February 26th Confessional

Two years ago today, it was confirmed Mizuko Bean had died inside me.

One year ago today, two little dots — one of whom became V — were transferred to my uterus.

Today I posted this double-fact on Twitter and someone asked what I would tell the me of two years ago. I’ve been thinking about this all day.

♥

For the past year, there have been times I’ve seen February 26 written in some form: the number 226, the time 2:26, a best before date… Each time I saw it, there was a little crack inside me. Bean…

But now that V is here, the association of that sequence of numbers with that terrible day has dimmed. It’s been nudged out of the way by the happy occasion that was a successful DEIVF transfer. Two-twenty-six has become a special number, one that unites all three of my babies — the two tiny boys I lost, and the giant (she is 96th and 95th percentile for weight and height, respectively) baby girl I hold lug around in my arms.

The pain of my miscarriage was eclipsed by my infertility on top of loss, and then that was eclipsed by losing the genetic connection on top of infertility on top of loss. So, I confess that sometimes I am not as patient as I would like with those who have suffered a miscarriage without infertility, or those who have suffered infertility without a miscarriage, because my heart truly belongs to those of us who know the pain of both and/or use third party reproduction (donor egg/sperm/embryo or surrogate).

I catch myself, remembering that this is my own residual grief. I try not to judge others’ pain by my own, how does that benefit anyone? I try to be genuinely pleased for people I know who conceive effortlessly. I look at a pregnant belly now and can smile. I’ve done a 180 on my PTSD! In January, I met a woman who’d delivered her son that week, and I took in her round belly, her engorged breasts, and staggering walk, and was overcome with tenderness for her. Even after only three months, I felt maternal and protective towards a stranger. Her vulnerability, the power of her body, was fucking beautiful and, goddammit, I do not take that for granted.

♥

The memory of the ultrasound is like an old photograph softened around the edges. I remember vividly the sight of the tiny bean-shaped baby on the screen, so still and lifeless. I remember the pause of the nurse practitioner, the flurry of her movements to make absolutely certain, her face which in retrospect I have painted with the restrained concern and resignation of someone who knows she is about to break bad news. I have relived this moment a thousand times over, and now it doesn’t send a surge of adrenaline through my body the way it did. I thought that intense pain would stay with me forever. That I would always cry for Bean. Even though an hour later, staring at the ocean, I said flatly, I know I’ll get through this, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me it wouldn’t always be that way. I expected to live with that pain for the rest of my life, but it has waned. Two years later it is like a scar that is both numb and sensitive to the touch.

In the months after my miscarriage, my mum said she had been lying awake one night trying to choose a single word to describe each of her children. She chose ‘determined’ for me. It’s true that I am not easily talked out of something once I’ve set my mind to it. Failing a self-prescribed task will plunge me into a funk that can last weeks. To fail at something I don’t put much effort into is no big deal; but to fail at something I care about will smart for a long, long time.

You decide to have a baby. You stop contraception. You bonk. You get knocked up. Easy, right? That’s what we’re taught in Sex Ed. And that’s what happened. We pounced on each other one afternoon and enjoyed some of the most incredible sex we’ve had. Lying there afterwards, I knew I was going to be pregnant soon. A week or so later I heard my grandfather’s voice in my ear, It’s a boy… And then a week after that, two pink lines and my response to my pregnancy diary’s question “How did you feel when you learned you were pregnant?” It’s a relief to know I’m not infertile.

Oh, honey, you have no idea what’s coming…

Why would I have thought differently? And yet the answer belies the nagging sense that I knew deep down something was wrong. Is this instinct? It was the same tiny voice that demanded answers as to why I’d miscarried. We ruled out my thyroid. Next up was to manage my endometriosis, and that’s when I opened Pandora’s box and the full horror surged forth. I relive the infertility diagnosis and sometimes my blood still runs cold. But how can I be sad about it when I have this wonderful sweet baby who wouldn’t be here any other way? There is so much joy, sometimes I forget that pain still laps my ankles.

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I have often acknowledged to myself what a good thing it was that I declined to have Bean karyotyped. That would have led me to my genetic diagnosis six months sooner and I know I wouldn’t be where I am today: stronger and kinder than I was; better at rolling with life’s blows and finding its sweet pleasures; and, best of all, mama to my sweet and plucky little girl… who, I noticed this evening, looks like a Kewpie doll.

Two years ago, if you had told me I was going to be a mom thanks to egg donation, I would have screamed and cried.

One year ago, if you had told me I was going to be mom thanks to egg donation, I would have nervously said, I hope so.

Today I would tell my past self that I was going to be a mom thanks to egg donation, and it would be one of the best decisions I ever made.