Motherhood

Words from a vulnerable time in my life…

Panic. Fear. Confusion.

This is impossible, I’m infertile, broken.

Pure anxiety… overwhelmed in a sea of emotion.

The wave crashes over me.

I am weightless, everything is mute.

The tides change, the moon shifts, the world stands still.

I feel love.

Deep, unrelenting, cataclysmic love.

Pulling at my heartstrings, ripping my chest apart.

The right decision and the easy decision are hardly ever the same thing…

but the right decision, is still the right thing to do.

Two little lines can change everything.

Everything.

I never thought I would want to be a mother.

That is, until life began to bloom inside my broken body…

and now I’m not so sure about what I’ll want in the future,

but I do know, deep in my being, that now is not the time for this.

Even though I love what we’ve created, 

with a raw passion that burns fathoms deep,

I cannot bare you into this world.

The smell of sterilization fills my nose.

I cringe, a little apprehensive, a little unsure of what’s coming next.

The clinic runs efficiently, no fluff around the edges.

Step one, step two, step three, step four…

on and on the process goes, with long stretches of waiting in-between each step.

Hours later, the last step, and I finally see the doctor.

I can feel his heart is heavy with the work that he must do…

And so I smile at him, and he smiles me at me too.

As he explains what I’m about to do, I feel peace being in his presence.

This man is an angel, a shepherd of the light.

I satiate my hunger, and allow myself to rest.

Every now and then I remember what’s happening to my body,

and I feel my throat constrict as emotions course through me.

By the end of the night, I can feel the medication kicking in…

my chemistry is changing, my anatomy responds, my mind reels.

I can’t help but cry, slowly and silently, prolonging the pain of imminent loss.

I wake and go about my day…

anticipation starts to kick in.

2 pills.

4 pills.

Fatigue. Pure exhaustion.

I drift off to sleep…

1 hour, I am awoken by a pain so intense I forget where I am.

I can feel the blood, I run to the bathroom…

and I faint, cracking my head off the sink as I awaken on the floor.

Short of breath. Dripping sweat.

I lay back down to endure the most painful experience of my human life.

For 3 hours there is a cold steel vice gripping my uterus.

Every single muscle is constantly contracting, slowly suffocating the life I have created.

The drugs allow me to drift in and out of consciousness.

But when I am asleep, my soul is restless…

and when I am awake, I can barely fathom where my body ends and the pain begins.

Pain so intense, I can not stop myself from crying out.

Tears pour down my face.

There is one moment, in the midst of it all, when clarity strikes,

and I cognitively acknowledge what is happening in my body.

My entire being is crippled by a relentless physical pain that bonds with deep emotional grief.

Body and soul, I am on fire, I am drowning, I am suffocating…

every fiber of my existence is being torn apart, cell by cell, piece by piece.

I feel the tears dripping from my eyes.

I feel the loss of my baby.

Loss.

Complete, irrevocable, unbelievable loss.

It feels impossible to love something so much.

My mind builds a gentle wall to save me from enduring more… I drift back into sleep.

On and off, I am awake in pain, I am asleep in pain.

Midnight.

The worst is over. For now.

Bed time.

6:30 in the morning…

Blood.

So much blood.

The sheets, the mattress, my clothes are covered.

I move to the bathroom and feel the biggest clot leave my body.

This is the end of my pregnancy.

I can feel it in my body, but more so in my heart.

Tears.

So many tears.

I sleep just a few hours more before moving back to the couch.

The drugs are still in effect, I cannot process any more.

I let myself rest throughout the day, monitoring my bleeding, temperature, and hydration.

No time to accept things, I go back to a normal routine.

For 4 days I do my work, teaching yoga and putting effort into my work.

My mind is busy, but I can feel deep inside, the emotions are waiting to surface.

Slowly I allow myself to process what has happened to me. To us. To our baby.

For 10 years I was infertile.

It became a certainty in my life.

I never dreamed of having children of my own…

until I grew inside my body, the beginning of another life.

For a moment I envisioned what my life could have been like,

who would you have become to me?

How beautiful would you have been?

How much would you have changed my life?

If I could hold you in my arms I would tell you…

that I’m sorry that I could not love you more than I love myself.