Another 'No'

I had my drink ready, hard apple cider that tastes like wine. I put it next to the test because I just knew. Now obviously I’m not trying to put negative thoughts out there, I have been wanting to have a baby for a very long time but every month it’s the same thing. That ‘yes’ that we got last year went away and everyone forgot about it but me and my husband. Ever since then I have been waiting for the ‘yes’ or the + or the double lines and it is always ’no’, negative, one line. I did wait a few days, been taking tests all week but this ‘no’ from today was it for me.

How do people have multiple miscarriages and I can barely recognize myself after having one? How do people try IVF for years and years or try every fertility drug and I am exhausted mentally and physically after only a year of this? We haven’t even gotten to IVF and the reality is we may never get there. Every time I go to the fertility office they think about my age and about how long I’ve been trying and say you know IVF is really the best route. And all I want to say is really because do you have the $30k that I would need to pay for me to have this done? Oh, you expect me to have the money in my back pocket along with my MetroCard is that it?

When you’re young and you are the type of person that knows you want to have a family you spend years dreaming of your children and your grandchildren and the house you’re going to buy and your spouse and the happy wonderful life you’re going to live.

Hear me out here, I live in the real world. I live in this world of Covid and racism, police brutality, and school shootings. I am of this world, this too warm world with not enough snow. I know where we are and where we stand and the hellhole that this life on earth has become.

But in the back of my mind, it’s like but can I have the white picket fence though? I met the man of my dreams finally after being single for so long. I found someone that truly loved me and someone I could open my heart to.

I have a child, did I mention that? She is the most incredible blessing of my entire life. She is smart, she’s funny, she is independent, she is unique, she is quirky. She’s 19 years old and she is not my baby anymore.

Secondary infertility is real. I used to think that I would have to 2, 3, or even 4 children. And here I am with my new husband and all I want is one more. And it feels like the universe is conspiring against me, it feels like it will never happen and yet people that do not know how to parent or should not be parents have children and hurt them.

There are children in the foster care system in this country, children all over the world needing to be adopted because they were abandoned or unwanted or unfortunate orphans, and I am a good person, I am a good mother, I am a good woman and all I want is to exhaust all this love to all the children.

We are coming up on a year, the one-year anniversary that after weeks of tests and scans and aches and pains and tears, when finally told us that there was no baby, no heartbeat, just an empty sac that carried all the broken pieces of my heart.

But I had dreams for that child, I felt his love I had images of a future wrapped around this new life that was going to be welcomed into our family with the most open arms. I knew my baby. I dreamed of him, I’d held him, I’d breathed him in. He was real. He is always with me.

Miscarriage is a loss, and no it is not just a heavy period. I dilated I contracted, I delivered.

It is a great loss that shifts your whole existence. I might look the same but I am not the same person that I was the day before I lost my baby. And as much as I want another one I still worry that if I do get pregnant how stressed out I’ll be hoping that nothing happens this time and also feeling a little guilty that my baby in heaven is being replaced by another one.

I have so many emotions but right now I have no more words.

Thank you for listening. Perhaps this wasn’t my best piece of writing, but there really will be is no end to these emotions will there? So I must put them somewhere so I can at least maintain a little of my sanity.

So that's it. Right now I just have alcohol running down my throat and tears streaming down my face because I got another ‘no’ on a pregnancy test and it just really isn’t fair.