Summer solstice

After Lucia died, six months seemed like such an impossibly long time away. June?

It will never come.

June is warm. June is beautiful. June is summer. I couldn’t conceive of where I would be in my life, my healing, or my grief. I measured my mood based on the hour, even a day seemed too long. Lucy died and was born on winter solstice. December, I could conceive of nothing warm. Everything was much too icy, much too cold, much too dark and lonely; the sun seemed lifetimes away.

Six months later was summer solstice, the polar opposite of Lucy’s day. I have these markers forever, and I suspect that I will attach my grieving to those days rather than to a date on the calendar. Summer solstice, would I be on the opposite side of my emotions as well? I had no idea. Now, six months has become a different marker of sorts. Not simply because half a year will have passed since Lucy died, which is its own pain, but also because it is the time when our midwives and high risk OB told us we can start trying to conceive again.

*gulp*

I’m not one of those women who left the hospital thinking I would try again. Ever. “I will never have another child.” I said to Sam, staring into the beautiful eyes of my husband. The ultrasound technician and the nurses and the midwives and the doctors had left the room to give us space after telling us our baby was dead. “I’m sorry, love, but I can’t.” I cried softly into his shoulder, repeating “I’m sorry.” And he held me repeating the words, “I know, Angie, I know.”

In the next few weeks, and months, I would periodically say it to him, just to remind him not to get any funny thoughts. “I’m not sure I will ever have another child, Sam. Do you understand?” And he would answer, “I will be sad, but I will understand.”

Some days, I mourn for all my possible children, not just Lucy. I cannot imagine ever being pregnant again. I don’t ever want to be pregnant again. I always wanted two girls. I have two girls, even if one is dead. Even if one can’t run and play, she is still a daughter I birthed. She is still a girl I birthed and is my daughter. Does it only count if they breathe?

I think sometimes this is why I don’t have shadow issues, like some babylost mamas, with pregnant women and babies, because it is not something for which I am longing. I want MY baby, my Lucy, my beautiful beautiful Lucia. I don’t want another baby. I don’t want a new baby to remind me of my loss. I don’t want to push my luck. I appreciate the child I have. I don’t want to move on, have a “rainbow” baby…I want to be whole again. I want to be a whole person. A good mother. A stable daughter. I’m not sure I can do that with a newborn. And yet, I fully understand when other women focus on trying again. It is an impulse that is just below the surface of not wanting to ever again. Sometimes I’m afraid if I scratch that veneer, I will desperately want another child I may never get.

All of these thoughts sometimes make me feel very Other in this community and outside of it. People say things that I know are meant to comfort, but that ache in me. Friends who say it would be a travesty if I don’t have another baby, since I am such a good mother. (I DID HAVE A BABY!) People that interpret my dreams to mean I am destined to have another living child. Acquaintances that assume I would be trying again, as soon as I get the green light. Other people that tell me it is fear, cowardly, to not try again. Even my first grief therapist refused to accept that I didn’t want to have more children, she would repeat like a positive birth loss therapist mantra, “Some women wait as long as a year before trying again.” The metatext simply being: But they always try again.

Truth be told, I haven’t really read many stories of women who go on to decide not to have any more children. I have read stories of infertility, of painful decisions, of not conceiving easily after loss, but to choose not to have another child, it seems strange, even to me. I decided to have Lucy, why not decide to have another baby that lives?

It is not simply that she might not live. It is NOT fear, though for a while I thought it was. It is just that my heart isn’t in it. I imagine going back to square one with grief. Square one with child rearing. Square one with being out of work (being a stay at home mom is a sacrifice I chose to make for a limited time.) I imagine if something were to happen to child number three, would I, could I, still be a good mother to Beatrice, or a good wife to Sam? It’s not just about me; it is also about them.

I do not take this decision lightly. I remember my midwives, like a hippie Greek chorus, saying, “Some women just chose to forgo birth control and see what happens.” To use birth control, or not use birth control…it is very tempting to leave it up to the Fates.

I think about having another baby all the time, even if it seems like my decision is made already. Molly once said to me, “I thought hard about my decision to have children, and now I resent having to make that decision again.” And I have thought that too. I resent having to make this decision again. But the truth is, I thought it would happen that one day I would wake up, and say, “I need to have another baby.” That my body would want it. That I would know, deep within my soul, that another baby is the right decision. But that hasn’t fucking happened yet. Will it ever happen? Did it happen to you?

I catch myself, every now and again, imagining my full belly, moving with baby, and the expectation. I think of baby names constantly. I paint pictures of Bea and Lucy and imagine what our family portrait will be in a few years. I think about the women I know who are pregnant—there are many many of them (nine at last count), and remember what that was like—pregnant with my first, pregnant with my second. The happiest times of my life. I think of Beatrice with her little sister, and I get choked up and sad. She deserves a sister, or brother. I think of breast feeding, and baby smells, and then...I also can’t go there. Not completely. It always stops. Something stops me.

On the longest day of the year, I will begin making the toughest decision of my life. I know I don’t have to make this decision now, every therapist I have seen, every person I have talked to, says that to me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate that sentiment. It is good to be reminded that I have flexibility and choice in this. It is that it is out there lingering. It is eating me up. I want to know if I should begin mentally preparing for this next phase of our life. Baby after loss. I also don’t know if getting pregnant will be easy. I am 35, that bullshit magic age. I want to start trying now, if I am going to try again.

Sometimes, despite my logical, non-superstitious, non-fate-believing mind, I want to consult the Oracle of Delphi. I want the hallucinogenic smoke to waft over an altar, and a half-crazed woman in long flowing gowns and crazy gypsy hair screaming and high to tell me what the gods have in store for me. I want someone to read my tarot cards, my astrological forecast, my aura.

I want someone to tell me what to do. I've made too many decisions since December. Is that too much to ask?