Category Archives: Subsequent Pregnancy

Thinking About Trying Again

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“I am half agony, half hope.”  Jane Austen,  Persuasion 

“I’ll never know, and neither will you of the life you didn’t choose.  We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours.  It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us.  There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”  Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things:  Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

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In the midst of, or immediately after a baby loss, a giant elephant of a question usually takes up residence with us.  It tends to come with a number of spin off questions and fears.

Can we try again?

Will we try again?

When will we try again?

What will happen if we try again?

I’m afraid that’s it’s the only way I’ll feel better.

I’m scared that I’m trying to replace my baby.

Will everyone forget my last baby?

How will I get through another pregnancy?

What if we lose the next one too?

I always feel a bit startled when I to read an article or book on loss that recommends people not make any major life decisions while grieving.  How might that work with baby loss?  It’s not like pregnancy or infant loss comes with a fast pass to travel through grief or an extension on the childbearing window.  And that baby longing probably isn’t going anywhere either.

But I understand where those writers on loss are coming from when they express this concern. There is, of course a difference in jumping to a decision immediately after a loss vs. waiting some weeks, months or longer. Waiting allows for some important processing of your feelings and I recommend giving yourself whatever time and space you can.  However, my experience is that the feelings accompanying our loss will still be actively living with us when other factors compel us to make a decision about trying for another baby.

Your brain on grief may not be the best one for choosing what neighborhood to move to or what kind of car you’ll need for the next ten years.   In the midst of grieving our babies, it may not seem possible for us to do a good job of assessing decisions that require weighing facts and anticipating the needs and desires of our future self.  Yet, somehow, that’s exactly what we do.  We have to and we do.

This is the part where I wish I had a roadmap to give you so you could know what direction to go in and feel sure that you would get there.  You definitely deserve such a thing.  I’d love to have a map that would guide you through the decision about trying for a pregnancy or other family building option when you are heartbroken and know that pregnancy does not always equal living baby and that sometimes things can go so terribly wrong.  I would post it here, I would tell all my clients and anyone else who needed the information.  But I think some places we visit in life don’t lend themselves to mapping– the terrain just isn’t clear enough for everyone to see it the same way.  For that reason, this walk is less a determined march and more a humble exploration.

That said, you are traveling a road with lots of others ahead of you and alongside you.  Some things are known.  Some landmarks, and places to pause, have been identified and can be pointed out.

A first stop is often where you spend some time trying to understand the risk of recurrence of whatever version of pain and bad luck struck before.  This may be a short visit or a long layover.  Medical appointments, tests, procedures or research might all be needed or desired.  And then there will be a time to stop doing those things, remembering that you can google your heart out and will still never get the specific answer to the question “what will happen if I try again?”.

Less objective is ascertaining what we are up for emotionally.  Trying for a baby at any time is a leap of faith.  When your previous leap has landed you face down at the bottom of a gully, it makes sense to evaluate whether you are up for trying again.  The place where you examine  your feelings is another stop on the road that may be approached in fits and starts and will probably take a lot out of you.  It’s also one that deserves your time.

The spot where you at last make your decision may take many attempts to reach.  The decision itself may look familiar or it may be brand new.  You might be clear that your heart pulls strongest in the direction of trying for another baby in whatever manner you did before.  As scary as this might be, it may feel very right to try again as soon as possible.  It may fill you with hope.  It may feel healing.  The task at this point becomes how and when to best support yourself in this direction.  It may be useful to remind yourself often that, regardless of outcome, this will absolutely be a different pregnancy or baby than the one that came before.

You may also decide to try in a different way than you have tried in the past, such as with assisted reproduction or family building through adoption.  Trying in a different way requires learning and investment,  but may be indicated for medical or emotional reasons.  For some people it gives an extra benefit of a delineation of this experience from the previous one.  Any direction, though, is still an adjustment from the path you were on with your previous pregnancy or baby.  Any direction, even standing still, is at some point a decision.

Finally, for all kinds of reasons, you may feel that your best decision is to remain child-free or without more living children than you already have.  This could be due to age, finances or the understanding that this direction can lead you to a happy and meaningful life.  Finding others who have had done the same thing may help.  One option is to look at the RESOLVE website for articles about living child-free.  Acceptance and enjoyment of the life you have can’t be forced, but it can be found.

