I Won't Make This Pretty for You

It’s been nearly two weeks (tomorrow) since Baby A joined. Boy has he added so much joy to our life. We are so in love with this stinking cutie!

Something that has come up a few times in the past two weeks is “what is he going to call you?”

Here is the thing: he is not of speaking age yet and so at the moment he isn’t calling anyone anything. I understand why people want to know. They want to know what is most appropriate, most comfortable when they are doing their baby babble and referring to us.

But we don’t know yet. We don’t know a lot of things. With fostering there are so many unknowns. We can’t predict tomorrow let alone months or years from now. Fostering did not come with a play-by-play manual and we are navigating this day by day. If Baby A could be adopted tomorrow we wouldn’t even take a milisecond to say yes. We are SO in LOVE with Baby A. But that’s not the way the foster care system works.

I will not put a pretty bow on this and make it make sense just for the sake of other people. Right now, we are figuring out how to take care of this little one to the best of our ability and that does not include figuring out the best and most appropriate terminology for US.

I would love nothing more for this little baby to call me mama. But I understand and recognize that there is another mama out their too…and although I don’t know her, I can imagine she loves him just as much as I do because this kid is impossible not to love.

I take this role very seriously. At the moment, I am doing my best to show up as “mama.” That’s my job right now and of course I would LOVE to be his mama for eternity. At the same time, it feels selfish to be thinking about what Baby A will call me. It doesn’t matter yet.

All of this is only about Baby A. Every single thing. I love him and want him here always…but I also understand I don’t have complete control over the situation. What I want mostly is for things to be best for him. Best for him in the most magnificent way.

Another F word...Fostering

Holy Guacamole. It has been a week since baby A joined us. We received at call at around 9:30 am last Monday and by about 4pm baby A was here.

Rob and I began exploring fostering in the fall of 2019. We went to an information meeting. We had no idea what to expect. After that meeting Rob and I decided that we would start the process to become licensed. It was a pretty intuitive experience. At every stage Rob and I kept feeling like it not only was something we could do but it was something that was needed.

We went to the trainings and were educated about the foster care system. We went through the process of getting our home study completed. And then Covid happened. Things were halted for a while and so Rob and I weren’t thinking much about it. Things started moving again by the summer of 2020 and by the fall we were licensed.

The call we received for Baby A was our first placement call. I got off the phone and spoke with Rob and we pretty quickly acknowledged, “well yes, this is why we got licensed, right?”

And it is. Sure there were things that got interrupted. Nothing that important, though.

There are a lot of unknowns at the moment. The goal is reunification with the biological family. And so we pray for Baby A’s parents. We don’t judge or criticize. We hope only for the best possible outcome for this little one.

At the same time, we love him fiercely. It is so easy to do. He is absolute perfection and I am so happy to know I get to spend this time with him. He is napping right now and so I thought I would put some of my thoughts to down…nothing eloquent of course because I am slightly sleep deprived.

I pray that my heart stays open and strong. My feelings are the least important in this situation. My one goal is to protect baby and love baby for as long as I’m needed.

And now he is up. :)

My Annual Visit

I keep hearing this: “The more specific you get, the more universal it becomes.” I don’t know who said it first, but I understand the sentiment.

I have been struggling with my value. Big time. My therapist asked me yesterday what value I see in other people besides motherhood. And I honestly had a difficult time answering. I don’t know what is valuable. I’m so clouded that I feel like I don’t know anything at all.

At this point, the only thing I have is my experience. I’m unsure if is valuable. Sometimes all of this feels like its for nothing. Pain just for the sake of pain. But it’s all I have. And so I hope that by being specific about my experience I am not being indulgent but in some way offering value. When I thought about it, I value hearing other people’s truths. Truth is valuable. Always.

And so this is some of my truth.

I went back to my OB/GYN for the first time yesterday after my ectopic pregnancy.

I pulled into the same parking lot, I walked up the same staircase, I sat in the same waiting room. The fragrance from the flowers blooming smelled exactly like they did last spring.

A little over a year ago, right as the pandemic was becoming a reality for us on the east coast, my husband and I entered the building together. “He can’t come in with you,” they said, and so he went back out to the car.

I sat in the waiting room, nervous. My first ultrasound. In the 4 years, I hadn’t made it this far. It was a new experience. It felt victorious. I would be about 7 weeks, I predicted. Here we go.

