After Wes was born we decided we probably wouldn’t have any more kids, definitely didn’t want anymore for awhile, but that we would wait to make a permanent decision until January 2011 which would be 9 months from when NikkiZ would start Kindergarten. We didn’t want more than two preschool kids at a time because at that time I was working full time and the idea of three kids in daycare made our wallets explode.

Well…we’re coming up on decision time. We have already made a decision of sorts in the last few months. We do want more kids. Living in that cramped house when I was working fulltime – the idea of another kid made me want to punch myself in the face. But now that life is a bit more manageable and our house has a bit more room, I really feel like I want more. But…do we start trying in January? I mean, let’s face it, if you’ve struggled at all with conceptions or pregnancy (like we have) then the only reason NOT to try is if at that moment you just couldn’t handle the idea of another kid. And right NOW? That’s the case. Sorta. We just really want NikkiZ to be in Kindergarten before we have anymore kids so we have to wait until January to reach that goal. But then…why wait? If our past history is any indication, and then the trend for my preproductive tracts to get in worse shape in the last few years, we should start trying as soon as we get out of that Three Kids At Home danger zone.

But…BUT…am I ready to get on the TTC train again? Before I dealt fibroids, endometriosis, and the annoying habit of miscarrying for no good reason. This time I get to add several ovarian cysts to the stockpile of Fun Stuff going on in my lady bits. (Totally the name of my next single, by the way.) So…the Trying To Conceive train may be even MORE fun than it was before. MORE FUN? Really? Can I handle more fun? I mean, sometimes it’s easy to “forget” the challenges when you see your successes every day. Two angel faces coloring on your walls and eating your moisturizers. But when I pause for a moment and look back? It comes flooding in and I think…Why would I want to do that again?

With Wes, we just stayed on the TTC path even after NikkiZ was born because we knew we wanted two and didn’t know how long it would take. We never stopped TTC. This time, willfully stepping back into the emotional heartbreak and anxiety after such a long and peaceful break? Seems so torturous. And masochistic. But, we’ll be doing it. We’ve decided. ONE MORE we keep telling our selves. We would love ONE MORE. Will we get it? Maybe. Will we kill ourselves emotionally and physically trying? No. We’ll probably be much more willing to accept defeat this time around. Too many failures, or too long without any successes, and we can easily throw in the towel. Because we are lucky and we know that. We left the battle long ago with our trophies in hand. We’ll go back in for awhile, but the stakes won’t be as high. The wounds won’t go as deep. It will be tough, but not AS tough. Because our gifts from the previous battles are here to distract us and both remind us why we’ll be trying again, but also why it will be okay to surrender if the pain gets to be too much.

What about you? Have you struggled with building your family? How did you resolve the desire of more children with the pain of the struggle to have them?

ONE MORE.

Just the other day I was thinking about my pregnancy losses and how the Trying To Conceive phase of my life was probably over, meaning those losses are officially things of the past. Previously, when considering Life After TTC, I always assumed, “I’ll never forget…” Because those losses have always been such a part of me. They are on my mind every month when my period comes because of the horrible and vivid memory of miscarrying in my bathroom one night. They are on my mind when I call any doctor because even the pediatrician stirs up memories of fearful checkups. They are on my mind whenever I think of my c-sections and how weird it was they were done in the same OR as my D&C. On my mind when I pause in the chaos of child-rearing to remember how lucky I am to have a success story.

But to tell you the truth? In the months since my Dad died?

I think I’ve forgotten.

I think sometimes a heart can only handle so much sadness. At least my heart does. And the grief over losing my Dad seems to have pushed out those regular pangs of sadness over lost pregnancies. Raising kids in general does that, I guess. You lose the ability to dwell on anything for more than 14 seconds before the next disaster. But lately, those 14 seconds, I’ve devoted to my Dad. To missing him and still having to remind myself that he is actually gone. I still don’t believe it sometimes. I still expect him to call on my birthday. Which is hysterical considering he actually forgot more birthdays than he remembered.

But then…someone else had her heart broken. Reading her words, her pain, it all came flooding back. Maybe my Dad was keeping it all at bay for the last few months, those periodic reminders. But reading Michelle describe exactly what I’ve been through, word for word, I remembered. And I’m glad I did. I almost feel guilty that I needed reminding.

But not too guilty.

It’s okay to forget sometimes. Especially in light of new sadness.

I emailed Michelle (who doesn’t know me from Adam) the same link I’ve emailed several women who have suffered this loss. It’s a New York Times article that Chez Miscarriage (I miss her) linked to many moons ago. I’m so glad the article is still there in the archives.

