[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqfGqOx2iDQ&w=420&h=315]

Watch it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqfGqOx2iDQ

By Kellie Coffey

© Duet Inc. All Rights Reserved

I’m feeling especially emotional tonight. There’s been a recurring theme in the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss circle of the blogging world lately. Some of you have been writing about whether you think you’ll be a good mom and the more time that goes by in the trying process and with all the losses, some of you are giving it more and more thought. I wish I could say I wasn’t one of you, but of course the thought has crossed my mind too. In the darkest recesses of my mind, I have asked if there is a reason why none of my pregnancies have worked out. Maybe I’m not meant to be a mother, or worse, maybe I shouldn’t be, but somehow my hope and faith always prevails. Then today I read a very touching post by A Calm Persistence, where she writes I just won’t go there… She talks about how with each of her subsequent pregnancies after her first loss, she protected herself and didn’t allow herself to fully hope, but if she becomes pregnant again, she plans to honor her baby by allowing herself to hope even if that baby is lost too. A Calm Persistence, really speaks to my heart with this post. With all of my losses, I have been completely crushed, but somehow I kept hoping with each one. With each pregnancy, I have bought a little keepsake for the baby, and believed that surely that time our baby would be ok. I hoped each time that we would finally deliver a healthy baby and get to take him or her home, but we never did. A Calm Persistence, referenced another bogger, themelesslife who wrote The Unused Baby Items. I found myself replying to themelesslife. Initially, I just wanted to give her a few words of encouragement and let her know that I was there for her as she said she is there for all of us, but as I started writing, I found myself telling her my whole scary story, and before I knew it I had written a long reply. She wrote about how after doing some organizing in her closet, she came across a large bag of items she had been collecting during her pregnancy and how it brought back all her grief. It reminded me of all our baby items that we have hiding in our house.

I wrote to her the following reply…

I can relate to this like no other. I have an entire nursery packed away. When my son, Holdon was born 3 months early, family and friends started sending all kinds of gifts, and my mother even purchased all the furniture. At the time of my son’s birth, we were really scared for his health, but we never thought in a million years that he wouldn’t come home eventually. So we prepared his room. We built his crib. We had the dresser, the changing table and the rocking chair. We had tons of preemie clothes that people had sent us and a few that I went out and bought. We had it all. We were ready for him to come home. He never came home. Our son died at 3 1/2 months old. He was too premature to survive. In the months after his death, I couldn’t even go in his room. Then eventually I did and couldn’t bring myself to put anything away. So I left it all the way it was. A year after his birth, we had the go ahead from my doctor to try again (my c-section was dangerous so we had to wait a year). I got pregnant after a few months of trying and I thought it was a new beginning. I went through everything in the room and kept a few special items aside as Holdon’s things that could never be used by another child. I spent a lot of time crying in that room, but also preparing and hoping for a new baby. But then I had a miscarriage, then another. The room that we put together with so much joy and hope became a chamber of grief in my house, mocking me and reminding me of all my losses. Like a masochist, I would go in there and touch the crib, and the soft little blankets, and fall on the floor in a puddle of despair. This went on for months and years. Then, last year my husband and I moved to a new house and I packed everything up. We dissembled the crib and the other furniture and put it all in the attic of the new house. The rocking chair now sits in a corner in our bedroom with a mountain of pillows on it. My maternity clothes from my first pregnancy are all in a box as are all the baby blankets, clothes and toys. We have 2 guest rooms instead of rooms for our children. I haven’t given up and still have everything, but I just couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. Since we moved into the new house, I got pregnant again and bought a cute little teddy bear for the new baby. I thought something new that wasn’t part of our RPL past was the perfect way to start a new pregnancy and a new life in our new home. Then I had another miscarriage and the teddy bear now sits under the mountain of pillows on the rocking chair. You’d think I’d learn, but I always go into every pregnancy with so much hope that I can’t help myself. I still think we’ll need all our baby things. I just read A Calm Persistence’s post about how she never let herself hope, I think I hope too much sometimes to the point where I’m almost blindsided every time we have a loss. I don’t know anymore which is the best way to be. I think as she says, in honor of that special life, however short, we should always hope, but it gets harder and harder. And yet somehow I know, if we are fortunate to become pregnant again, I won’t be able to help myself from hoping that the next time will be it. I won’t stop hoping for all of us.
Sending you hugs and prayers.

I am re-posting my reply here for all of you to see because I wanted to share this with all of you and just say, that even after all I have been through, I think it’s ok to hope with each pregnancy. I think as they say, every pregnancy is different and we really never know when the next one will be THE one. To all the angel moms in the RPL world and anyone who is having difficulty becoming pregnant, I  just wanted to say, I echo your fears, but I do not really believe any of us will be bad mothers and I don’t want to give up hope. If anything, I think after all we have been through, we will be exceptional mothers because we know without any uncertainty how much we want it and we will never take motherhood for granted.

I found out yesterday that a good friend of mine is pregnant with her third child. Her and her husband have been blessed with the amazing gift of easy fertility and already have a perfect son and daughter and are now 14 weeks into their third pregnancy. I had visited her recently and suspected it, and then every time we talked since then, I was waiting for her to tell me, but she kept it to herself because she was afraid to upset me. The irony is that I already knew and just couldn’t bring myself to ask her about it. It pains me that my good friend couldn’t share her good news with me because of my sad story. I’ll never understand why some people have it so easy and and others have to do anything and everything and then some to have a baby, and some of us are still waiting. It’s so unfair, and yet as much as I hurt for myself, I do feel joy for my friend.

Four years ago, I was just starting to think about trying for a baby. I was in that blissful place where I was still newly married and having a baby was an attainable dream that I was certain would happen very soon. My experience with infertility and miscarriage was an abstract point of view, that I only understood through the heartache of another good friend. Her and her husband had struggled for years to get pregnant and when they finally conceived, they had 2 miscarriages in a row. I remember feeling so helpless and heartbroken for my friend, but I didn’t fully understand what she was going through. She sent me a link for a youtube video (see above) that made my heart ache for her. However, I didn’t really get it. Well tonight I was feeling rather emotional, so looked up that same video, and I watched it this time for myself. I now have my own painful experiences and can relate to this video in a way I never could before. This video says everything we are feeling and so much more. As I watched the video tonight, I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, but it also renewed my hope. That same friend who shared this video with me in a moment of despair, found out a month later that she was pregnant again with her miracle baby. That same friend now has another child, and although it wasn’t easy, they now have two beautiful children. Why do I share this story? I share it because, I want to remind all of us to not give up. To not lose faith in our greatest dreams. Our dreams will only become impossible if we give up on them, and most importantly, we should not lose faith in ourselves.