Two weeks ago, it was Infertility Awareness week. I was so
wrapped up in fundraising for March for Babies that I didn’t have a chance to
write anything about it. Today is International Bereaved Mother’s Day. These 2
topics are inextricably linked for me. And this year, I realize that, because
we now have a living child, there are probably people who think neither apply
to me any more. How I wish that were true.
The fact of the matter remains, I am still a bereaved
Mother, and I still struggle with infertility. Both of these roles color my
life and have made me who I am, in both good ways and bad.
Let’s start with the bereaved mother part. I recognize that
many people think I should be “fixed” by now. It’s been nearly 4 years, and we
now have a daughter to hold in our arms.
It’s hard to make people understand that grieving for Vivienne will last
a lifetime. There will never be a day that I don’t miss her, wonder what she’d
be like, and just generally feel cheated that I don’t get to see her grow up
and be a big sister to Eleanor. This does not mean that I spend every day in
sadness and tears. But it does mean that it’s always there – sometimes under
the surface and sometimes right in my face. Sometimes, the thought of her makes
me smile, and sometimes it makes me cry.
No matter what happens, though, she is still my daughter, and I am still
her mother. I’m incredibly grateful for Eleanor and love her more than I can
say, but she does not take the place of her sister. There is a quote I go to
often: Before you tell a grieving parent to be grateful for the children they
have, think about which one of yours you could live without. Bereaved parents like myself can
simultaneously appreciate the children they have and mourn the children they
lost. I guess broken hearts can handle more complicated emotions than we give
them credit for.
Now the Infertility part. Since Eleanor entered our lives,
I’ve done a lot of thinking on this one. Mostly because this seems to affect my
parenting more than I expected. I can honestly say that I look at my daughter
with complete wonder multiple times a day. I know that all parents will say
their children are miracles (and they are), but what it took to get this girl
here – miracles on top of miracles.
But I also carry a lot of baggage from our struggles. It is
still extremely difficult for me to be around pregnancy talk. It’s not very
complicated – when it comes to pregnancy, I feel like a failure. It’s something
that many people fall into accidentally, and some even plan for it and have
everything go exactly as they planned. I have never had a normal pregnancy, and
I never will. And I will grieve for a long time over not getting to carry
another child and not being able to give Eleanor a living sibling.
I worry every day that I will lose another daughter. I
suppose this is to be expected when you know all of the things that can go
wrong, but I find that infertility colors this fear too. Every time a door
closed to us in our efforts to expand our family, I felt like the universe was
telling me that I did not deserve to be a mother. Because I did not carry her,
I somehow feel that I cheated the system, and the universe will correct for
that, some way, some how. I worked harder to become a parent than I have at
anything else in my life. And I work extremely hard to be a good parent to my
children, and it’s partially because I feel the need to prove to the universe
that it was wrong – some crazy cosmic agreement that if I do a good enough job,
I’ll get to keep her.
Every year, as these “holidays” of sorts come around, I say
how I wish I didn’t know about them. And this year, I say the same thing.
Despite the joy and love that a rainbow has brought into our lives, I am, and
will be for the rest of my life, the face of infertility and a bereaved Mom.
It’s the hand I was dealt, and I’m playing it the best I can. But it never goes
away.
