We might want to file this under “The unexpected part 3 to my grief story” because this is the aftermath of tragedy and it came with its very own baggage for me to unpack.
Have you ever felt like something or someone was intentionally and specifically working against you? Like, sabotaging your dreams and messing with your whole life almost maliciously?
Any faith based individual will tell you that God doesn’t make mistakes and we’re all made perfectly. I think this is where my faith was most tested throughout my life, but most especially during the latter part of my reproductive years. It felt like my body was out to get me, rejecting almost all the things it was supposed to be doing. Before pregnancy my period was extra painful. No doctor ever diagnosed me with endometriosis or anything, but most months I’d be curled up in a ball and needing to go to sleep to stop enduring the cramps. Heavy flow or not; because it varied each month; I’d feel that wrath and wish I could reach inside and squeeze my uterus out like a sponge just to get it over with quicker. Yes, I know that menstruation is SUPPOSED to happen, so why would I think my body hates me when it’s doing it’s job? Because why does it have to do it with such anger?! Also, I didn’t really start to believe my body hated me until just after my first pregnancy. This period part turned out to be more of a realization after that belief was established. As in, “oh look at that, my body’s actually hated me all along, I just didn’t notice until now”. Maybe it was a lead-in for all things yet to occur.
When I was pregnant with Sam things went almost perfectly. I did have gestational diabetes but it was diet controlled and my sugar levels stayed in normal range through the entirety. He grew perfectly and cooked until 39 weeks. Here’s where I believe things took a nosedive. Long story short, I went in for a non stress test and Sam wasn’t making enough movements so the doctor sent me up to labor & delivery to be induced. 28 hours of Pitocin later and I reached 10cm. But my dear little peanut wasn’t making enough progress down the birth canal so I was told to stop pushing and I’d be taken in for a c section. All’s well that ends well which I’m grateful for all the time, but afterwards Sam was in the NICU for a week. Even though I was able to spend time with him and try nursing everyday, I couldn’t produce enough milk and had to supplement with formula. That lasted his first five months and I finally threw in the towel. It was chaotic and frustrating at best and I felt like a complete failure as a first-time mom not being able to give my baby the most nutritious food that came directly from me. Adding insult to injury, Sam had acid reflux so we made him what I refer to as a bottle cocktail, consisting of breast milk, formula, rice cereal, and karo (to keep him regular). I swear to this day that all of these issues began with his induction and my body’s inability to adapt. I hated myself for that.
As the years passed I struggled to get pregnant again. With every negative test; month after month, cycle after cycle; I grew more and more discouraged and distrustful of my body. Somewhere along the way I became convinced that Sam was an anomaly. What do they call it these days… the glitch in the matrix? Was the ability to carry and care for one child a glitch in my body’s matrix? I was honestly thinking it was a miracle I was even able to have him! But lo and behold in 2015 I finally got pregnant again and a glimmer of hope formed as I considered that maybe I’d been dramatic and it wasn’t my body, but just timing, that delayed a second pregnancy. Even if that was true I stopped believing it when the pregnancy ended at 26 weeks. Once again this vessel of skin and bone that was supposed to nurture life had failed, not just me, but my child. Ben got wrapped in the umbilical cord and stopped living. A cord provided by me to GIVE life, not to fucking end it. And to add insult to injury my worthless body hadn’t even alerted me something was wrong like it was supposed to. Instead it forced me to deliver my stillborn baby after not catching the problem in time to even attempt to save him. I felt so angry and confused on top of the immense guilt I was carrying. More self hate.
It became a pattern. Every time something went wrong with my body I’d say “of course, my body hates me”. I lived with that for a long time; my body just hates me. And in return I didn’t love my body. I stopped caring, but not in a love-yourself-as-is kind of way, rather in an I’m-letting-myself-go manner. It wasn’t good, and I didn’t feel good about it. I felt crappy and ugly and unworthy. And hopeless… I felt hopeless that those feelings would ever change and as more years passed I continued to blame my body for anything that went wrong; most especially the two additional pregnancy losses I endured in 2019. Thirteen weeks and six weeks respectively and both times, once again, my body didn’t do what it was supposed to. It killed two more of my desperately longed for babies and (probably somehow evilly laughing and pointing) didn’t naturally pass either of them. I had to take a pill to cause these babies to come out and the experience was nothing short of a nightmare. I’m going to spare you the horror story-like details, but the outcome remained the same: no babies and 100% self-resentment.
My heartfelt desire to have a second child had been pummeled over and over again. As I approached the scary age of 40 I felt my time was running out as quickly and steadily as sand in an hourglass. The almost ten years of begging God “just one more, please” were to no avail and my window was closing. The feeling was heavy. Negative pregnancy tests, baby losses, endless heartache… and all because my body hated me.
There’s no resolute end to this story because I’m still a work in progress, but I will say that somewhere more recently along my journey I finally began to shift. I started taking better care of myself just a little, became slightly more peaceful in my headspace, tried to accept myself for who and what I was. Maybe it was the ripe old age of forty looming but I realized I needed to find a way to love myself, especially the body I was in. And I needed to at least begin to accept that Sam would be my only living birth child. So once I let all of this sink in I truly started to heal. There were glimmers of true inner peace and self acceptance, and I believed I could love myself just as I was. I carried deep scars on my heart and battle wounds on my skin but my journey would be sprinkled with at least a little self love from then on. Yep, I’d finally start to be alright.
The Reinvented Mom 