Mourning Celebrations
Just a heads’ up-this one’s about children in a tough, if-you’re-going-through-treatment-you-may-want-to-give-this-one-a-miss kind of way.
A number of things have been occurring that send little thoughts scurrying into my head. Some of them I can talk about. Some I can’t. I’ll start from where I can.
The babies turn two in two days’ time. I can barely believe that two years ago I had yet to meet two of the single most important people I would ever get the privilege to know. Two years ago I was panting to breathe, I was sick as a dog, I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t get comfortable, and I had yet to know what it was like to see my daughter light up at the sight of her Baby, I hadn’t known what it was like to get a slobbery kiss from my son.
That in itself is hard for me.
My period was late last week. In the past 6 months I’ve had a lot of problems with my hormones, periods are late or early, breakthrough bleeding is common. I sat around twiddling my thumbs until my period finally arrived, at which point I announced, like I always do “Looks like I’m not pregnant.”
As though it were an option.
It’s not that easy. For reasons unknown to myself I still have a bag of needles under the bed, remnants from the many rounds of IVF. I can’t throw the bag out. I don’t know why I can’t throw the bag out, I just can’t. I guess IVF has just become a part of me and, strangely, a part of what’s under my bed. I suppose it’s what made me what I am (and has certainly helped my statistics).
I’m making a slide show for the babies’ birthday like I always do, and I find I want to chuck every picture in it. Every picture is something. I literally have thousands of photos of them from each year so far, and I take so many that Alastair moans about the hard drive space I take up. I just don’t want to let a moment pass by. I can’t let it pass, I can’t let anything pass lest I miss a milestone, a first, a moment I’ll never get to have again.
On Tuesday I was with a huge group of women and two fantastic bloggers. We were talking about our fertility treatments, and I talked about the donor cycles I did, the false hopes I gave two other women who never succeeded in having the child of their dreams. The guilt I have at not helping those women is almost palpable. I feel like I personally failed them, like they bet on the wrong horse. I’m most remorseful about the last woman – she got two lousy eggs from me. I could say that my cycle was so crap because I had to be down-regulated for so long as her cycle couldn’t get under control, but it doesn’t help. She paid a fortune to have eggs from a known donor and she got two miserable fucking eggs. And worse, she got to find out that I also got two lousy eggs, and that my two lousy eggs turned into two “meh” embryos, and now my two average embryos have blond hair and blue eyes and a preference for spaghetti bolognaise.
The guilt is overwhelming if I let myself think about it.
A giant fuck-off swingset and playhouse arrived today for the babies, courtesy of their grandparents. I have an afternoon set to make fairy cakes for the babies’ nursery tomorrow, and a giant cupcake-cake for their family birthday party on Saturday. I have birthday presents and “I am 2!” T-shirts and I’ve got to clean out all their 12-18m clothes as they’ve outgrown them.
And I can’t stop crying.
I am stupidly unable to stop crying.
A friend asked me what was the basis of my crying, what was behind it, and the truth came to me: I’m happy. And sad.
Because I know one thing and I have to accept it: This is it. Nick and Nora are it.
Something’s happened this week, something has cemented it, it’s just so crystal clear now that it feels like I’ve been stabbed. My two are the only children that I will ever have. This is it. And I know that there are people who read here who are still trying, who probably want to reach through this screen and choke me to death. At least you have children! you might want to scream. Are you so ungrateful? Of course you want to say that. Before I succeeded I’d read other women who’d been successful and then mourned the loss of more and I wanted to tell them they were fucking ungrateful and if I could just get to where they were then I would never feel like that, I’d never be ungrateful.
But I’m not ungrateful, I swear to god I’m not. I am the luckiest woman in the whole wide world ever (and if I haven’t just ostracized those in treatment for seeming ungrateful I have now done so for seeming gloating. I’m so sorry). I am so hugely thankful for my children. It’s said that if you have boy/girl twins then you’ve won the IVF lottery and I have won the lottery, wrapped in Christmas, sealed with golden velvet kisses. Pick your cheesy metaphor on it and I will agree. Please don’t for once think that I am disregarding Nick and Nora and pining without thought for them.
