A right to grieve, a right to believe.

When I first started this journey of trying to conceive through IVF it was my intention to go out in search of a support network. I had no idea what I would find. Blogging combined with twitter has opened so many doors for me. It has connected me with women that have similar stories, share similar pain, and have the same hopes and dreams as my husband and I do. I have to admit I was naive, believing that infertility (IF) was only “my” problem. I had no idea how many women are affected by IF or how wide-spread of a problem it really is.

I spent a majority of my night reading stories by various women on faces of loss.  After reading their stories and being given the opportunity to walk in their shoes for a brief moment, my own personal experience with loss seems more manageable, I feel empowered and more importantly I feel allowed to grieve my unborn children. Sometimes I suffer silently because I don’t feel I have the right to come out right and say “Yes, if only for a moment I was a Mom, I am a Mom”.

Being a mother of miscarriage, late-term neonatal loss or stillbirth affects every aspect of your life. There are no words to describe how terrifying it was being pregnant again after my first loss. When I found out I was pregnant with my second child  there was initial excitement. But that excitement quickly gets over shadowed by your bodies own  defense mechanisms. Every cramp, every twinge, every ping in your belly brings fear. Every time I went to the bathroom I thought for sure I would find blood. I was so scared to lose that pregnancy that when I did, it was almost expected. Saying that my heart wasn’t broken would be a lie. Because it was shattered. But it was different for me.

I have found that such loss also affects your social circles. For me, I feel as if I have a hard time relating  to my girlfriends that have babies because I don’t have any living children and we can’t bond over stories of “first steps, first teeth and first words”.  Then there are my  girlfriends that don’t have children. They can’t relate to the loss I feel, they don’t know that type of pain. Sometimes its just hard fitting in. I must say though, if it weren’t for my friends I don’t know how I could have possibly picked myself up and found the strength to get out of bed.

It is true that out of tragedy comes strength. This experience has brought a closeness in my marriage that words can not explain. My husband still cries for our daughter. He still questions why he couldn’t get to hold her or brush her hair. His questions of who she would have looked like will forever go unanswered. But, we go on. And we have faith that one day things will work out and we will have that family I know we both deserve.