance and use it to feed my hope that someday I will have a living child to call me "Mama".

Today, though, I am torn between grief and hope, and I need to give the grief some space to come through. I know it won't drown me. So I will let myself grieve, and then I will move on.

Myth: The Ability to Get Pregnant is My Hall Pass Out of Infertility*

Busted! Many couples who have gotten pregnant in the past are still diagnosed with infertility. A couple may be unable to conceive or maintain a pregnancy after having successfully done so before. This is called secondary infertility. It is thought to be more common than primary infertility, and its causes are similar to the causes of primary infertility. Another version of infertility occurs when a couple is able to conceive, but their pregnancies do not result in live births. This is called recurrent pregnancy loss. It is far less common than than the simple inability to conceive. Sources differ on the actual statistics of recurrent pregnancy loss (or RPL), saying it affects as many as 5% of women of childbearing age, or as few as 1 in 300. In any case, I am one of those women.

The pain of a miscarriage is different from the pain of infertility, although in both cases, parents-to-be morn for their lost hopes. However, most couples who experience an isolated miscarriage can and do go on to have healthy subsequent pregnancies. In fact, one in four women experience a pregnancy loss at some point during their reproductive years. The fact that isolated pregnancy losses are so common, does not in any way diminish the pain felt by the bereaved parents. A single miscarriage is still very painful. However, an isolated loss is not usually considered an indication that the couple will experience problems in future pregnancies.

About half of all miscarriages are due to chromosomal problems in the fetus, and these types of problems are not usually predictive of the outcomes of future pregnancies. Most isolated miscarriages fall into this category, but sometimes back-to-back miscarriages can also be due to these, supposedly non-recurring, chromosomal errors. The other half of all pregnancy losses are primarily due to problems in the mother's body, although there is some evidence that there are paternal causes of miscarriage, as well. When there is a maternal or paternal cause for pregnancy loss, the result is that nearly every time the couple conceives, the mother will miscarry before term. Losing pregnancy after pregnancy, baby after baby, is very emotionally painful for the couple. Medical advances have made testing and treatment for the causes of RPL more and more available, but most couples suffer through at least two or three devastating losses before any investigation is even begun.

RPL is defined as three (or sometimes two) back to back pregnancy losses. It is considered a form of infertility, because, the more miscarriages a woman has, the more likely it is that they are due to a recurring, maternal or paternal factor, and the less likely it is that the mother will carry to term without medical assistance. Many of these recurring problems can be diagnosed and treated, just like many of the problems that interfere with conception can be diagnosed and treated. Infertility is a disease in which a couple needs medical assistance in order to conceive and carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to a healthy baby.

Couples who struggle with any form of infertility, including RPL, experience a roller-coaster of emotions, ranging from hope to despair. There is also the marry-go-round of testing and treatment to contend with. Sometimes a couple gets lucky and the first cause found is the single cause. In these cases, treatment is usually effective quite quickly. In many other cases, multiple causes are found, and no one ever knows exactly which treatment was the "key treatment". Couples are often put through basic initial testing, treated for the first cause found, and then only tested for more causes if that treatment doesn't work. This approach means that precious months or years may be spent on useless treatments, before all the causes of the couples infertility are found.

One of the most painful experiences for a couple to go through is a miscarriage after infertility. Finally, often after several years of treatment, the couple conceives, only to have a miscarriage. This sometimes happens because of non-recurring issues, but all to often, it happens because of recurring issues that weren't tested for in the infertility work-ups. RPL is often the final form of infertility found, because it is only discovered once the couple finally conceives. It is heartbreaking to loose any pregnancy, and doubly so when the loss comes on the heals of months or years of trying to get pregnant in the first place.

Comprehensive testing for all potential reproductive issues, whenever infertility is suspected, could save time, heartache, and money in the long term. However, many doctors do not offer this kind of comprehensive testing, and many insurance companies will not cover these tests, or the necessary treatments, making such testing prohibitively expensive. Even when a couple knows that comprehensive testing is available, the thought, "The solution could be simple, so why spend all that money on potentially unnecessary tests?" can be very seductive. It can be very hard to be your own advocate and request more testing than your doctor offers. The emotional turmoil that almost always accompanies the experience of any form of infertility is very draining and leaves little energy for self-advocacy.

