The Final Box

We moved into our current home two years ago. Yesterday I unceremoniously decided to unpack the last remaining box in our bedroom closet. I knew there was something in there that I must have been avoiding. That’s why it sat there for two and a half years. Laziness hadn’t kept it there. Avoidance had. I excavated through layers of Olivia’s old baby toys, her wooden bear puzzle with the interchangable facial expressions and outfits, her very first cloth book, her original “Po shoes,” the sandals with the Teletubbies characters she walked in during her second year. This box also held some my old belongings from high school that Mom gave me: my senior year concert band program, buttons I pinned on my competition jacket, rusted now around the edges. But that wasn’t the stuff that got to me.

It was the photographs. Of course there were photographs. I found the first ultrasound images of Olivia, made around ten weeks’ gestation, probably at the first appointment with my OB. She was just a little lump inside the gap which was my womb. But she was so much more. This must be what my other two babies looked like when I lost them around this same stage of gestation. The questions came up again: why did I lose them? What went wrong?

There were more photos of me and my family taken during those difficult three years, from miscarriage to miscarriage. I looked fine – my hair was nice – Jane in Columbus was my stylist then. I had a stylist because I worked full time and made good money, so I could afford a stylist. I was exercising twice a week. The classes were in a facility right down the hall from my office. It was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do: push aside my maternal instincts in order to work a corporate job. I did it to support my family and my husband through his career change. It forced me to work on those parts of myself that resisted doing what I hated doing.

Looking at these photos now, I deeply fear that this work-filled period of time consumed my last years of opportunity for having another baby. I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. I was too busy loving the child I had. And working. For some damn reason the embryos just didn’t hold on. I will be forty two years old soon, and the option of a full term pregnancy becomes less likely with each passing day. This is a reality that is so, so hard for me to accept. I’m the kind of person that likes to keep all my options open. But it’s starting to look like I have to decide if it is time to give in to my body’s failings and call it quits on childbearing.

My friend Iva does spiritual readings. She sent me a message recently that tells me I am not a failure for not having another child, and asks me to release that falsity. She relays to me that after I have moved through this letting go, there will be a gift; a surprise.

I like surprises, but I think I’m going to need a lot of help with this. Time to tap my resources.

Dear God,

HELP!!!!!!

I’ll think of a more refined prayer tomorrow. Although I don’t think that’s a requirement, is it?