It talks about one woman’s journey toward mourning her loss in a culture that provides more ritual for that than our own does.

I had never previously considered that there is no word in English for a miscarried or aborted fetus. In Japanese it is mizuko, which is typically translated as ”water child.” Historically, Japanese Buddhists believed that existence flowed into a being slowly, like liquid. Children solidified only gradually over time and weren’t considered to be fully in our world until they reached the age of 7. Similarly, leaving this world — returning to the primordial waters — was seen as a process that began at 60 with the celebration of a symbolic second birth. According to Paula K.R. Arai, author of ”Women Living Zen” and one of several authorities I later turned to for help in understanding the ritual, the mizuko lies somewhere along the continuum, in that liminal space between life and death but belonging to neither. True to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, it was expected (and still is today) that Jizo would eventually help the mizuko find another pathway into being.

I’m not a Buddhist (I’m not anything), but I adopted this mindset and the spirituality associated with it in when mourning my own losses. It helped me greatly and I always pass it along hoping it will help other women as well. Today, I think about my mizuko. My lost pregnancies. I’ll think about them in tribute to Michelle and all of the other women who have felt the same pain. I think about it today to remind you all…you’re not alone. It feels like it, god does it feel like it, but you’re not. All of us who have felt the pain of those empty arms, we’re all there with you. Using our empty arms to hold you up.

After my losses I ended up with the family I was struggling to build. I hope that all of my sisters will also have happy endings to the stories they are trying to write.

You know — the TTC (Trying To Conceive) train is a rough one to ride. Even if you don’t have any solidly diagnosed issues, just a few months of the hope and failures can wear on your soul. MrZ and I have had that “hope” for years now. After we finally had NikkiZ after actively trying for a couple of years, we opted to not use birth control, but also not try every month. I needed a little of an emotional break but we didn’t want to block any chances we might have. We got pregnant one month, miscarried, got pregnant a few months later, and here we are. 8 weeks from bringing in AndyZ to our krazee little family.

After he gets here, we are going to actively use birth control for the first time in five years. We are coming out and saying, “Under no circumstances do we want another child for a few years.”

God – it feels so WEIRD to say that. But – we are at that point where if we have no more kids – we’ll be okay with that. So, we’re taking a break. We’re going to wait until 2011 to consider having more. That’s when NikkiZ will start Kindergarten (Free School!) and it will give me two solid years of having my body back. It’s tough to never be able to look into your own future and plan 100% because there’s always that chance/hope that I might be pregnant. Even the entire time I was training for the marathon, there was a part of me thinking it’s okay to miss this mid-week run because I’ll probably be pregnant next month and will have to stop training. This decision of ours will give me until 2011 to plan all of the drinking and extreme sports I want because we will not be hoping to be pregnant. We’ll actually be going about life assuming we won’t be. Very weird.

I think I’ll actually be a little depressed for awhile. The hope to be pregnant has defined my state of mind for so long, I think it will be a little sad to lose that. I’ll have to get in touch with the me who doesn’t want to be pregnant again. It’s been awhile since I’ve hung out with her and I don’t remember if she’s cool or not. I remember she drinks a lot, that’s a plus! And sometimes she actually goes out to concerts in smoky dank clubs and dances her ass off. I’m not sure how much of that stuff I’ll be doing with two kids under 5, but it will be interesting knowing I could do it if I wanted to.

Have you made that transition? What was that like for you? How much sushi did you eat to celebrate? Did you face any extreme depression or anxiety over not having a medicine cabinet stocked full of Home Pregnancy Tests? Or did you find yourself taking them every month just because old habits die hard? I’m betting that’s what I’ll be doing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Lily Allen the last several days since the media got wind of her miscarriage. Whenever I hear or read about a woman having a miscarriage, I feel this incredible need to reach out. With Ms. Allen, I can’t really do that. No without appearing like a stalker. But I have reached out to other before, even if I don’t know them. I’ve often tried to put those thoughts online…for any others who have just suffered from a miscarriage.

But – the odd thing is – I keep wanting to add the phrase for the first time on the end of that. That’s my fatal flaw and why I don’t reach out as my instincts tell me to. It often sounds like I assume everyone will have more than one. That’s when I realized that there is a difference between first and only. The things I would tell myself after that first miscarriage, are because I suffered many more. But – if I hadn’t suffered any more, maybe those things would not relate? I’m jaded, I guess. Jaded. I just keep coming back to that word. JADED.