When you have twins – particularly boy/girl twins – people say to you “You got it out of your system in one go!” And it’s best to laugh and go along with it but the truth is, it doesn’t get it out of your system having two at once. I wager it’s exactly opposite. Children are not an itch – you don’t scratch it and it disappears. If you have two kids two years apart then you transition from stage to stage with one, then go through it all again with the other, all armed with the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom of having been there/done that. If you have two at once you race through it together and then look back at the path strewed with detritus – soothies and mobiles and bouncy chairs and 0-6m onesies and you don’t get to go back and pick those things up.
Add to it the infertility element which tastes of broken desperation and it’s worse. You fight so hard to get there and when you do, you realize that yes. It’s all worth it. Every needle and every scan and every hope and prayer and yes, even every failure and every miscarriage…you would do it again knowing what you do now. Include a dangerous and very emotionally charged pregnancy and still, yes, my god you’d do it again. You’d be more careful, you know what you want and don’t want now, you’d celebrate your body instead of hiding it, you’d laugh about the pouch that you know you’re going to have afterward because you already have one now. The history, the challenges of IVF, the tears the prayers the fights the screaming the agony the hope…it was all worth it.
But this is it.
I will never have more children.
I am 35 years old and my children are gorgeous and brilliant and I love them to pieces. I would have more kids in an instant.
But I won’t.
This is it.
It’s time to throw out the IVF bag of needles and to honestly clean out. I’ve kept a box of things that I just can’t let go of theirs and I will continue to keep things as they grow. I just may not re-visit the box for a very long time. I will bake fairy cakes and I will upload photos and I will not be able to stop crying for some time as the truth – which I suppose I have always known, only somehow never accepted – really hurts. I suppose it’s bittersweet. I’m mourning the future children I won’t have while celebrating the present children I do.
I have two children. Two amazing, fun, happy, loving, wonderful children.
And that is all I will ever have.
At some point I’m going to be ok with that (better had do as there’s really no other option), only I’m not there just now.
-S.
This post particularly speaks to me right now as I am on the cusp of meeting my own boy-girl twins for the first time.
In addition, the frequent comments of, “Oh, then you’ve gotten it all over with!” etc. make assumptions that I don’t appreciate. Wanting more children because the ones I have are so wonderful is entirely possible, and I’m not comfortable ruling anything out right now (but DH and I have agreed never to resume treatments, so it would have to be a miracle baby). Your point about having only one go at each stage is well-taken. Before becoming pregnant with boy-girl twins I didn’t get why anyone would keep wanting more after that, but now I do — and I haven’t even met my babies yet.
It is so wonderful that you have these two children and that they are so amazing, but I’m sorry that you don’t get to see who else might have been.
This post encapsulate secondary infertility in the proverbial nutshell.
The other day I received a letter stating that I should soon be getting the bill for cryopreservation, and I just wanted to shout YES, now we can try again – except the money isn’t there. And I turn 42 in June. I am, possibly, even more desperate than I was before to have a baby because yes, it’s all worth it, the pain, the agony, the depression – all of it. Because my son is, selfishly, the best thing I have ever done, and parenting is like a drug, one I can’t get enough of.
Should it be that he is my one and only…I just can’t think of it. I simply can’t think that’s a reality right now. I refuse to believe it’s true.
Everytime I say the words ‘IVF Jackpot’ I can feel my mouth twist up at the corners. There is seldom an unconditional win with the bittersweet that is IF treatment. Complicated pregancies, miscarriages, unanticipated numbers of babies, the thought that This Is It: Right Here, Right Now; I will never have a child aged X, and learning to do X again. But the joy. Oh, my, yes. The Joy.
I’ll look after your IVF box for you if you like. Not gone, but one step removed.
Hugs to you, babe.
I’ll continue to sit here in my corner and dream of my own maybe someday while I enjoy watching your miracles grow and explore and light up your world.
What a brilliant post. Brutally honest, and even though I sit so far outside of what you have had to go through-all of it-I can taste what you are saying. I would never want to sound like an arrogant bitch; especially with Scott, with whom I pretty much decided “hey, I want another baby”, flushed the birth control, slipped B into A, and 4 months later I’m pregnant.
Then I had him, and it was an un-enjoyable pregnancy, he was a temperamental baby, and I had long made up my mind that I was done having children. Two healthy kids-I couldn’t tempt Fate again, and honestly I did not want too.
Yet I feel guilty. When you share all your hopes and your pain, all that you have gone through physically and mentally. As I watched my brother and his wife try for years, then finally get pregnant, and now have one twin at home-the other just celebrating his 9 month on this earth in an isolette in the NICU. And more guilt for how I pissed and moaned because Scott was in the NICU two days. My sister loved being pregnant, and says that if she didn’t have Crohn’s she would be a surrogate. I am healthy and had healthy pregnancies-but I loathed being pregnant. And I feel guilty.