The decision of whether or not to try again for a baby after perinatal loss tends to be a combination of fact finding and soul searching in the midst of what can be debilitating pain.  It’s often a question that stops us in our tracks with fear or confusion and wakes us up with need and hope.  After baby loss we are usually keenly aware that we have not and will not be offered a risk free life.  We are not calling all the shots and wherever we end up on our decision making path,  it won’t end in a flag raising.  But the combination of hope and intention is powerful.  It contains in itself some meaning and beauty.  At the end of our path, it’s our moment to pick up our dandelions, take a deep breath and blow.

Smacking Sharks

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The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. – Abraham Maslow

Blue ocean underwater sun rays background

I recently spent some time reading aloud to a family member who wasn’t feeling well.  Our selection was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the true story of an Olympic runner who was in World War II. It’s not the kind of book I usually go for, but I plan to finish it as I’m finding it to be not just a page turner, but pretty darn inspiring.

The part we just finished (spoiler alert) involves the main character, Louie Zamperini, floating in a life raft after his B-24 bomber has crashed with the loss of eight men aboard.  He is one of the three crew members who have survived together on two life rafts.  After being adrift for 27 days, with the men in the throes of both intense starvation and dehydration, a plane appears overhead.  Unfortunately, it’s a Japanese aircraft,  which starts firing at them.  Louie jumps overboard to avoid being shot and the life raft begins to be riddled with bullets.

The area of the ocean where this takes place is infested with sharks, and as Louie enters it, he suddenly becomes the intended object of the next meal.  Weak and underwater, Louie is approached by attacking, open mouthed sharks which he fights off using the information he learned in a survival class (basically to widen his eyes, bare his teeth and bop the sharks on the snout with an open palm).

He goes back and forth between shark bopping and climbing back onto the raft in between the six passes of the plane and six episodes of shooting (plus a dropped bomb that did not explode).   When he climbs back aboard the raft for the last time he finds his two crew mates miraculously unscathed by the shooting.  The three of them manage to save one raft and patch the 48 bullet holes in it while taking turns pumping out water and clubbing the sharks that are now jumping out of the water to get at them.  Altogether a pretty intense series of images…

The story stirred up a lot of thoughts for me, and is currently serving as a marker of what a really bad day can look like.  It made me think, too, about how so many dramatic episodes in life seem to be a mixture of lucky and unlucky events.  Another take on the story could be that it’s a compelling message about not giving up in the middle of a crisis.  And it has definitely crossed my mind that I may want to invest in a survival class.

It also made me think about how in any challenge, no matter how dire or convoluted, we can only face our issues one step at a time.  We can only be where we are right then doing the little piece in front of us.  We can only be right where we are.

Louie had a bunch of things on his mind that day in the ocean and he was full of action, but he wasn’t really multi tasking.  When he was smacking sharks, he was smacking sharks.  Not dealing with starvation, dehydration, avoiding bullets, fixing the boat or trying to float to land.  He wasn’t even breathing.

If Maslow was right about the ability to live in the present moment being a component of mental wellness, and if all of those writers, meditators and therapists preaching mindfulness are also on to something, then our moment, our now, seems a bit more sacred.   What we are doing right now is what we need to be doing fully.  And all the moments coming will benefit from engagement with the one we’re having with now.

More aspirational than realistic as a way to be all the time?  Heck, yeah.  And what’s wrong with that?

I was pretty anxious during my last pregnancy, which occured after my two losses.  But I remember a point where I really started to appreciate that there were very few things in the pregnancy that were under my control.  I could try to eat well, take my vitamins, go to my doctor appointments and generally try to live a safe and pleasant life.   And that very short and humble list was the total extent of my control over the experience.

And sometimes, not all of the time, I felt the freedom of that humble list.  I could eat and think about eating (way too many bagels for some reason), take my vitamins and so on and those actions had meaning and purpose.  The rest of the time I could try to take up my now, whether that moment was about acknowledging and living with a moment of fear (which always passes eventually) or enjoying a moment of peace or hope.  Just like in meditation or any type of mindfulness, I didn’t stay in this place.  My mind would race away and I would have to circle back, but it helped.  It helped a lot.

In times of uncertainty, (which, realistically, is always) this is the only moment we have.  If we’re in a tough spot, breaking it down is likely to help us get through it.  If we’re in a great spot, it’s probably worth taking in.  Yes, we’re going to sleep through and space out through much of our lives.  But it just might help to notice that we can also jump in and roll around in a given moment.  Your right now experience may feel like a challenge, a gift, or pretty inconsequential, but by noticing it, you might live it a little more deeply.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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