I listened intently to the sonographer as she gave me instructions. Get undressed, urinate, put on the gown. I folded my clothes and placed my underwear between my yoga pants and sweatshirt. I put my socks inside my sneakers and tucked those neatly beneath the chair. I laid down and soon felt the cold jelly on my stomach.

I waited patiently as I heard her capturing pictures. Click. Click. She was silent. I anticipated the moment when she would turn the screen towards me and show me a blob that would eventually become my baby.

She never did.

Minutes went by and I built up the courage to ask, “is everything ok?”She took a breath and I could tell it wasn’t. “Well, I’m not seeing anything,” she said but assured me that I would talk with the doctor. Tears started streaming down my face almost immediately. Of course this is where it ends. Of course there is something wrong. Why would I have ever believed otherwise. I’m so stupid!

The sonographer continued to ask me questions, trying to acknowledge my reaction while also trying to make sense of it herself. “And when was your last period?” she asked. Click. Click.

I laid there as she finished her job, disconnecting from my body entirely. This was no longer an experience for my baby and I. This was now my body being medicalized. I was no longer a pregnant woman; I was a broken body that needed further investigation—a problem in need of a solution.

The sonographer was sympatheic to the fact that I was all alone, enduring the “new normal.” “It’s never easy, but I am sorry you don’t have your husband with you.”

“It’s ok,” I replied not because it was ok but because there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not about the pandemic and not about my stupid fucking infertile body that can’t seem to do anything right. It just is what it is.

I was told to come back a week later. It could just be too early, I was told. Although, that seemed to be a generous offering of hope to get me through one week of obsessively worrying. I knew that this wasn’t a good sign.

I waked back out to my husband, waiting in the car expecting me to be holding a sonogram. Instead, I entered the car and sobbed. Empty handed. Empty, entirely.

In that week I prayed fiercely. I talked to my belly. I asked for guidance and strength.

When I went back a week later it was determined that my Hcg stopped doubling but was continuing to rise, the second ultrasound still wasn’t showing anything, and I was ultimately given the diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy of unknown location.

I didn’t have tears left. I was numb. I listened to the doctor explain my options. There weren’t any good ones. It wasn’t like choosing between a red popsicle or a blue one. Ultimately, you don’t get a popsicle. But no one can tell you what to do. There is a strong insinuation…but ultimately, I had to put my big girl pants on.

They offered me a few minutes to call my husband. I opted not to. I had to think rationally, not emotionally. I knew the decision I needed to make and I feared that once I spoke with my husband I would confuse myself.

I was alone, yet pregnant. Just not the right type of pregnant. Not the type of pregnant that gives you a child.

They sent me straight to the hospital. They made me put on gloves and a surgical mask before leaving their office. I remember thinking at the time that it was ridiculous. Why couldn’t I just wear the mask I walked in with and couldn’t they just give me the pair of gloves to put on before I walked into the hospital? “No, its our policy,” they explained. “If your’re going to the hospital you have to leave our office wearing gloves.” So I did. I drove the mile to from the doctor’s office to the hospital wearing a mask and gloves like an idiot. Like a sad, scared, idiot.

When you’re “treated” for an ectopic pregnancy early, it means you are given methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug. So when I arrived at the hospital I was sent to the radiation department. I was there for a couple of hours. It was understandable. It was the beginning of a global pandemic.

I sat in the waiting room alone, still wearing the gloves that were now ripped from getting snagged on the zipper of my wallet when I was fumbling to give my ID and insurance card to the woman at the front desk. I sat alone, yet pregnant. I surrendered. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening but I knew I’d have to endure it. This was reality. The pregnancy wasn’t viable. The pregnancy was going to be terminated. 

When my name was called I was brought back and taken to a semi-private room to wait. There was a curtain that separated me from other patients. The nurse apologized several times as I watched her care for other patients who were wearing scarves on their heads. “I’m sorry, it’s lunch time so I’m all alone right now. But I’ll be with you shortly! Do you need water or juice or anything?” 

“I’m good, take your time,” I remember telling her. I didn’t know how to communicate that I wasn’t necessarily in a rush to terminate my pregnancy. I’d be still and present and try to embrace the last moments I had being alone, yet pregnant. 