The common sense side of me knows that I should not have more kids just because I can; it is irresponsible and selfish (hear me Duggar’s? I’m talking to you!). Yet my heart tugs on a day like today, sitting here with a closed sign on my uterus.
Why are you done? I know IVF is hell, but if you really want to, is there a medical reason to prevent you? If you want more babies so badly, you should have them. What could possibly be more important?
Oh I so get this. We have gone back and forth and back and forth again. We too just got our bill for embryo storage for the 4 we have from our “jackpot” cycle. We WANT another. And yet, do we? I want to go through all the baby stages again, and yet, I worry about taking attention away from two little ones who have had to share their attention from the time they were conceived. I know people have more than two children all the time. I know it works. But the relationships I have with my children I cherish so much that as much as I want to have another, I worry.
I hate the assumptions of “boy/girl twins! You got it all over in one shot”. First off asshat, it was a damned LOT of shots. Secondly, why do people feel qualified to make random assumptions about my desire to procreate? I wish I could find an equally absurd analogy but I can’t. My answer usually is, “maybe” when someone says that to me. We actually had a woman this past weekend tell us NOT to have another (random stranger) because they are cute now but later not so cute. Right, because we have no concept that toddlers become teenagers. Do I fear the day my children will yell they hate me and slam the door and not talk to me for 3 days? Absolutely. But having children is not about having babies – it’s about raising PEOPLE.
And yet, even with all our doubts, I can’t let go either. We still have needles, alcohol wipes, follistim pens (even though we won’t need that since all we’ll do is an FET) and other assorted paraphernalia from IVF. And the money isn’t there or we would have already tried. Because the uncertainty of what could be is hard.
I just re-read your post and realize my comment was insensitive. I missed the “Something happened this week” part. Whatever happened, please consider what you want to be looking at in 15 years: Alastair’s saggy butt (assuming he’s still around), an opulent home, a brilliant career or 4 or 5 children that will bring you unending joy (and pain)? 35 is too young to definitively say “It’s over”
Possibly this comment is also insensitive. However, someone should have said these things to you before you had your tubal. Don’t assume the future again.
From a person without kids at the moment: It’s OK that you’re sad. Of course you love your children. You’re sad because you had a dream and it’s not going to happen. That has nothing to do with how much you love Nick and Nora. Much love to you and wishes for peace and strength.
Marie, another pregnancy, if even possible, might just kill Shannon. That’s what’s stopping her.
And while I sympathise with your mourning, dear sweet Muse of mine, I would personally rather not have you subject yourself to gestational torture again. If anything happened to the squirmy while you were gestating, you wouldn’t forgive yourself. And if anything happened to YOU during, I think I’d have to join you.
Thanks Ms. Pants. You always have to consider those that are here before those that might come. I had no idea, though. Her last pregnancy, while no fun, didn’t seem life-threatening.
@ Marie – pregnancy and I, we don’t get on well. I already have permanent effects from the pregnancy, and Pants is right – it would be gestational torture. Besides that, there are other issues involved in this (as well as in the background on the tubal) that I don’t talk about -money, what Kim said in her comment about feeling like there’s enough of you to spread around, time passing, and a few other very key criteria. Unless the Lotto is won, I’ll never have an opulent home and I’ll never be one of those top guys in a posh office. I may want more children, but it’s a selfish thing, this want of mine. I want. Not need. Hindsight would have helped a lot in life. But then that’s the way of it.
And Alastair’s family luckily don’t get saggy butts. Not like I’ve been looking at the men in their line or anything, but it doesn’t look out of the ordinary on any of them.
@ Pants – I was tempted to write “if I go, come with me” but then that started to screech of Sid and Nancy a bit. I can be Sid and you can be Nancy if you want.
I think that you’re going through the oh-God-my-babies-aren’t-babies-anymore phase that all of the women I know seem to go through. Once they’re potty-trained for a year I’ll bet that you’ll be reluctant to face the diapers again.
About the time my youngest turned 4, my wife started hinting that maybe we should try for a boy. I told her she’d have to do that with her next husband.
Someday they’ll be teenagers and you’ll wonder why in the hell you ever wanted kids in the first place. ;-)
Shannon, I’m sorry. That must really hurt.
