Alternate Worlds

I read a few posts recently about looking back, and imagining what would have happened if things turned out differently with regards to family building. One was someone looking back at the moment when they were pregnant with their first child and suffering a subchorionic hematoma, wondering if this would actually be that moment where a child was a result (it was). One was someone looking at decisions made by younger family members, who had a baby first and then started looking for a house and that's proving difficult, and wondering if that order had reversed if things would have been different.

It is SO HARD not to do that. Not to look back and wonder how things might have been different if other decisions, other events, other timelines had occurred.

For me, maybe I would have had a baby if I'd tried in my first marriage, when I was younger, but I would far rather have the life I lead now than have had a baby in that situation. So that one doesn't make me sad.

There's no way Bryce and I could have started trying earlier, and we did do testing and get referrals before we were even married (I signed for my first Ovidrel shot delivery in my wedding dress), so that isn't a regret.

Had my first pregnancy that ended as an ectopic survived, I would have an 8 year old, but ectopics can't be saved, no matter what some idiotic, ignorant senators might say.

That second pregnancy though, that one is a doozy. I mourn that one hard.

I had just had a friend with a subchorionic hematoma, and so when I first started bleeding, I was assured that it was probably okay, that this happened sometimes. I was relieved somewhat by the first ultrasound within an hour of the bleed, which showed a sac. All of the hopeful thoughts I'd had about FINALLY having made it to pregnancy, of giving myself permission to dream about what that would look like and how our future would unfold, I could still hang on to them, albeit with a shadow of dread creeping in around the edges.

Now it seems cruel that I was on bed rest for a couple days until blood test results came back and a fancier ultrasound was performed. I think deep down I knew that I wasn't going to be one of the lucky ones. I think I knew when I first felt cramping in the parking lot of my grandmother's assisted living apartment building, and hoped against hope that it was something normal. I knew when I saw the blood. I just hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped that it was the scary but somewhat routine event that had plagued my friends, a bleed that didn't impact the baby, that wouldn't set my dreams on fire. EVERYONE had a story about something that went wrong but still ended well, even when I had the ectopic but didn't know that yet -- there were stories about low numbers and crappy rises that ended in perfectly healthy children, see? It can happen!

It didn't make me feel better. Because it didn't happen for me, not the first nor the second time I experienced pregnancy loss. It made me feel even more like a freak, like a failure, like something was terribly wrong with me. That luck was just not on my side. That all my magical thinking and desperate bargaining was wasted because something, somewhere, did not want me to have a baby.

That second pregnancy had the unfortunate parallel window into an alternate world, when a fertility yoga friend also became pregnant the day before me, and then her pregnancy continued while mine was cut short with an HCG drop in the thousands and a fancy ultrasound that revealed a sac, but also detritus and a smaller-than-normal development that indicated that there was nothing that would have made a difference -- I was bound to miscarry no matter what. I watched her belly grow while mine grew ever squishier due to hormone fallout and grief eating. I saw her post about the birth of her baby girl in April, right at the same time my baby would have been born in other timelines, other worlds. And then eventually I hid her on social media because watching her little girl grow was just too painful, it was way too easy to imagine what life would have looked like had my baby survived.

I think that's why it was so hard when the family with two boys moved in to our old house, and the house got the family we tried to make happen, but only after we'd left. Seeing toys in the yard and hearing neighbors talk about the life in the house because of those two young people gives me another window into what could have been.

Adoption was interesting, because it was so taxing but I didn't always give myself the ability to imagine what life would be like if we were chosen. For being such an emotionally difficult process, it was strangely impersonal as, at least for us, we didn't ever see an expectant mother or get updates on a pregnancy, we were never matched, and almost all of our opportunities were last-minute, so there was no specific-baby anticipation of arrival. But occasionally there was imagining of the baby that could be, and as time went on, it felt so demoralizing to not be picked, to have everything in our nursery ready for this baby we wanted so badly, and come close but not nearly close enough every single time. That opportunity near the end where it was possible we'd have to drive to Buffalo the next day if we were the lucky couple chosen was the hardest, because it was such an imminent thing. It's hard to harden yourself against that and not imagine what a tomorrow where you're a parent would look like. That was probably the most devastating "Sorry, you were not chosen this time" moment. We could see into that alternate world and imagine what excitement and nervousness we would feel in the car ride to the hospital. But it stayed just a crushing thought experiment.

Now though, living in our new house, free of anything other than a small box of mementos from that time and a stack of books that I keep behind a bookshelf, it's way harder to imagine what life would be like with any of the children that could-have-been but weren't.

We wouldn't live here if we'd been successful. We might not live in our old house anymore, but we definitely wouldn't be in this palace of books and windows and unlimited gardening possibilities. I really try not to think about alternate worlds too much now, because it is over. That is the gift of resolution -- there is no way to change this outcome, we are in a different place, and so there's not a lot of sense in mulling over this other life that didn't happen.

Some things trigger those moments -- pregnancy announcements, seeing a child that looks like what we envisioned ours to be, spending time with friends' children and feeling like it's a shame we didn't get the chance because I so love kids and enjoy being silly and goofy and snuggly. But then I go home, and I can be grateful for my office, for my space and my time, and the ability to recharge after giving so much of myself to my students because there are no small people who need me.

I loved Mali's post on forgiving yourself, because so often these moments of looking back and thinking about what life would have looked like is a sort of self-punishing exercise. There are so many good reminders in this post about what and who you can forgive to continue moving forward in your resolution (because it is NOT a static thing). I struggle with the body piece, because I absolutely blamed my body and was oddly vindictive and pleased when I had to have my hysterectomy. It felt like a sort of vengeance. But now that that's gone, I can forgive the rest of me. All the other forgives I can do -- we made the best decisions with the knowledge I had at the time, and we decided to stop probably well after we could have, but it was when it was clear there was no way we could keep going. It cost too much, in ways that had nothing (okay, maybe a little) to do with money.

I will try to visit these alternate worlds without blaming myself for the fact that they did not come to pass. I won't linger there, because it's too easy to get stuck in brain space that isn't real, and spend too much time visiting what could have been where I can put that energy into what is yet to be. It's all part of that healing, of accepting and honoring what happened before, of working through the trauma and grief of it, and figuring out how to make the best way forward.