over and over and over and OVER (a letter to ngm)

I started using visualization in third grade, when I had chronic stomachaches. A very sensitive doctor taught me how to do it, and it worked. Every time. I started thinking I was powerful with my mind, and so, started to implore the universe to do other things, like clear up traffic on our way to summer camp and things like that, and it worked; if not every time, enough to support my blossoming relationship with connection. At thirteen, both my (younger) sisters got chickenpox pretty badly. I decided that there was no way I was going to have that disgusting disease, and told my mother I wouldn’t get it. I went as far as to rub them with calamine lotion and drink from their glasses. I have never had chickenpox. My mother kept me home for an extra two weeks, believing I was going to explode any minute. HA! WATCH OUT, WORLD!!

At twelve, I got my first period. They were irregular from the start…completely irregular. I was happy at first, because that meant way fewer periods than my friends. There was, however, a lingering whisper that it would maybe be hard to get pregnant. But who really cares at 12?

At 20, I got married to a horrible man about 10 yrs my senior. I told him I couldn’t get pregnant, and we didn’t use birth control. It took exactly one year to get pregnant. I was in shock! I was daring the universe, and it happened. My husband was MORTIFIED, and I quickly realized there was no way in hell I could give my child a father like that…and had an abortion 3 days later. To this day, I feel that I was a good mother to that baby. I left him soon thereafter.

The break-up was really terrible. He was a horrible narcissist (clinically, I believe). Suffice it to say that he did NOT appreciate the fact that I was leaving HIM. A few years later, still needing closure that would never happen, I remembered my power. Over the course of a weekend, using (some probably half-ass version of) self-hypnosis, I created a new ending wherein we parted with respect. The dreams (nightmares?) stopped. I was free to marry my current husband and move on.

Once happily married, we decided to try for a child. I knew I got pregnant before, but I also knew it would take some time. After the first year, we went to an RE and had the work-ups (normal), started the clomid, and had an iui. It scared the shit out of me. I wanted to be a midwife! I studied health and medical anthropology!! We don’t know SHIT about what really happens at conception! There was no way, jose, any possibility that I was going to let them suck my eggs out, inject them with sperm, and let them sit in a petri dish! HOW VIOLENT! Jesus god, there was JUST. NO. WAY.

I embarked on one year of natural fertility stimulation. I did herbs. I did acupuncture. I did BBT and cervical mucus charting. I did the fertility diet. I did OPTs. I even did the mother-fucking moon shit where you sleep completely in the dark and then with a goddamned nightlight on to simulate the phases of the moon, supposedly having some effect (on the pituitary?) to balance hormones. Whatever.

At about the four-year mark, I was spent. Marc was spent. We went back to an RE. We had IVF, with ICSI (sperm injection). To keep my spirits positive, I spent the dreaded two-week wait (for pregnancy results) interviewing independent birthing center and homebirth midwives. Then, THEN…….triplets. I spent my handicapped pregnancy grieving my homebirth- fuck, my VAGINAL birth-, grieving my chance to be pregnant once per child, grieving the fact that I would be split in three after the birth (I HAD NO IDEA). On the positive side, I never thought about the fact that they could (one or two or all) die. It wasn’t on the radar. The babies were pulled out of me at about 33 weeks after 4 days of PROM, steroid injections, magnesium sulfate…generally speaking, HELL. Two girls and one boy, 4lbs each, perfect. They were home from the NICU in twenty days.

The whole pregnancy, my only saving grace was breastfeeding. I could still breastfeed them! I spent hundreds of hours reading about how others breastfed triplets. LLL be damned, no one from there would help me! But I found, thank god for the internet, other triplet moms who had done it. I COULD DO IT TOO…until we all had thrush so badly I wanted to DIE. Pumping was slightly less suicide inducing, so I figured I would do that until the endless efforts to cure the thrust would work. It didn’t work until it was too late. I was broken. I pumped for a year and they got minimal formula. It shocks everyone that I pumped for that long, for triplets. I am proud that I hung on so long. But what was the alternative? There wasn’t one. I was a broken, tortured prisoner of reproductive circumstance.

When the three were about 18 months old, we considered having another baby. Lo and behold, my body was telling me it was time for a second child!! It didn’t know we made THREE the first time!! It would be our fourth but truly, seriously felt like a second. I never realized what people meant when they said “biological clock!!” We decided against it eventually. I mean, who wants to go back to an RE when they already have three kids?

Five months later, I was spontaneously pregnant. Our miracle conception. My dreams of homebirth (technically HBAC at that point), breastfeeding, ONE baby to care for…it would heal me. Birth is healing, right? I got me a homebirth midwife and a doula. I was worried that I couldn’t HBAC with GDM and thought I had it again (had it with the three). I tested blood sugar with my monitor. It wasn’t good. The midwife, on the other hand, convinced me I didn’t, and I believed her. I was gaining weight like CRAZY. She never asked me about my diet except, “how are you eating?” to which I would reply, “good.” It was good (ok, average) for someone without GDM. The baby was getting big, and she said as much. There was no GTT offered or even mentioned, despite history. It was a non-issue.

The whole pregnancy, I was severely depressed. How do I cope with depression? Why, with food! I felt cripplingly guilty that I was going to “heal myself” from my previous hellacious reproductive efforts. I would look at the three I had and cry about the disconnect. What the fuck was I going to do if the baby was born HBAC, one baby, who I could care for the RIGHT way…what of the tremendous GUILT of not being able to do the same for my other children?? So eating, eating, EATING over those feelings kept it, I don’t know…bearable for the instant I was stuffing myself? I was eating the good foods: fruit, veg, etc…but I was also eating the crappy.

Then she died inside me, the day before her due date.

The moment the tech put the wand on my huge belly, I knew she was dead. The thought was, exactly, I KILLED HER. I knew I killed her with the depression and the eating. I knew, somewhere in me the whole time, I DID have GD. The morning before, I had googled “high blood sugar fetal demise.” So, there it was.

She was ripped from me, DEAD, on her due date. Another c-section.

I went to therapy. I am accepting. I have learned and grown and know my baby girl gave me new life. I have seen things, raw things, things that I would have never seen had she been born alive. I am better for having had her. I know I am going back to school for my RN and will work in L&D/antepartum. I will be the hands off, woman respecting OB nurse. And Paige showed me that. And more. She is me, and I am her mother.

I know that, even if I did become pregnant again, it probably can’t be a VBAC- GDM, 2 c-secs, history of irregular periods and infertility. I’ve read that many IVF moms go past due and need induction, probably because the hormone insufficiency that caused the infertility throw off the normal signals to begin labor. Uterine scars=no induction. Infertility=possible problems starting labor. Previous c-secs+GDM+previous stillbirth at term=possible compromised placenta=very nervous providers and mother.

In other words, even if I did get pregnant again, I still probably will not get the chance to BIRTH A BABY. My dream is DEAD. And how is that going to affect my ability to be the L&D nurse I want to be? Will I grieve every time for the loss of my own dream? Will I be effective enough, never going through it myself, not being able to truly understand from that place of experience?

And, what of my connection to my alive babies? They were violently “given” to me. They pinned me down during pregnancy. Then they were violently birthed. The process that was meant to empower a mother has broken me. I DON’T WANT TO BE A PRISONER TO MY BROKEN REPRODUCTIVE SELF ANY LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what to do?