BTW, why does everyone say that about teenagers? Mine are fine. Sure I worry a lot, but I worried about SIDS when they were babies, I worried about them making friends in grade school, I worried about the friends they made, etc. I’m missing the part where teen-agers are living hell. Melissa and Jeff sound tough, but given their up-bringing, what else could you expect? They’ll probably be hard to take as adults, too. Don’t worry about teenage years, you’ll all be fine.
@ Marie – Melissa and Jeff were only as tough as any kids are in a new step-parent/mixed with teen hormones situation. We’ve had our ups and downs, but they are fabulous kids. They’re not hard to handle now and they’ll undoubtedly be fabulous adults, too.
It comes and goes for me. Sometimes I am fine with having no more children. Other days I just want to curl up and cry about it. I guess the good news is that the days I’m content happen more than the days I want to cry. With my marriage in the state it’s in, I feel fine with putting my energy toward making my family as it is as happy as possible.
I can’t believe those Lemonheads are about to be two. I can’t wait to see photos of their celebration!
God I understand this … I know I am so lucky. Success at first IVf … issue free pregnancy until the shock of the very abrupt premature end. Intial scare but completely healthy and perfect little boy who is now 8 weeks.
yet yesterday I was in tears over how tight his new born clothes are ….. tears at the loss of my tiny baby when I know I should be enjoying every second and looking forward to every new development.
He is my last …. and I am so lucky it stops me breathing sometimes!
I was recently talking to my husband’s niece whose kids are 14 and 10 (boy and girl). I didn’t know her when she had them and that they were IVF. She talked about how much she wanted a larger family (she is one of TWELVE kids!) and how hard it was to finally stop trying after her 2. She knows that she is so blessed – her kids are amazing, but she said that she still feels a pang of sadness when she sees a baby. Until then, I thought they were the perfect family, healthy, successful, happy – one of each and all that. I had no idea of the sadness that lay beneath. It taught me something and changed me. I will never presume on another person’s family again. And for you, yes your children are amazing. But that doesn’t mean your sadness isn’t real. Your feelings are valid. Always remember that.
I did not go through what you went through. I want to make that clear, so I am not mistaken for someone who has traveled the tough road you traveled to have the two glorious babies you have.
But… how you got them at this point, truly is irrelevant, right? I mean, it is relevant in that YOU know what you went through, but the bottom line is, you got pregnant, you had babies, you became a mother. That last section is what the rest of us due… you just took a hellish road to get there. We got pregnant, we had babies, we became mothers.
In that sense, we are in the same field. I think it is natural for a woman to have healthy babies and wonder if she should have one more. A good mother with all the love in her heart as you have for your mate and your children, often wonders, “One more?”
I knew for sure we had enough children (we have three) when I nearly went insane after the last. I told my husband, “We can’t do this again. If I get pregnant again, you’ll find me hanging in the shower.” And I’m not trying to be insensitive to the women having to travel the road you did, just being honest that having 3 under 4 years of age was more than my focused engineering mind could take. I had hit that point of ‘too much’. Yet, I was the one, at age 34, with two wonderful healthy little boys wondering “one more?” and not to try for a girl, but because I just loved them SO MUCH that I wanted to have another. As I said to my husband, “I don’t want to be 40 and wonder, “Should we have?”"
So I think what you are feeling is normal. As I said… how you got to where you are with your children is not the path I traveled, but after they were born, we ended up on the same field… both moms with wonderful happy healthy children, that we could easily love more, if we could.
I don’t know if this help. Take care.
I know we were talking about this earlier, for me, at least, even though they are spaced two years apart, knowing that it is my last has been a lot harder on me than I thought. With the Mini, I was so on the fence, and I had a hard time believing it was my last. With LG, I KNEW it was my last. During my pregnancy, I was over the pregnancy part enough, that knowing it was my last, hadn’t fully hit me, and rightfully so. I couldn’t get into that mental state yet. I had to get over the giving birth hurdle. But when she was born, oh my word, it hit me so much harder than I ever thought it would. Because I KNOW we are done. That chapter is closed. My mental state CANNOT handle anymore kids and LG? She is dream baby. You don’t get that more than once.
There is something so magical, and powerful about a newborn. It’s both hell and glamorous. It is the best sleeping pill. The minute you put them in my arms, I was out like a light, so long as they were sleeping on my chest. There is only one first day that you get. Only one first smile, only one first year.
