365 Days of Not Being a Mom

It's hard to believe that today marks one year since I learned of my miscarriage, since setting into motion the double D&Cs it took to get my body back to normal. But it's not back to normal, is it? I'm not back to normal.
 
In the midst of my miscarriage, I thought, "I will remember every moment of this, & I will write it all down later. I will tell my version of this story for women who can't figure out how to tell their own." It felt too painful in the moment, though, too much emotional energy I didn't have – & I found that when I "recovered," I didn't have it in me anymore to tell that story, to go back, to delve that deep.
 
I remember most vividly those days before the miscarriage, when I knew that nothing was living or growing inside me anymore but hadn't yet undergone the procedure to finalize it. I remember walking through Target & WalMart like a zombie, equal parts trying to ignore the baby sections & drawn to them, like I couldn't help but immerse myself in the midst of the most painful possible place to be. Surrounded by strollers & diaper rash cream & pacifiers & onesies, hands on my lower stomach, I breathed deeply & quietly & told myself, "I am not a mom anymore."
 
There's something weird that happens, mentally, when you learn that you're pregnant, a mental shift from "This body is mine" to "This body is yours" – a moment in which you realize that while you're still yourself, you're also something else, something new, a protective vessel for a burgeoning life. For that one mere month that I knew I was pregnant, everything I did was designed to sustain, support, & grow that life, to ensure that the baby inside me was protected & provided for – to give my child the beginning they deserved.
 
And so, in those in-between moments, when I learned that my body had failed in its role of protector & provider but before I'd gone into surgery to make it "official," I felt more helpless than ever before – like a failure who hadn't even done anything wrong. I'd gone from not-a-mother to mother-to-be to just plain old me again, all in the span of just over a month. And maybe it shouldn't have been long enough to change me, but I did.
 
Before my miscarriage, I was never really sure whether I wanted kids. I thought I wanted to adopt, maybe; I had no real interest in the specifics of being pregnant, didn't want some foreign body taking over my body, distorting & destroying my already-warped view of the flesh in which I life. I never felt the tick of that proverbial biological clock, never felt like I was missing out, never experienced any jealousy or envy over pregnant women or parents.
 
Until I did.
 
For the last 365 days, it has felt as though everyone is getting pregnant & having babies but me – & as much as I hate experiencing that jealousy & envy, as much as it makes me feel like a jerk & a failure & a sore loser (to put it bluntly), I can't seem to help it. Every pregnancy announcement is tinged with pain; there's joy, of course, because I love my friends, & I'm not a monster. But the hurt that comes with it – the "Why her & not me? Why not me, too?" thoughts that accompany it – eat away at me, sending me into a small tailspin every time.
  
I am embarrassed by it, almost, disgusted by it – by how simple & basic & common it all feels, to suddenly feel the desperate urge to be a mother, to experience jealousy & envy toward those who are, to to struggle this much with my feelings about it, which all seem to have changed so quickly & so dramatically. I was always so proud of being a woman who wasn't defined by my status as a parent or lack thereof, & sometimes I'm ashamed to have fallen into the age-old trope of "older woman desperate to have a child."
 
I just keep thinking there's something so cruel about the fact that I spent the entirety of my 20s trying so desperately not to get pregnant, only to find that getting pregnant is actually pretty difficult. There's something deeply & existentially unfair about having been so responsible in my lack of sureness about having a child, & then, upon deciding I'm sure, discovering that perhaps I am too old or my body too broken to have a child after all.
  
In this moment, I am just short of 36 & a half years old; at one time, I thought that by now, I would be the mother of a 5-month-old, but every day that passes leaves me one day older, one day closer to "too "late." I know many women my age & older have kids, that I am not doomed, & that even if I cannot have children of my own, adoption is still an option. I know this isn't over; I know this has, in some ways, barely begun. I know there is more to come. I know now, with certainty, that Mike & I want to be parents, & that we will work to make sure it happens.
  
But in the meantime, I'm just left with the wanting – with the ache of having been there, almost, of feeling like we were on the way toward parenthood. With the pain of having chosen a name & envisioned a future & started to change our life to accommodate someone else's presence within it.
 
In this moment, I'm reminded – yet, again, like I have been nearly every day for the past 365 of them – that I am not yet a mother, & that I do not know when or if I ever will be. That this journey is not going to be easy & clear-cut & straightforward & storybook. That we can't make our bodies do what we want them to do, & that try as we might, we don't have the power to bend the future to our whims.
 
We'll keep trying. We'll keep hoping. And until then, we'll keep grieving, too.