Being surrounded by people who were fighting for their life gave levity to my experience. “This will not kill you. You will get through this. There is still life to live” I remember thinking.

Today I went back, after delaying my annual visit, and it brought all these emotions to the surface. I was anxiety ridden. I still question my decision. It was one of the hardest I’d ever have to make. Even writing these words about the experience, I am struck with shame.

But the facts were this: the information I was given made it clear that the pregnancy was not viable. I could have “waited” but that felt like a selfish decision given the state of the world and the overburdened hospital system at the time. Ectopic pregnancies, if left untreated, can result in life threatening circumstances that could result in need for immediate surgery. I felt, at that time, making the decision to wait was selfish and emotional. My rational brain knew what the facts were. But ultimately that decision is mine to live with. It’s a tug-of-war I put myself through. I have to believe that it was the bravest decision I could have made, and it was certainly the hardest.

There is no point to me writing this other than to acknowledge that we endure. We endure things that we can’t imagine. But there is still life to live.

She Told Me to Pray and Fight Violently For What I Want

I’ve never been to a psychiatrist before. Add it to the list of things I didn’t anticipate for myself. Not that it’s a bad thing. I actually advocated for myself to see one. I thought I had an idea of what to expect but I’ve been absurdly wrong. To be fair to myself, I’d say my experience has been unusual and probably not the norm.

I have a history of feeling like I’m not believed or I won’t be believed. And this stems from not being believed (go, figure!) by people in my life or medical professionals. I don’t always wear my emotions on my sleeve and so I get the sense people might have a difficult time feeling me out. I’m guarded, we could say.

So when I am meeting with a Board Certified Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, I tell myself to be fully and completely honest. This is hard for me. I don’t like to reveal the dirty parts, the messy parts, the ugly parts. Those parts have been simmering beneath the surface for so long I get nervous that if I bring them to the surface I will light myself on fire. I also hate that brief moment between me revealing something and the other person processing and preparing their response.

I tell her it all. Not all of it. But more of it than I normally would.

As I discuss infertility, I feel misunderstood. And then quickly annoyed. “She doesn’t get it,” I think. She gives me some clinical advice, encourages me to reframe some of my thinking, and also some shitty anecdotal suggestions. Let me elaborate for those who may not know what I mean. She tells me she once had a client who started taking chlorophyll and got pregnant (eyeroll, eyeroll, barfing emoji). She also told me a story about how some women get pregnant without uteruses (eyeroll, eyeroll, hand-to-face emoji). And the winner, she told me that stress can greatly impact fertility (head-explodes emoji. “No shit doc! Did you go to medical school for that insight?!!! GAH!”) I am frustrated all over again just writing it.

Let me be clear, I did not meet with a Board Certified Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner for fertility advice.

Toward the end of our first session she asked me if I followed any specific religion. I told her the truth which is I grew up believing in God. I was baptized, made my communion and confirmation at a Lutheran church. My family wasn’t “religious” per se, but we went to church on holidays and when we were feeling guilty. Although we weren’t devout Christians, the idea of God was really influential to me and I prayed often as a kid. I understood relatively quickly that adults didn’t really have a clue what they were doing and so the idea that there was a God, an entity that knew-all, was supremely comforting to me.

When I was in high school I found out some difficult, disheartening, and upsetting information about the church I belonged to. I refused to step foot in that church ever again and to this day I still haven’t. I would have considered myself agnostic, I suppose, during my 20s. I remember trying different words on like, “the universe,” “a higher power,” or the worst of them, “source.” But ultimately, I’ve landed back at God. I, personally, have found it impossible to not believe in God after having such a clear knowing as a child.

By the time I started experiencing infertility there was a distinct and profound disconnection with my spirituality. It as a huge hole that I felt. I hadn’t prayed in such a long time that the idea of it was enormously uncomfortable. I also began to conflate God with religion and religion with the church and I couldn’t make sense of some of the injustices that I believed were directly associated with both religion and the church. The God I knew didn’t make sense in the context of the church as I had understood it.