Emotional turmoil is one of the hardest parts of dealing with infertility. The experience of RPL, in particular, is an extreme roller-coaster ride from hope and joy, to grief and despair. Each pregnancy brings a painful mix of hope and anxiety that can be very, very difficult to cope with. The following poem tells the story of my experiences in dealing with RPL so far.

Spark, Star, Seed

A little spark of life flickers and trembles with promise
Hopes blaze up only to collapse in ash
A phantom baby slips away

A new star blinks and bursts into flame
Blazing a trail of bright hope
Across an imaginary future

A black, baby-shaped hole opens
Life-sucking grief swallows all joy

Denial Not my life NO!

okay . . . alright . . . This is what is

Family history leads to tests
Life becomes a series of acronyms in a land of refills, needles, herbs
Plans to begin again are laid

Windblown seed falls on fertile soil, sprouts, and stets down roots
Suspicion germinates hope,
Envisioning growth, focusing on each moment, each now

Roots lose their grip, sap ceases to flow
Left empty, an Unmother, again

Left to face the labels:
Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
Infertility

Left to embrace the sisterhood of Unmothers

Why, God?
Why?

*Title inspired by starfishkittydreams

Because 1 in 8 is someone you know.  National Infertility Awarenss Week, Infertility 101 

Why I Chose to Name My Dream Babies (Esoteric)

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a couple of weeks, waiting for me to get up the guts to post it (because I'm often shy to share my spiritual/esoteric beliefs), and also waiting for my life to calm down to where I don't actually have a daily update I'm burning to put up every day. Things are in a holding pattern right now, so it feels like a good time. Enjoy. :-)

In the first weeks following my first two miscarriages, I didn't actively grieve. I followed my old belief system (my pre-miscarriage belief system) and told myself that miscarriage is common and probably for the best since there was probably something wrong with the baby(ies). I also firmly believed (and still believe) in re-incarnation, and by extension I believe that the soul(s) of the babies I miscarried were meant to incarnate as my children, and that they would be back. These two beliefs made me think that I shouldn't grieve. I believed that since a) miscarriage was for the best, and b) the soul(s) of my babies were not lost to me and would be back when the timing was better, there was no reason to mourn. All I had to do was wait, and do a bit more preparation for their reappearance.

Those beliefs carried me through exactly one cycle after my second miscarriage. On CD1 after my second loss, I went to pieces. I now think that the crash was so hard because I spent so many weeks in denial. I talked myself out of remembering that, during my brief pregnancies, my babies had been very real to me. They were so real, from the moment I suspected I was pregnant. The loss of those little sparks of life inside me was something I felt keenly in the moment, but tried to move on from almost instantly.

When I experienced that emotional crash, I began searching the internet for help. One thing I found was that some people name the babies they miscarry. This was an entirely new idea for me, but it resonated. Still, I struggled with my belief that the soul(s) of my babies would be back, that I hadn't really "lost" them. I don't remember how long it took, but after a while I realized that I wouldn't be naming the soul. Just like my name IRL refers to me in this particular physical body, the names I would be giving my Dream Babies would refer to them in the physical body they were building during that incarnation. Even if Astin and Ember were incarnations of the same soul, each would have had a unique personality. One might even have been a boy and the other a girl, and they could still have been the same soul, trying to incarnate.

Naming each physical manifestation, each potential to be a unique individual, allowed me to grieve the loss of those potential children far more fully and effectively. It took time. I had to learn how to grieve, and how to cope with my grief. There were many other issues to complicate my experience, and many other reasons why the emotional processing of my first two miscarriages kept me from seeking treatment for four long months. Still, this one, simple thing, naming my babies, had a huge impact.

