Content warning: This blog mentions pregnancy loss.
It’s the uncertainty of it all that scares me as much as it keeps me alive. I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel a bit flat, and the word I keep coming back to is ‘uncertain’.
I think I want everything to be compartmentalized, my love, my grief, my overwhelm, my indecisiveness, my hopes, my fears.. I want a place for everything. But everything feels a bit mixed up right now.
Sure it could be the lack of exercise or the fact that my diet has been pretty beige as of late. It could be that I have a high intolerance to dairy but cheese is life, and there’s been a few more wines these holidays, but its none of those things, it’s something else.
I wondered if it was Harry, the pulling him out of kindy, the paediatrician appointment coming up, the meltdowns and walking on egg shells the past few weeks. Was it that?
I wondered if it was my work, while I will always write, and I am working on future books, I still sometimes get this feeling of… what next? Figuring out my work boundaries, sometimes lost in this busy online world. Was it that?
Is it just this crazy world we live in now?
I asked my husband the other day, “why do you think I feel this way, I can’t figure it out”, and he told me that he had been feeling that way too. We were at the sink together doing the dishes and it always feels like the place to say something (or nothing), and there it was.
He simply said “we never dealt with the miscarriages”, he then paused and said, “I don’t think you have dealt with it”. I wasn’t surprised, in a way I was glad he said it.
But how do you ‘deal’ with something? What do you do?
I have allowed myself to see pregnancy announcements and smile and then question that strange niggle of sadness I have, like a hidden pocket somewhere. I have sat in the feeling and realised that maybe it affected me more than I thought it had. I have talked about it, not a lot, but I have. I’ve gotten on with things, because that’s what you do.
The other day Harry said, “Mummy, I want a baby brother”, I felt slightly winded because it occurred to me that maybe we never would have another, maybe we couldn't?. I wasn’t sure if I was OK with that or not. Suddenly our plans weren’t really in our hands. Are they ever? or do we just think they are?
It’s the uncertainty.
And am I even allowed to feel that way when we were so lucky enough to have two?
When I wasn’t even sure I wanted 3?
When couples hold hands through years of these struggles with no children at all?
How can I even feel uncertain when so much certainty around me?
But I do feel that way, that’s just it.
I do.
It never negates the love I feel each moment I breathe one of them in, the absolute gift my family is to me. The small heaviness I carry will get lighter, I know that, but here I am acknowledging it’s there.
I guess I am just waiting for something in my mind to click, for something to make sense, do we make peace with it and leave it? was it just not meant for us? Do we try again and possibly keep facing this? Do I really want that?
Maybe some things will never make sense.
Regardless of the uncertainty I am feeling, I am certain of the good days and the bad days. They’ll come in waves, 3 good, one bad (and that the love for your unborn baby cannot be measured in weeks).
I am certain that this discomfort is pulling me more into the present. My confusion of the past and the future has left me with the now, because that’s where I need to be, that's all I have in this moment.
I am certain that contentment and longing maybe aren’t so opposite after all, not If we can feel them together.
It will happen.
I just don’t know what ’it’ is.
I’ll figure it out though, that I am certain.