May 4th was the date you were transferred. We watched as they placed you directly into me, all on a screen. You were there, a “textbook” embroyo, they said. I finally felt as though things were meant to be, that everything was going to finally work out for us.
That all the needles, all the appointments, all the tears and frustrations and everything would be long gone memories once you made your way into this world. It was finally a bit of good news after the egg harvest, they only collected five which is not great and of that, only three made it through. You, my little snowflake, were the best of the three, the most viable and the promise of an exciting future.
I told a few people, those that knew how excited I was, that had been there for the tears and knew how badly I wanted you. it was weird telling people, “we’re going to be pregnant on Wednesday” but it was also exciting, and although I wish it happened organically and we had the luxury of telling people it happened “unexpectedly” or by a miracle, it just wasn’t our lot.
I told one of my best friends I’d be pregnant by her wedding, and sure enough when I look back at photos of her wedding I can’t help but smile knowing you were there with me.
May 4th, I thought what a perfect date. Audrey Hepburns birthday, so close to mine and both your great grandmothers. It was just meant to be, right? Your father loves Star Wars and May the Fourth also happens to be “Star Wars Day”. We even joked we’d have a Star Wars x Audrey Hepburn baby shower and instead of a traditional gender reveal, we’d have an “Anakin or Audrey” reveal.
It gave me hope and reason to try and mend things with other family members. To tell your would be grandma, that she would be celebrating her first “Grandmothers Day” next year. Knowing you’d have a new cousin only a few months older felt like such a beautiful gift the world was bestowing upon our family.
And then the pain started and I tried for so long to push through. The blood results were bad on Monday, then they got better by Wednesday and several extra steps and injections later. But by Friday I knew something was really off. I thought maybe it was just a cyst rupture. Maybe it’s nothing major and I’m just over reacting. Maybe it’s fine.
I was ordered to go to hospital immediately and get a scan, but I thought perhaps I’d go to bed instead and head in the morning. For whatever reason I pushed through and drove all the way to Melbourne just in case it was serious.
I suppose the whole time I thought it was just me being a hypochondriac, but I was scared. I thought, no no, this is fine, it’s normal, they said the results got better. But then, they told me I’d be admitted. I thought, no this is fine, just better to be safe than sorry and I suppose part of me is still thinking that.
But the reality is, it’s not fine. Right now, my little snowflake, for whatever reason and by no fault of your own, you and I are not compatible. And part of me wonders if I should have nicknamed you something more permanent, rather than something so small, so unique and so fleeting.
You were my first Mother’s Day, even if you were only a week old. You gave me so much hope and happiness, and a promise of a future that mattered. I’m not sure how to find that strength again, to go through it all over again. I don’t care about the needles, about the surgery or about the pain. I care about letting down him, seeing how heartbroken he is to find out how much of a failure I am as a woman, as a wife and as a mother.
I want to push him away, force him to be with someone who can give him a baby as easily as one should. I have never felt worthy, but now more than ever I feel like a complete and utter waste of a woman. I will try my best not to, but I am not sure how to let him in when all I feel for myself is hatred for this failure. I know I shouldn’t, that one in four women experience miscarriage, that this is “a good sign” that I can get this far along and is better than the 5 chemical pregnancies prior. That I should be glad we found the ectopic pregnancy now before rupture, before sepsis, before my life was in the line with yours. But what about my heart? does it ever stop hurting? Long after the blood is gone and the cramps disappear, does your heart ever truly mend? Or do you always carry this emptiness and feeling of failure with you. Will it hurt every time I see a baby? Will I watch other pregnant women and wish to have their morning sickness, stretch marks and cankles? Or will I be able to just push through and act as though everything is fine?
For now, as ever, writing is my therapy, my way of coping and sorting out my mind. I know he hates it, he wants everything to be private, but for me it’s therapy and the only way I feel I can heal. It’s solace in this time as I sit alone in this giant hospital room, having to decide how you leave my body. I thought we’d be getting excited about announcement options or planning trips to baby expos to learn everything we don’t know. Instead, I’m choosing between having chemotherapy to destroy the cells that placed you outside the uterus or having surgery to completely remove my left tube and you with it. Somehow, I have to make a choice and yet somehow I just wish I didn’t.
My darling snowflake, I wrote you several letters in the past three weeks hoping that one day we’d read them together and laugh over how trivial it all seemed. But now, I suppose I’ll read them myself, and remember how much you meant to me, how much you will always mean to me and hope that one day, you will have a little brother or sister, who will know you were the first to make me a mother.