Nine months later, when I had, for the most part, made peace with what had happened, when I was feeling hopeful and ready to try again, I found that I had fallen pregnant* a cycle too soon. When I miscarried a third time, I made the choice to actively grieve, to not allow myself to spend weeks in denial, but to access and address the pain of my loss on a regular basis. I think that naming Poppy right away made a big difference. In acknowledging her uniqueness, and her reality, I gave myself something concrete to grieve for, an object, a focus for my grief. It gives me a direction for my painful feelings, and helps me to allow myself to feel them without allowing them to completely engulf me.

Don't get me wrong, grief is never easy, and knowing what is coming only makes me want to avoid the pain. My only hope is that, by not allowing myself to spend too much time, at a time, in denial, I will process these painful emotions a little more quickly, a little more fully, and begin feeling hopeful and being ready to try again sooner than if I tried to deny and ignore and avoid the grieving process, just because it hurts.

*I love the phrase "fell pregnant" or "fallen pregnant". First, it's very British, and I have a thing for British stuff. Second, it's a pretty accurate description of what happens to me. I really do "fall pregnant". If only I could figure out how to stay pregnant, then, perhaps I could get a baby out of all this "falling".

Coping: Early Days after Loss

So far, I think I'm coping a little better with this loss than my previous two. Part of that is having a support system already in place. I have you, my wonderful readers, who surrounded me in the initial days of anxiety and disappointment. I have a few IRL friends I can talk to about my losses. One special friend has also had an early loss, and we have a lot of other things in common, too. She's been really good about making sure I know she's there for me this week. I also have Ms. Bird, Dr. Black, and Dr. R. I have some e-mail groups I participate in. And of course I have The Mister--I don't know what I'd do without him. He is my rock.

But another big part of why I'm coping better is that I didn't allow myself to think very far ahead while I was pregnant. I focused on the present during that time. While I didn't try to think my symptoms away (at least not after a certain point) I also didn't let myself go very far down the road of imagining the future. I didn't ever let myself spend more than a minute or two thinking about when I'd be due. I didn't picture myself with a big belly, and certainly not with a live baby. So while I am sad that Poppy didn't make it, I don't have nearly as many broken dreams to grieve over as I did with Ember.

When I was pregnant with Ember, I really let myself believe I was going to have a baby. I didn't even do that so much with Astin. That is probably part of the reason why Ember's loss has continued to be so hard for me. With Poppy, I was almost completely focused on the present, on doing what I could, in that moment, to enjoy her presence and sustain the pregnancy. When the symptoms started to diminish, I did spend some time thinking, "NO! This cannot be happening! Not again! What about all the things that were different this time?" and then a bit of, "Why? Why did this have to happen again? I thought we'd fixed those problems!" but it didn't last. Within a day of losing the symptoms I was able to acknowledge that I was losing the pregnancy.

Of course I am disappointed. It would have been wonderful if staying pregnant could have been that easy. Now I have to face doing a lot more testing and finding answers to a lot of questions, some of which probably don't have answers. But the thing is, I can face that. I've assembled my team. I've gotten my head around the idea that I will need help to stay pregnant. I'm ready to start moving forward.

After Ember's loss, I went through months of paralyzing fear and indecision. I was genuinely unwilling to seek expert help for the first four or five months. I think that indecision, fulled by the fear of what I might have to do to stay pregnant, made my grieving a lot worse. I wasn't just grieving the loss of my second pregnancy, I was also grieving the loss of a lot of choices in prenatal care that I had always expected to have. Over that past 9 months, I have worked really hard to shift my perspective on medical care during pregnancy. I have found good care providers whom I trust, created a good emotional support network, and gained a lot more knowledge. Those are the tools I need to move forward with trying again. Knowing I can start moving forward right away is a very empowering feeling. So, while I'm not trying to ignore or cover up my grief, I'm also not going to let myself get stuck in it. I'm going to keep on keeping on. And that makes it much easier to cope, even when I'm feeling sad.

Green Light!

Yesterday, Ms. Bird gave us the green light to try again next cycle! Actually, what she said was, "It wouldn't be bad if you decided to try next cycle." Which isn't exactly the same thing as saying, "You're body is in great shape, next cycle would be the perfect time to try," But it also isn't, "I'd really like you to wait a couple more months." When I said that if it "wouldn't be bad" we'd like to go ahead and try, she immediately adjusted my herbal formula to include miscarriage prevention herbs. I should be getting the new formula tomorrow. This whole discussion occurred before Ms. Bird felt my pulses and declared that they "don't feel deficient at all." Another huge improvement. I'm so glad that she is finally being positive and encouraging about how I'm doing. I was so worried that it would take months and months before she'd clear us to try again.

