This is not a love song

This post has nothing to do with the 80s song lyrics referenced above, but I am quite conscious that this blog is roses and rainbows and the warm summer rains of Mommy Blogs. I am unabashadly happy to have MZ, and acutely aware that lack of sleep, or obsession with finger foods or emergence of a strong will are but speedbumps in the positiveness that is parenthood. After a miscarriage and a stillbirth, I daily acknowledge that we are blessed to have MZ, and that's a word that didn't exist in my vocabulary until we met. So, rage and frustration and a sense of "oh, no, not again," are rare entrants in these pages.

But I am so damned pissed. I just canceled my subscription to the Babycenter Your Pregnancy This Week newsletter. Again. We've been down this path before, so you think it would get easier, and in a way it is. I've gone straight to fury and that must be worth something.

Another almost-completed first trimester. My fourth! I'm getting so good at managing my morning sickness that it was a few days before I realized that the prophylaxis morning crackers didn't seem necessary. That was the day I started spotting, and two days before my breastmilk came flooding back. In my heart of hearts, I knew the show was over, but damned if I'm not having THE LONGEST FLIPPIN' MISCARRIAGE on record. A week of spotting, a week of "maybe this is just a new thing for me, other people spot." A week of bargaining for happy and healthy. A week of resolutely ignoring what I know about me and morning sickness: if it stops before Week 13, no good can come of this. Lucky 13, indeed.

And I am angry to be here again. After losing our twins, I became comfortable with the notion that you can't choose your tragedy, that it visits everyone and this is ours and that which doesn't kill you, yadda yadda yadda. I even began to cherish the learnings that grew out of our pain. There's no "silver lining" to losing twin boys to premature birth, to holding them and loving them and then letting them go. But there are transformational changes that occur, and one might as well embrace them.

I am even resigned to the fact that for us, reproduction involves drama.

But christ on a cracker, I am sick of bleeding. Of bleeding and then waiting. Of bleeding and then waiting and then trying and then waiting and then all of a sudden you're in the hell of the 28-day cycle. 14 days to get psyched up, 14 days to manage disappointment and get psyched up again. The mobius loop of fertility isn't just our story, but it IS a story and for me, in my world, I WANT TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

And that makes me mad. Beyond the grief and mourning and conviction that miscarriage is often an unavoidable step towards happy and healthy when you're nearing 40, having to bleed and wait and try to find out how it ends again makes me really flippin' mad.