Merry Christmas Darling

 

The lights on my tree 

I wish you could see 

I wish it every day 

Logs on the fire 

Fill me with desire 

To see you and to say 

That I wish you Merry Christmas 

Happy New Year, too 

I've just one wish 

On this Christmas Eve 

I wish I were with you 

The Black Hole, pt 1

I can't say that all my life, I have wanted nothing more than to be a mother.  What kid doesn't have big, if not unrealistic, dreams?  I can say, though, that even through all of my other dreams, I just assumed I would be a mother.  It wasn't just a dream; some dreams come true, some dreams don't.  Motherhood was an expectation, as though my life owed me something or was subordinate to me and this was what I expected of it.  

I was, of course, no fool though.  I had to meet it halfway.  I met and married an incredible man with similar expectations of life who loves me dearly and has the potential to support any family we create.  We got respectable jobs with sufficient income.  We bought a house with *significant* room to grow our family.  We settled into respectable adult bed times and extra curricular activities.  I never worked more than temporary or part-time jobs, leaving plenty of time for housewifery and, eventually, to take care of our children.  We had loving, well-timed, married baby-making sex.  Lots of it.  It was time for life to life to fulfill it's end of the bargain, so we waited.  When we realized there were some fertility issues that needed taken care of, we were nothing if not proactive.  And yet here we wait.  

One could argue that we were being responsible adults, planning and preparing for a future we had no idea might not be ours.  One could also argue that it was foolish of us to build our lives around an assumption.  Either way, it amounts to the same thing: we built our lives around a hole that might never be filled.  

I can't say that's a new realization for me, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately because sometimes it feels more like a black hole, sucking everything else in with it, and I'm just not sure how much longer I can live like that.  As such, we've started  considering our other options.

• We could do nothing.  We could technically keep things exactly like they are.  Keep living around our hole, keep trying desperately to fill it as"naturally" as we are able. 
• We could change the way our life is.  We could quit living around the hole.  Create a life for ourselves that doesn't assume we'll have children.  That doesn't mean we quit trying, but it does mean we quit waiting.  We move on, and we create a more healthy routine.  
• We could adopt or find a surrogate.  We could quit waiting for life or fate or God to hand us what we want ad go get it on our own.  It wouldn't be the same and I'm not sure I'm ready to quit trying yet, but that doesn't mean we have to live with the hole in the mean time.  

More to come on this later...

Breaking Dawn

I got a new iPhone this past week.  My PrePlus was dying a slow, painful death and I can't afford to have my only real phone be in that kind of condition.  I've never had an iPod or real mp3 player before (tho i guess my other smart phones have had the capability) so it's a pretty novel thing for me.  A few years ago, a friend put her twilight audio books on my computer and it'd been a while since I'd had an opportunity to listen to them (especially a portable one).

Twilight is one of the series' that I re-read almost every summer (my peak reading time) but I didn't this year.  I had a reason at the time, but it didn't occur to me... until I got closer to Breaking Dawn.  Bella's unexpected, supposedly impossible honeymoon pregnancy is an infertile's nightmare in it's own right, but her uber short high-risk bed-ridden pregnancy that ends in a traumatic birth and, unlike in reality, a healthy mother (if you count vampirism as healthy) and baby.

I'm still not to the birth part yet, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna handle it but like everything else that has made me shy away, I'm trying to push through it, get back on the horse.

This morning, I heard two passages that got me thinking:

"From that first little touch, the whole world had shifted.  Where before there was just one thing  I could not live without, now there were two.  There was no division - my love was not split between them now, it wasn't like that.  It was more like my heart had grown, swollen up to twice its size in that moment.  All that extra space, already filled.  The increase was almost dizzying."

"When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options.  How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one?  If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it?  If it was someone you truly loved?"

Maybe the first one just made me remember that joy and miss it... and hate the brokenness that love gave me when my "little nudgers" (as Bella would have called them) were taken from me.

But the latter one... *sigh*
When my water broke and we knew there was no way we could save Elizabeth, we chose to induce.  The reasons were twofold: Staying that way was pretty dangerous for me and I hoped in vain that if Elizabeth was born quickly enough, she might survive it well enough for us to have a few seconds with her before she passed.  They had been trying to talk me in to inducing for two days before then, but if there was any way we could have saved Elizabeth, I really didn't care if it was risky for me.  Before they induced, they did another ultrasound.  Because her heart was still beating, I had to sign abortion paperwork.  Because it was considered a risk to me, we were able to forgo the 24 hour waiting period.  I can't tell you how it pained me to sign paperwork that I'd marched on DC year after year to abolish.  Most abortions in this country are by choice, not medical necessity, but I'll admit: I always considered the "risk to the mother's health" part to be a bit of a cop-out.  As a mother, I could never imagine choosing to save myself if there was any way to save my child.  I sympathized with Bella.  But that option never existed for me.  No one ever asked me to die for my daughter or tried to talk me out of it.  My baby was going to die whether I chose to act for my safety or not.  I know it's silly, but I can't help but be jealous of a fictional character and her happily ever after this morning.

Happy Due Date, Sweet Elizabeth

You know, it's strange.  All of our other angel's due dates have been spent thinking about how my day could have gone, should have gone.  Of course, few babies are actually born on their due dates, but it represents something so absolutely vital to having a living, breathing little human being to hold in your arms.

But Elizabeth was born.  Less than a month before she would have reached viability.  Today doesn't represent her birthday because she has a birthday.  Today represents my failure, the enormous gap between when she would have been ready to be born and when she was born.  ... and I have no idea  how to mark this shitty, shitty occasion.

Nightmare

I had a dream last night.  I'm inclined to call it a nightmare, and the fact that I woke up crying certainly would confirm that, but it's content isn't what you'd expect of a nightmare.  There were no monsters in the classical sense (unless you count me), no vast expanses or horrific scenes.

Last week my mom, out of concern for my grandpap, told me about a dream he had had that must have been so real that he thought it was real when he woke up.  He dreamed that my little brother had gotten his new girlfriend pregnant.  (The good news is my mom straightened him out before he did or said anything too bad).

Last night, my sub-conscious followed that line of thought to it's "logical" (or as logical as a dream can be) conclusion, complete with making me sit through their ultrasound and  and a combination wedding reception/baby shower, with me running around throwing things, screaming about a bastard child and basically having a nervous breakdown.

This morning, I'm not sure what has me more upset; feeling like a monster that I could react like that to my brother's happiness, or realizing that it's not entirely impossible for my brother to have kids before we do (as if my cousins doing so wasn't hard enough).

The good news is that "new girlfriend" is already gone and my brother just left for 6 months of military training.    So he's not in a relationship at all, and he'll be surrounded by mostly guys for the next 6 months.  Also, he's really not at a settling down point and (as far as I know, not that he'd prolly tell me) he doesn't generally (or prolly ever) sleep with his girlfriends.  Still, at the rate we're going, it's not impossible...and its kinda terrifying.