Other than that, not much is going on. Last week was really, really hard, which is why I didn't post much. It would have just been the same moaning post about missing Ember over and over. Then yesterday, I spontaneously turned a corner, and now I'm feeling much better now. However it has also been a bit difficult to keep up with reading and commenting. I'm going to try to catch up over the next few days, but I'm also trying to cut down on computer time, so if I seem to be MIA for a while, please don't take it personally.

Thanks for all the supportive comments on my most recent posts. I really appreciate my readers, and I will do my best to keep you updated and to keep up with reading your blogs, even if I don't comment quite as much for the next little while. :-)

(((Hugs to All!)))

Ember Should Be Due Now

According to my pregnancy wheel, Ember would have been due on the 28th of January. I have been horribly sad and emotional since Thursday, when I posted about having a sad day. Friday I had a bit of a reprieve, which is odd, since that was the 28th itself, then Saturday was super hard, and Sunday somewhat difficult. I'm very sad again this morning. Any little thing can set me off crying again. I don't expect things to be better, soon, because I had in my head that she would be born by Valentines' Day. I expect the next two weeks to be really hard.

Back in November, when I made plans to try again in January, I had hoped that we would get pregnant right away again, and that hoping and worrying about a new pregnancy would take my mind off grieving over my due dates. I'm not sure it would have worked, but that's a moot point now.  As it is, I am having a hard time being rational. I've already managed to worry myself into a panic over something that really, was nothing to worry about. I needed help to come down from that state of fear, and now I'm embarrassed, as I could have figured it out for myself, if I'd just thought to look in the right place.

I think what happens is that it's so hard to face the pain and grief directly that I invent other reasons for my feelings. The truth is, I'm just sad. I guess I should try to go easy on myself until the grief starts to lift, but I don't want to go back to feeling this way. Why can't I be done with this pain?

Aching, Empty Arms

Today was going to be a good day. But it all went south. I had a stomach upset in the morning that started things off on the wrong foot. Then, I was supposed to see one of my IRL miscarriage friends in the afternoon, but she had to cancel, because her daughter has a cold. We got to chat on the phone, but it's just not the same. I was so disappointed, and after we got off the phone I was just aching inside, feeling so lonely. It took me a while to process it, and figure out what I wanted.

What I wanted (and still want) is a baby to hold. I haven't had much empty-arms syndrome before now, but, maybe it's hitting me now because this is the time of year when Astin or Ember would have been due. If Astin hadn't died, he would be born by now, or if Ember had lived, she would be getting ready to be born. (Plus, tomorrow will be the 8 month anniversary of Ember's death.)  This longing to hold a baby is not specific. I think I would be comforted even by holding someone else's baby, but I don't know anyone IRL with a new baby right now.

So I created a substitute baby. I got out my baby doll (the one I dreamed about in this post) and my Moby Wrap (from when I was a nanny) and wore my doll around the house. It felt really comforting. The doll is made of wool and she warms up to body temperature, so she feels almost real, although much lighter than a live baby. I don't think I'm cracking. I know the difference between my doll and a live baby, but holding her has been a comfort today, a way to sooth myself.

Gratitude

Okay, everyone's been doing these gratitude/Thanksgiving posts, and I'm late with mine, but really I love to practice gratitude. I've done gratitude journals in the past and I think they really work. Writing down even 3 things I'm grateful for on a bad day puts me in a better place. So here goes. I'm going to try to come up with 10 things I'm grateful for from the past year:

1. Our honeymoon in New Zealand. We went over Christmas last year and it was great. For one thing, it was nice to not feel obliged to spend time with or call family. Since we were out of the country we could just focus on ourselves. We were in a totally new place, and we didn't know anyone, so we really bonded. And New Zealand is a fabulous country to be in. We stayed in one city and just got to know the local area. It was very relaxing. We didn't over-plan, so we were able to just spend time in our room watching TV when we didn't feel like going out.
2. Joining a Moms-to-Be support group before we started TTC. I thought it would be a good way to prepare for pregnancy, but it has turned out to be an invaluable support for surviving pregnancy loss as well. Also, the leader of the group is the sole reason I was able to get a new patient appoitnment with my RE.
3. My volunteer work at a local educational garden. It gets me out of doors on a regular basis, interacting with like-minded people, and working with the earth and growing things. Plus I get to bring home fresh, organic produce.
4. Attending a KidPower workshop for adults. I was emotionally abused by my peers as a child and attending this workshop was very cathartic. It was a step in starting to realize that I have the right to say "no" and protect myself from emotional as well as physical abuse. I am also learning to avoid potentially triggering situations.
5. Spending time with two friends whose children were all "accidents" before the grief and envy from my miscarriages really kicked in. These people have been important to me in the past, but I have had to distance myself from them over the past months. One probably won't notice, we don't see each other more than once or twice a year anyway, but the other may be offended. She's more needy, and I was distancing myself from her anyway, so I'm trying to let her go.
6. My decision to quit a very "public" volunteer position in my church before we started TTC. I had to avoid the church almost entirely in the early months after my miscarriages. Quitting that position also made it possible for me to consider a position as a Sunday School teacher--this gives me a wonderful opportunity to interact with children without feeling any resentment towards their parents.
7. Deciding to volunteer as a Music Docent. I love music, and even though I am still not teaching in the classroom, I really think that it will end up being a positive experience. In fact, I'm optimistic enough that I got some books out of the library so I can be prepared to go in on short notice as soon as the teacher contacts me with some possible times.
8. My cousin who gave me the family history of miscarriage and her emotional support when I called. Her information was very helpful when it came to getting a diagnosis from my RE.
9. Finding a good team of professionals who will support me through all the aspects of preparing to try again--medical, physical, emotional.
10. Finally, last but most important, I am grateful for my dear husband. He is my hero and my greatest support. He has seen me through so many challenges over the past year, and he has stood firm through all of them. I know that I would not be as balanced and happy as I am today without his emotional, and financial, support. He is an amazing man and I am lucky and blessed to be married to him.

Whew. I made it to ten. I'm sure there are more. Other wonderful friends and family and helping professionals. Other enjoyable experiences, like going to the beach and to baseball games. But I'll leave it at that. Those are probably the key things. Well there is one more. I'm grateful for Astin and Ember. Not so much for the miscarriages as for how they touched my lives and what I have learned about myself and the world because of their brief time with me.

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ 

We had a quiet Thanksgiving Day. I took a blog break. We didn't have a Turkey, but I did buy myself some cranberry relish. It was the one thing I thought I'd really miss that I also thought I could justify on a low GI diet. Then we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. I've read all the books, and DH hasn't read any of them. I thought it was okay, for a dramatization, but if you want my opinion, I thing that the first 4 books were the best, and that after that, Ms. Rowling focused too much on plot and forgot about character development. Even though the last 3 books were each quite long, the seemed short because there was no character development to help me get invested in the story. Also, it seemed like there wasn't much new magic introduced after about book 4. (Also, when it comes to books vs. movies, I almost always vote books. I like to use my own imagination, thankyouverymuch!:-) But it was still fun to go to a movie in the theater. It's not something we do very often, maybe 3 or 4 times a year, so when we do go it's a real treat.

Sunset on the Beach with Astin and Ember

Yesterday, I had an absolutely wonderful afternoon at the beach with Astin and Ember. Yes, they were there with me, in spirit. I love going to the beach, and since my miscarriages, DH and I have gone a few times. It's always healing and revitalizing. Yesterday morning, I just had this sudden hankering to go to the beach, and so, despite dire predictions of rain and wind, I went that very afternoon. (This is unusual for me. I'm a planner, and I'm virtually never that spontaneous. Deciding to drive 45 minutes each way to spend a couple of hours on the beach the day I do it is unheard of in my world.)

