Pro-Life Shock Value and the Miscarrying Mom

 I have a unique perspective.  Maybe it's not really that unique, considering 1 in 4 women have a miscarriage at some point in their lives.  I've had 3 miscarriages, all in the span of one year, so the emotional impact of this hits me pretty hard, and I think that is understandable.  

I am Catholic and I am also 100% pro-life.  You would think those two things would be synonymous, but it is sadly something I must clarify due to current leadership who loudly wave the Catholic flag and yet fully support abortion.  But I digress.  

Around this time of year, there is much talk about supporting life, as the March For Life (was supposed to) happens at this time.  Lots of people do good things such as post their support for the unborn on social media, images of the unborn and the like.  It is good to support good things.  

But by golly it stings.  Seeing images of newborn babies, ultrasounds of the unborn, talking about making "the womb into a tomb" for those who have abortions, etc...freaking hurts.  It hurts my raw emotions.  My brain knows that my dead children are not the same as dead children lost to abortion.  But seeing those ultrasounds and all the macabre shock value pictures...yowza.  It's like a gut punch to someone who isn't your intended victim. 

I am a mother begging for God to give me just one child to hold.  Just one to somehow survive the horror house that is apparently my womb.  There are so many like me.  Please think twice before you hit send on that noble pro-life post that is meant to shock and shame those who support abortion.  There are silent ones who get caught in the cross fire.  

Perfectly folded

In the evening, as the sun starts to think of sinking a bit in the sky, the breezes get a tiny bit cooler.  The cicadas are singing their unmistakable song of summer.  Families are starting to settle into dinner and watching TV together.  And a heaviness descends on my heart.  It starts small; almost imperceptible.  Then it becomes a few blinks of a headache, a fatigue, a "I just need to lie down for a bit".  Then, before you know it, hours have past, the sun has gone away, and my thoughts are hopelessly tangled up in despair.  Thoughts of "what if..."

"...maybe I should have stayed with my old doctor".
"What if I had started progesterone a few days earlier?"
"Should I have stayed on the paleo diet?"
"I did have a glass of wine last week..."
"Maybe this was my last chance."

Thoughts are invisible, but they are heaviest things in the world.

I see flickers of health in me, mentally.  But sometimes it is crying or acting crazy.  Or writing bad words over and over in my journal.  A lot of times it is avoidance, or transferring my feelings onto obsession with some unrelated thing - "I need to find the perfect PopSocket for my phone!".  Or "I need to read about the history of human interaction with sloths".  Today was "I need to organize all of my quilting fabric into perfectly folded five inch stacks.". 

All of this is an attempt to gain control over some small aspect of my life.  My heart has been drawn and quartered, I think, because I can't feel much today.  Not much at all.  Except a dull, heavy pressure. 

I want to fold myself into squares in lovely rainbow order.  I want to be organized and have my life put together.  I want to make baby quilts for my own babies, not just other people's babies.  I want all this stored up love to be tangible. 

God has taken my joys.  I do have a few more left, but they are small compared to my children.  So I focus on the tiny things - the mundane and meaningless things, because they are in my power. 

Another Loss

It's really interesting to me how I'm always too scared to announce that I'm pregnant, for fear of it failing.  When it fails, I'm okay with writing about it.  So guess what I'm doing today?  

I still have never announced officially that I'm pregnant, not any of the three times I've been pregnant in the past year.  I was always of the conservative mindset that you don't announce until the end of the first trimester when the "danger was mostly passed" (lol).  Now that I've been pregnant three times, and never gotten past 10 weeks, I cannot conceive of being past the first trimester.  I was talking with my husband yesterday, before I got the utterly shocking phone call that my HCG had plummeted, and saying that it's so hard to be hopeful because I literally cannot imagine having a huge belly at this point, or seeing a heartbeat on the scan, or taking a baby home.  It's a foreign concept.  

Pregnancy to me is like playing Stella in "A Streetcar Named Desire", which I did.  It's putting on a pregnant suit and taking it off a few days or weeks later.  It's acting.  It's not real.  

But the devastation that follows it is real.  Whew momma, is it real.  It's lying in bed, silently crying and scrolling though Twitter while I emo tweet what I'm feeling and delete most of them later on.  It's messaging a few select people who I only talk to when I'm trying to get pregnant or losing a baby.  It's seeing babies in public, at mass, the store...wherever, and feeling my heart rate spike.  It's the endless pregnancy announcements that feel like a lead weight in my stomach.  It's watching myself become a more and more bitter and angry person every time it happens.  It's seeing myself rapidly age in the mirror.  It's having to go back and tell a few people that my pregnancy will no longer be an issue in their plans.  And then the actual miscarriage - curled up with cramps as my body goes through a tiny labor, canceling plans because "I'm not feeling well", and having to put on a brave face to a world that didn't even know I lost yet another child.  

This isn't a fun post to write or read.  But I must get my feelings out.  COVID-19 and the ensuing societal political dog-and-pony show have taken away my coping mechanisms.  I need to GET AWAY, but where?  Everywhere has restrictions.  I can't go visit my friends in New Mexico or New Orleans because there is nowhere to go once we get there.  Restrictions, distancing, capacity limits.  Places closed.  Quarantines.  The political implications aside, wearing a mask is chipping away at my sanity.  I need to be FREE right now and it is a very visceral set of chains to me.  I feel the world is closing in on me and it's hard to breathe.

I stopped being open with the world years ago when the politics started heating up to the point where people couldn't disagree and respect each other.  Now that I've lost my jobs, my income, all of my babies, and my social life...I'll probably start writing here a bit more.  (I hope).  I need community even though I'm an introvert.  I need people to talk to.  I need support.  I have the best husband in the world, but the weight of all of this is too much to bear.