Contents of my uterus: confidential until further notice

Not so long ago, I received an email; to be precise from this friend, he of the oh-so-early, oh-so-unassailable-pregnancy-optimism.

This most recent communique was a quick, punchy two-liner probing enquiring about the...ahem, situation with our efforts for a dream baby. Quote: success with pregnancy...dare I ask?, followed by a signature asking that I pass on his best wishes to H. He is clever and interested and witty and great fun to have at a party, this friend. No one has ever accused him of being overly delicate.

As for me, I have never been someone who confided my deepest feelings and angst around our struggles in that department to my friends or family, at least not since the early days of loss and grief, when I learned a disheartening lesson about how disinterested, selfish, trivializing people can be when faced with the kinds of tragedies they'd rather not think about. Most have a tendency to make it all about them, so that even when they do speak, clumsily, it is to assuage their own fears or feelings of inadequacy. (But that, dear readers, is a post for another day.) However, just as I have not shared the deepest darkest truths of infertility after loss, neither have I been secretive about our reality. Friends who ask after our well being have been told, in there amongst the updates on job searches and big moves and recent vacations, that yes, the patter of little feet is something that fills our daydreams, that no, it has not been easy and no, there is nothing (nothing!) yet to report. The friend in question knows about our struggles, which is one of the reasons I was so screamy about his artless pregnancy announcement back in my most barren - of hope or baby - summer months.

Normally, I would have brushed off this equally artless, if well intentioned, attempt at friendly concern with just the sort of update described above: full of trivialities about our goings-on, inserting somewhere in their midst a concise response on the contents of my uterus in the negative.

But.

But, it just so happens - still much to my amazement, even writing it now - that when this particular enquiry reached my inbox, I was (am) indeed with child. It arrived, in fact, only days after we had first encountered that glorious second line. Not only that, but really, the brevity and focus of this email prevents me from just throwing out a random, cheery response which skirts the issue entirely: We're great! Still in England! H is working on his thesis! and so on and so forth and so blah blah blah.

Initially of course, my lack of response was due to the fact that, well, we were processing some heavy, if exciting, stuff. For many days I simply didn't oh ok, still don't now, have much time or headspace for anyone or anything other than the burgeoning hope growing within me, the terror that has been its twin, or the intimacy of the secret that H and I share (uh, with all the lovely peoples of the interwebs, natch).

But then, actually, how do you answer this email? I don't want to write my little seedling out of existence with a harmless lie. It would feel too much like...tempting fate? Lacking maternal instinct? I don't know exactly, but I wasn't prepared to do it. At the same time, I'm obviously not in a place where I am wanting to share this massive, life changing news, this secret of secrets with all the world. It is still too precious; let me savour it a while longer, as the magical, intimate, unbelievable, sacred thing that it is.

Nonetheless, this stupid kindly email has forced me to think much earlier than I had anticipated about the inevitable question of when and how and who to tell.

I have feared this time, feared it long before I even had that concrete, second-line, reason to. I fear the forced joyfulness (where for us, pregnancy is far from the joyful, naive time that most parents experience). I fear fresh grief, over the knowledge that no one who has not been through something similar can really, truly provide any emotional support for such a pregnancy as ours. I fear the sense of isolation that will grow with that knowledge. I fear the 'helpful' advice on how we should be coping with it all, because I'm already bitchy and hormonal and mostly, besides H, nobody can do anything right even if they try and I want need to protect that as my prerogative for right now, here in my little cocoon. I fear the anger which will almost certainly be my response to the amnesiac joy I anticipate from others, forgetting my sweet baby S (if they ever acknowledged him to begin with), forgetting the heartbreak we experienced just in getting this far, belying the view that another pregnancy will fix it all and maybe, finally, I'll 'go back to the old Sadie'.

I won't go back. I don't want to. I don't want to forget my son, for he is as much a part of this family story, of the branches that shyly, tentatively search outward as the tree grows, as are H and I and this new little seedling, this branch. He is the deep and abiding love that has enriched the soil in which our family tree grows. And our struggles after S, the other losses and the months of disappointment and the prodding and invasive appointments with numerous medical specialists and the fear of remaining forever childless. All those experiences, too, colour this path, not only with abiding sadness, but with the gift of intense joy, the relish of every minuscule progression towards the future we've so long dreamed of with such ardent hope. Our joy is our sorrow unmasked, in the wise and comforting words of Gibran. Those same sorrows that have carved us with scars are also what allow us this joy; they are forever intertwined.

And really, on a more selfish, less poetic point, I fear that amnesiac joy coming from those who could not share my sorrow is a step too far for me. Maybe, in these moments, I don't have the ability to forgive and forget. What right do people have to share in my fresh joy when they could not share in, or even be present for my raw grief?

But all this too, I suppose, is a post for another day. Now I just have to figure out how to reply to that email, before I start to appear really rude.

I am working on it. Source