Recently, I have considered myself Christian curious. That’s the only way I can explain it. I believe in God and I am attempting to draw closer to God through learning about Jesus. I wouldn’t say I’m following. I’m still hugely skeptical (not of God, but of organized religion and the church). But I’m learning. I don’t want to be indoctrinated, I want to understand. It’s a journey and I’m not sure how it ends, but I am no longer shutting out opportunities to grow. I have found voices within the progressive Christianity community (I hope this is not a mischaracterization) like Brenda Marie Davies and Nadia-Bolz Weber who have helped me understand that faith isn’t a monolith.

Long story long, I told the NP a version of all that and she told me she also does Christian counseling.

After our first session there was a second. I remember feeling like I was wasting my time. But I’m a compliant patient so I go with the flow. “Maybe this is how things are done,” I thought. As she is trying to better understand why I am feeling so depressed and so filled with self-hatred I continue to get annoyed. Why won’t she just take me at my word? I finally decided to address the elephant in the room. Although I found her insight fascinating (not really) I was less interested in psychotherapy and more interested in discussing medications. She responded exactly how I feared she would. She doesn’t love to prescribe medications when someone is actively trying to get pregnant. That is precisely the response I got from my primary care doctor a few years ago when I left work because I had an anxiety attack.

Let me explain why that response is hard for me. I have been struggling with infertility for 5 years. Prior to that, I had been struggling with intense physical pain for 4 years that hadn’t been taken seriously or addressed. After 6 months of first trying to concieve I went to my OBGYN, and I believe because I was relatively young at the time, she dismissed my concerns and told me to wait another year and come back. If I wasn’t pregnant by then, she would recommend I see a specialist. So a year and a half into my infertility I am then encouraged to see a reproductive endocrinologist. Within my 5 year infertility battle, I have gone through a failed IVF cycle, a surgery with little to no follow-up care, an early pregnancy loss, and an ectopic pregnancy, and months and months and months of negative pregnancy tests. All of this is emotionally, physically, and financially, draining. I have lost so much of myself to this process. So fucking much.

I am exhausted, and tired, and feeling wholly misunderstood and misplaced. When I finally muster up the courage to go to the doctor and let them know that I think I need help, that I am not feeling like myself, and they tell me that the idea that I may have a baby in the future is more important than my mental health now—it is upsetting, to say the least.

I am a firm believer that I can get something out of most situations. There is always something to learn, some way to grow. So by the third session (again, is this normal?) I decide that perhaps I’m not meant to be on a medication and maybe I’m meant to gain something else from my sessions with the NP. To be completely transparent, although I was open to the idea of medications, I was also skeptical. Part of me feels likes how I am feeling is completely valid. I am grieving. I am sad. This seems like a really normal response to the trauma of infertility and pregnancy loss. Wouldn’t you be sad?

I decided at some point to let her know I was interested in the Christian counseling. Why not, right? And this is where things became interesting. I previous version of myself would have found this to be so inappropriate and condescending. But its not. I asked for it and I let her know I was okay with it.

And its actually nice.

It’s not clinical, its spiritual.

She reminds me that I am a child of God and God doesn’t make mistakes. So every time I hear my subconscious whisper, “you’re a real piece of shit ya know” I remind myself that those are thoughts, not truths. God doesn’t make pieces of shit.

She has said to me, “I believe you will have a child.” Which, again, seems super inappropriate, but for some reason it fills me with hope. This woman, who I assumed was going to give me a prescription to make me stop crying all the fucking time, is telling me that she believes I will have a child. It’s wild.

She told me I am fighting a spiritual battle. And this I believe to be true. In all of my grief and my trying to take the “right” steps to deal with it (talking about it, asking for help, etc.) I have felt a little let down. And I always come back to this idea that no one will help me. Which I know sounds harsh and cruel and dismissive of the love that others can give. But its not that others can’t help, because they can. But this is a battle against myself. Only I have the power to change this for myself. What fertility brought to the surface was an enormous amount of shame that I’ve been harboring. Infertility was the catalyst to unearth something that has always existed—a deep insecurity with who I am as a person.

And so I see my meetings with this woman, although at first frustrating, to be a gift. This is a highly unusual situation and I don’t think it is by accident. She said she prays for me and I believe her. She also said that in my spiritual battle, I have to “fight violently” for what I want. I don’t really know what that means. But the idea of fighting violently feels empowering for some reason; as if my anger, that I’ve been told to remedy for so long, is for purpose and by design to fuel this battle. I don’t know. I truly don’t know anything at all.