I was lucky that I got to space mine out. But maybe, for me anyway, I can’t say it’s any easier than realizing that you had your firsts in duplicate. It makes me ache more.
I just cleaned out my son’s drawers today. Summer is over and he has outgrown most of his long sleave shirts and pants. When the hell did this happen? I am mouring him growing up and not knowing if I will ever have another. I am no an IVFer, but I don’t know if I will ever have another baby. I am finding parenthood more difficult than I ever thought it would be. And don’t know if it would be fair to him to have another one. My guy is 18 months old today. He shares your b-day and your twins share my brothers. (Still kicking myself for not putting Oct. 3 in the baby pool) I’ve always wondered what yoru IVF story is. I read a lot of IVF blogs and you hear of PCOS, FETS, Betas, blastocysts other lingo and issues and maybe I missed it or you didn’t write about it. I was just curious. I hope I am not being inconsiderate in asking.
N&N are lucky to have you – this post is such a nice reminder of what lengths you’ve already gone through for them and how completely cherished they are. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting another, or contemplating it. You did pretty well with the two of them…it’s not unreasonable to feel some urge to have more. To ask you not to have that thought at all would be like asking you not to want another bag of wine gums, after the first was just so good…not that I’m comparing your children to wine gums, of course. You get the point. Hopefully (otherwise I’m coming off as a total lunatic).
I’ve got a little something to send their way, which should make it to the mail…at some point. It’s on my list. In the meantime, I wish them (and you) a happy birth-a-versary.
Boy is this something I understand. I envy women who just know when they are done. I don’t feel done at two but would I feel done at 3? At 4? Strangely I think I would have been okay being childless since I just wasn’t one to have maternal feelings before I had babies myself. And then I was okay at just one. Then number two came along and he gave me joy, gave number one joy and boom! That’s when I felt like I wanted even more.
If I had started having children earlier I’m sure I would have had more than two but I’m approaching 40 in 8 days so my two boys will have to be it. I just try not to think about what I’ve missed out on by being a late bloomer. I just thank God that I bloomed at all!
I’m getting the baby things ready for a yard sale in the spring. I hope I can do it. I put some baby stuff out this year and I was happy that it didn’t all sell.
Shannon,
As you know, my two little twinks turn two in a week and a half. I am crying every day, like I did last year when they turned one. I can’t throw anything of theirs away either, and I have yet to toss any of the old pregnancy/ovulation tests, even though I know we’re done.
I am thrilled and well aware of how lucky we are, but it still makes me sad to go through everything for the first and last time, and it makes it feel like the past two years have gone by on fast forward.
I am going to have to reread your post, as it made me cry the whole way through. (Although it doesn’t take much right now. :)
I know our roads to this point are a little different, but I know I feel a little less alone, knowing I have someone in the same place I am.
I think it’s “Last baby syndrome”. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. This baby is my last. I know that. and that makes every breath she takes that much more special to me. I never paid attention to so many things my older daughter did on a day to day basis. With this baby, I catalog each one, almost obsessively.
SO I get what you’re saying.
And it makes my uterus ache for “just one more”.
I was off at college when my mother had to get a hysterectomy and only saw her a little bit during that time. Still I saw her cry several times for the kids she wasn’t going to have. Anyone can feel that, you have nothing to apologize for.
I was raised to believe the saddest words in the English language are “What might have been”…
If your two cherubs don’t equal “we’re done” for your heart and soul you need to acknowledge that – feeling guilty and pretending it’s not true is no good for anyone! I still mourn the children we were never able to have – you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.
It’s so true that the two-fer is very much NOT the same as two singletons at once in an enormous number of ways.
I’m sorry it makes you sad that the Lemonheads will be your onlies. But I’m glad you have the two of them; they’ve been very good for you and I know you for them.
And I too still have a bag of needles and alcohol swabs that I can’t throw out even though we’re definitely done.
I have no children, and may never have any children.
This is a beautiful post. Not something I hadn’t thought about, when having children through treatments seemed to be a closer possibility, i.e. what if I can have one, but that’s it? I had always dreamed of having several. Where does that dream go?
Now the dream has kind of shrunken down to, maybe, can I, please, someday, one baby? Please? But do dreams really shrink down like that?
Probably not–as I think you’re saying. Even after you win the lottery.
I here the tinkling noise and it has me worried. Please accept my worry noise.
I’m sad. Very sad.