The other thing I knew I wanted to do was to have some sort of ceremony of letting go. So I bought white spray roses at the grocery store and took two of the flower heads with me--sending the rest home with DH. I also brought a small bag of white rice. I started my ceremony by dropping a single petal into a channel of water running from a small creek into the ocean. I walked along side it for several minutes while the petal made its way down stream. As I walked, I thought about how the petal's journey was a metaphor for grief. At first it moves slowly, sometimes pausing along the edge of the channel. The speed is inconsistent, and there are obstacles it has to go around to avoid getting hung up on. There were other people walking up the channel as I was following my petal, and this represented how those of us who are grieving still have to interact with a world that is not grieving. Eventually, the current grew faster and there were some small rapids, where I lost sight of my petal. I thought this was a metaphor, too, of how, eventually my grief will no longer be overwhelming, but will be absorbed into the current of the stream of my life.

After the petal was gone, I went to the edge of the waves. The tide was out, and the beach there is very flat, so the waves came up the sand a long way, very shallow. There was also a wide variation between the highest point the waves came to and the lower points where they sometimes ended. I spent maybe half an hour with the waves, moving forward as they pulled back and backing up as they came in, dropping in petals and rice with nearly every wave. Each time, I tried to drop a petal from each rose, and a little rice. I thought about Astin and Ember and letting go as I did this. I also thought about heartache, and how much I miss them, and how much I resent mothers with living babies. I tried to let all that go, too.

At some point, it began to sprinkle. Just a drop here and there--so few you really could walk between them. Just for a few minutes. The sun was below the clouds, and the cloud that was raining was just over the beach. It was a really beautiful moment. After a timeless time of dropping petals and moving with the movement of the ocean, I found that I was down to the final few petals on each flower, the tightly furled inner petals that surround the stamens, and I decided to through these inner buds into the stream. I threw them in just below the rapids where the first petal had gotten lost, and watched them flow down and get swept into an incoming wave.

The last thing I did was to find a short, fat piece of drift wood, and drift it down the stream, from the place where I had started the first petal, all the way down to the waves. I nearly lost track of it in the rapids, too, but it was big enough, and buoyant enough, that I found it again and watched it into the ocean.

Then I was done with that part of my ceremony, but I felt the need to walk, so I walked down the beach for some time. Eventually, I found a nice place to sit and just watch the waves. There were surfers out in the water, a ways down, but I chose a place where I could just see the waves. I watched the whole picture of the ocean, especially the place where the waves break off shore, before they roll in. The way the light was, I could see the spray rising up as the waves curled over themselves. It was beautiful and very soothing. I sat there, watching the waves, and slowly became aware that the sun was setting. I watched it slowly sink towards the water, dipping in and out behind the small clouds that dotted the sky.

The golden rays of the sun shone out from behind the white clouds, painting their edges in gold leaf, illuminating the still-blue sky, and reflecting off the water. I took only one picture, with my camera phone, but even that was too much of a distraction, so I stopped trying to capture the moment, and simply savored it. I tried to use non-focused awareness to stay present and enjoy every detail. A young mother and her friend came out to pose with a 3 or 4 month old baby, and, although I felt an ache in my heart seeing them, I stopped trying not to see them, because the more I tried to pretend they weren't there, the more aware I became of them. So I simply accepted that the were there, and let it go at that. I was even able to forget their presence for moments on end as I watched the sun sink lower and lower.

Eventually, when it was time to go, I walked to the water's edge and wrote in the very wet sand, "Good bye Astin & Ember I (heart) U." Just as I finished, a wave came up and washed away my words and I let them go. I will never forget Astin and Ember, I just felt that it was time to let go of them, and try to focus on living my life now, on moving forward with my current life, instead of wishing for a life that never could have been.

I know now that I did nothing wrong when I was pregnant this spring. There is very little chance that anything short of medical assistance would have allowed me to maintain either of those pregnancies. And I needed to go through the pain of miscarriage in order to change my worldview enough to be willing to accept that medical assistance. That, I believe, is what Astin and Ember came to Earth to teach me. I still love them. I will always remember them. And, for now, I still need to mostly avoid other mothers and their babies. But I am slowly learning to let my resentment go. It doesn't serve me, and it won't bring back my babies. So I am trying to accept my life the way it is and be thankful for the blessings I have.

