This week, as we focus on the things in our lives we can’t control, I’ve been thinking about how the hard stuff is often so integral to shaping our lives. And all week, this post has been weaving in and out of my thoughts. Today’s contributor, who’s going by Espero, for Hope, last wrote about navigating infertility. In that post, she talked about how for all that they’d lost, “Our infertility has become a fertile ground for growth in our marriage.” Today she’s discussing their recent miscarriage and how their new family has carried them through. I hope all of you will join me in holding them fiercely in your hearts.
Recently we had roughly this conversation in a back room of his parents’ home.
Me: I was feeling bad because we drove all this way to be with your family and here I am keeping you from them …
Him: No. Stop. Be quiet. Just stop.
Me: (not stopping) … but then I realized I’m your family. We love your parents, but I’m your family.
He wanted me to stop talking so he could tell me that exact same thing.
We were at his parents’ in the first place because we needed to not be home alone. And I was in the back room because less than an hour previously I’d had a second major hemorrhage, large enough to scare us both. The first had been six days earlier and resulted in the loss of our seven-and-a-half-week-old unborn baby.
The baby we had only known by seeing his heart beat at two doctor appointments. The baby that was there because of the round of IVF we did at our anniversary and then spent our anniversary trip joking about me eating and sleeping for four (we’d transferred three embryos). The baby that we’d nicknamed and talked to. The baby that had made us stake our claim on our family even stronger than we had before.
We’d held each other and claimed our baby family as we cried through all the fertility tests and treatments. We held each other and claimed our growing family as we laughed and planned when we found out I was finally pregnant, that together we’d made life. And now we are holding each other, claiming our family even stronger, and crying yet again, but still planning. It’ll hurt like crazy if this happens again. But we’re a family. We can do anything.
Photo by: Author’s personal collection