I guess through my pregnancy losses, I’ve come up with a set of things that people might tell me that don’t help in the slightest. And my first thought when I hear someone has suffered the same loss, is to call them and say, “These are the things people will tell you. Please ignore them. They won’t make you feel any better.” But then I hear that word again: JADED. If you only have one miscarriage, those words of comfort probably help. The person who says, “It happens for a reason…” probably soothes you in some way. For me? I just want to scream: NO IT DOESN’T. Physically – there may have been a cause to my miscarriage – but that does not give it reason. To me – the spontaneous aborter – there’s a difference.

Hearing someone say, “There’s always next time,” makes me cringe because “next time” simply means another pregnancy loss. “Next time” doesn’t guarantee me a child. But maybe the woman who only has one miscarriage, maybe “next time” will give her a baby. As will her next time. And her next. So she will find that comforting.

In other words – maybe I’m the last person who should reach out to someone who has suffered their first/only miscarriage. Maybe I will take away their hope. Maybe I will undo the good their friends and family have done. Maybe those placating statements gave them peace, and my tortured past comes and disrupts that. Maybe I should put the phone down. Close the email. Just leave the first-timers to suffer with their support network and not disrupt that.

But there are things I say that I think do help. I do not minimize their loss. Not everyone fully understands the pain that comes with such a miscarriage. I do. Our society doesn’t have a proper way to mourn that type of loss. Not one that seems significant, anyway. I always pass along this link which is where I first heard of the Japanese mizuko. It was mentioned by a dearly missed blogger named Chez Miscarriage. I turn to that article with every loss of mine. Or, on the days I’m simply remembering. The days I’m thinking numbers. Counting the children I should have. Crying the tears from the pain passed. I turn to that article. Because, where I may be jaded in my responses to the best-intentioned supporters, I am still one who understands the loss. So – I still reach out and at least say to that woman, “I know.”

So, if I had Lily Allen’s email, I’d email her the link like I have so many other women. I pass it on more often than my phone number. It’s my way of saying, “Here. This helped me. May it help you too.” It’s much better than me telling them my history of more loss, or more pain. Because, if they’re lucky, this will be their ONLY miscarriage and not their FIRST.

And for those of you who had a FIRST? Feel free to be jaded with me.

Edited to Add: I re-read this entry this morning as I was testing something out with my author comments and I thought, “Geezus. That is the worst entry I’ve ever written.” I make it sound like one miscarriage is not a big deal. When, in reality? No loss has been as severe to me as that first, because I have come to expect them along the way. So – if you’ve “only had one” – please don’t let this entry make it sound like your loss is less. Your loss is great – to me – the first was the one that tore me up the most.

Also – to those of you who suffered stillbirths – I can not possibly understand that kind of loss. To me? There is a hug a difference. I couldn’t have held my losses in my arms – you could have, and probably did. I know that emptiness never fades, but I wish you peace with all of my heart.

After my June miscarriage, it seemed liked every blogger in the world was pregnant. Several on my blogroll popped up pregnant and several others that I heard about through the grapevine. I found myself struggling to read their new updates for fear they’d be pregnancy related and I just couldn’t cope with that. It’s a snotty approach, I guess, but it’s realistic. It’s hard to read about someone’s pregnancy when yours just ended.

Several blogfriends that I’ve made over the years are currently knee-deep in TTC. Suffering losses or failures at every turn. These women are my friends, and I feel pain for them because I know the drill. I think of them every time I consider writing a pregnancy related entry. I think they are why I don’t talk as much about this pregnancy as I have ones in the past. Are they worried when my feeds update that I’ll be talking about pregnancy like I was? Do my entries make them cry? I don’t want to be that blogger, but I also know that they understand. These women are brilliant like that. You know I only befriend the brilliant ones, right?

The fertility-challenged often face this dilemma and many women have written about it more eloquently than I. You make friends on the journey that will understand why you still cry on the date of your first miscarriage, even though it was 7 years and 4 pregnancies ago. They know the heartache that comes with a negative HPT. They know the frustration over non-doubling betas. It’s a bond that can get you through all of those sad times because you know others simply understand. But inevitably, and thankfully, women do get pregnant. Women do have babies. Even in the most infertile of circles. And then those friendships change.

I guess I want to let you all in the trenches know that you are still my sisters. The last few weeks have brought losses to several of the women I read the most. It’s hard to let them know I understand their pain without sounding trivial as I bitch about my nausea. But I do understand. Just like I understand that you may not be able to stop by my blog anymore. But remember, I still stop by yours. And I still long for your success and hope for your joy. And should the roles reverse someday, I know you’ll think the same.