Here, now, is the one picture I did take. It shows the composition of the sunset--where the clouds were and all, but it doesn't do justice to its sheer beauty and gloriousness.

(And no, I won't enlarge it--it was taken on a camera phone, after all, and the resolution is pretty bad. You can click on it if you really want to see it bigger, but I think it looks better small.)

Projects Page Updated with Pics

I just put up the pics of my latest projects--the Baby Afghan, and the tiny Christmas stockings for Astin and Ember. Go over to the projects page and check them out. You have to scroll down to see them--maybe one of these days I'll fix that, so the most recent projects are on top, but I just spent 2-3 hours getting the pics up, so that will have to wait, at least until after I have some lunch!

holiday gift/ornament exchanges

I've decided to participate in a couple of holiday exchanges this year, in honor of Astin and Ember. The first one I found out about is an ornament swap hosted by Jenni at Demeter's Feet. The second is a gift exchange over at Faces of Loss. Neither are specific to any particular religion or holiday--they are both open to anyone who wants to participate. The one at Faces of Loss is a little more flexible--you can make or buy a gift as long as it costs less than $20. The Ornament Swap is a Secret Santa style exchange of handmade holiday ornaments.

Finding these gift exchanges reminded me of something I wanted to do before Christmas this year--I wanted to make tiny stockings for Astin and Ember. I made them up today. I'll post pics on the projects page, soon. I know it's still quite early, but I'm at a standstill in my afghan project, since I ran out of the color yarn I'm using on the border, and I wanted to knit something. I ended up using some hand spun yarn I got last summer at a tourist spot while visiting family. It's un-dyed wool of varying shades of gray/brown, from a light, almost white, to quite dark. I used two different skeins, but there were still points in the project where you could barely tell the difference between the two "colors". Still, I'm quite happy with the results, as each stocking has far more personality than they would if I'd used store-bought yarn.

Five Months

It's been five months since my second miscarriage. I notice the monthly anniversary of my second loss much more than my first. It's not that I loved Ember more than Astin, or that I had more dreams for her. It's more that her loss signified so much more. I knew that one loss was relatively common and didn't mean much in terms of whether I'd eventually carry to term. The second loss was more significant in that respect. If I'd stayed pregnant with Ember, I wouldn't have started worrying about FVL unless I developed other symptoms. I'd be planning a home birth right now instead of looking for a specialized OB. I'd be nearly 6 months pregnant. And I probably wouldn't ache so much over missing Astin. I might never have even named him if it hadn't been for miscarrying Ember as well. I probably wouldn't be blogging here, anonymously. I'd be blogging publicly under my own name.

This hurts so much. I ache. I am empty. I have some hope, but it is hope for an entirely different future than the one I planned and expected to have. Life isn't just a matter of planning and following the program. The road curves and we get surprised. Sometimes it looks like the road goes on, and it's not until the last minute that we see the detour sign. I feel like I'm sailing in uncharted waters. I don't recognize the stars anymore. Forget about landmarks--there is no land in sight right now.

I miss my babies. I miss the woman I thought I was. I'm trying to find a way to love the person I'm becoming, the life I've been given. How can the death of my babies be a gift? God? Are you out there? What comes next? Can you please give me a sign--show me a hint that my life will have some good in it again someday? Please?

Why do I have to be so painfully aware of what should have been? Will I ever be able to simply enjoy what is? I hope that someday I will find the silver lining in this cloud. Sometimes I get glimpses of it. I am becoming a more compassionate and accepting person, less judgmental, less critical of others. I'm learning that ideals aren't reality, and reality is often messy and complicated. I didn't want it to be this way. But I'm starting to accept that these are my lemons. Now, where did I put my sugar so I can make lemonade?

Our Candles Last Night

These are the candles DH and I lit last night. The tapers are for Astin and Ember and the pillar is for all the other babies whose lives ended too soon.