Mending

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering was she really here?
Is she standing in my room?
No she's not, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....

--John Mayer


I've always known exactly what sex my children will be. Even those that I lost early, their gender was clear and known to me. Hubby and I never wanted to know the baby's sex ahead of time, so during the ultrasounds we asked the technicians to not reveal anything. With both of my girls (the only ones to grow large enough in the womb to have the mid-pregnancy ultrasound), the tech said, "Oh, well, the legs are crossed so I can't tell anyways." Whether or not that was true, only she knew, but it was a fitting excuse to keep us from changing our minds at the moment and finding out something that we really didn't want to know.

We didn't need to know anyways. We both felt from their presence who they were, and what, though that was incidental. Neither of us has ever expressed the overwhelming desire for a boy, or a girl. We always say, "We don't care what it is, as long as it's healthy." We have been blessed with two healthy, female children. What more could we want?

My father-in-law is descended from not-too-ancient royalty, a family stripped of title and land by the Communists, yet not stripped of pride or memory. Even the family name is in dispute, unusual for its origins and yet a time capsule of each past era that has worn it, through battles, capture, prisons, victories, liberations and freedom. This family that has had many strong and notable ancestors in their part of the world has descended by generations into a present standing of four granddaughters and one grandson (who doesn't have the last name his mother--our cousin--did). My father-in-law wants nothing more in this world than to have a grandson to carry on the family name.

So what more we could want would be to have another baby, a little boy to love and teach and grow into a smart, strong, sensitive (like his father and grandfather) man.

My first child was a boy. He came to me in a dream, in the blue sky, in the rush of winds around me when I would go on walks around our condo where we lived at the time. I knew I was having a boy, without any need for confirmation from a ultrasonic window to his environment. But he left me at 9 weeks, just long enough to have bonded himself to my heart. When he left, I felt the sheet of his soul that had enveloped me, protecting me, tear away from my skin, leaving little bits behind stuck to me and taking little bits of me away with it, as it was sucked into the void. I was alone again, so so lonely for that week of pain, then the week of emptiness that followed. My son, the only one so far, was gone and I was left, drained and bleeding.

With a little apprehension (okay, a lot) and lots of placating reassurrances ("don't worry, it won't happen again, it was a fluke"), I got pregnant again two months later and met my first daughter on her due date. Textbook. She was there to show me, "This is how it is supposed to happen, Mom." My beautiful, my sweet, my sensitive daughter who lets everyone into her heart and cries uncontrollably at sad movies, she is my rock and my roots. She revealed herself to me in a sunset the week after we passed the earlier milestone that had me holding my breath for almost two months. One evening as I got home from work, a reflection in the second-floor condo window caught my eye and I turned to the west. Pink-lemonade stratus clouds shot from the horizon to over and above my head. The ribbons of light seemed to reach towards me, stretching out their gentle and airy fingers to touch me. She was there, safe inside me and yet speaking to me from the outside. My girl, my girl.

My stubborn second came wished for, wanted, but not obediently or easily. The positive test was elating, but the memory of the boy weighed me to the ground. At six weeks, when I started spotting, it was as if my heart had leapt into my throat and jumped out onto the floor. I was nauseous, and didn't know if it was from the hormones or the fear. I went to the doctor the next day, and they confirmed a heartbeat and admonished me to rest for a few days in the hopes that the bleeding would pass. It did. She was resolute and stayed. She also deceived me. She told me of herself in a dream, but my waking feelings were conflicted. I allowed myself to listen to the family members who examined my belly for its shape, pointiness, height, breadth and announced it to be a boy. Instead of convincing me, she led a tease inside. She let me vaccillate between convictions, and finally she wrote her birth story as a lesson in extremes. Born on the day of the worst storm of 2003, she is a tempest and a jester, a confidante and a lunatic. I love her with a love that I have never felt for anyone else, ever.

Last summer, I let myself feel things that did (and still do) give me shame. We weren't careful, we weren't planning, and I missed my period. For the first time in my life, after eighteen years of careful birth control and even more careful conception, I was unexpectedly pregnant. The timing was bad. The situation was bad. That my husband was working out of state and we didn't know what was going to happen with our future was bad. I was happy, hopeful and overwhelmingly, distraughtingly, scared. I had a hard time bonding. The voice inside was small and quiet. "It will be okay. We'll figure it out." My girls, unknowning yet full of intuition, one day tossed pennies into a fountain and wished for a baby sister. It was to be. I was shocked. They told me what we were having, without having even been told that another was coming. Another girl. The fourtune teller was right.

But not.

One morning I woke up feeling strange. Not feeling pregnant anymore. The day before, I told a close friend, finally ready to start sharing the news and facing the questions, like "How will you do it with two kids at home and a husband out of town?" After telling her that day, I felt my stomach ease and attributed it to relaxing of the nerves. By the next day, I knew that it was over.

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with your crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering could you stay my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No she can't, 'cause she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone....

If I hadn't taken a test last month, I wouldn't have known I was pregnant. If I had been only relying on morning temps, I would have seen my luteal phase temp drop on the day of my period and have thought that the strange signs of the last few days were PMS. But I did test, three times in fact. I did know. And I did miscarry, again.

Where there is defeat, there is also solace. At least it was early and I didn't experience the pain that I had before, last year and seven years before that. But the solace is meager and shallow. Now there are more losses than gains. More angels than children. More fear than confidence. Less time. Less time. Less time.

Mortality is a really hard concept for me to grasp. To accept. I worry too much about dying before I've served my purpose. But I try to be a good Catholic. I say my Hail Marys from the deepest parts of my heart. My soul loves Jesus. The parts of me that are empty, are filled with the words of the bible. One of yesterdays readings at Mass was Psalm 139:

You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb.
I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew;
my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.
How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them!

I have always loved this psalm. It first touched and filled me at a retreat after my first miscarriage. It is the beacon sent out by God's lighthouse when I am on the sea of uncertainty. More than anyone else, He is the one who knows me and guides me.

The Gospel was Luke's story of the birth of John the Baptist. Elizabeth named him, and by a miracle at that moment, his mute father regained his speech and confirmed his name. It is an amazing passage, full of wonder and foreshadowing. You can read all of yesterday's readings here: http://www.usccb.org/nab/062407b.shtml

The homily is what really got me. The visiting priest spoke of knowing yourself, who you are in this family of the church. He gave us an acronym: J.O.Y. "Jesus first; Others second; Yourself, third." Who have I been thinking of so much lately? Myself. Jesus first, others second. Hard to do.

He talked about abortion and NFP. How contraception and birth control are examples of putting yourself first. How if we put Jesus first, NFP is easy and normal. How children are to be welcomed and God's will allowed to be done.

Well, HERE I AM, DO YOUR WILL!

It was another moment where that diseased thought comes up. That double-edged question, "Why me? Why not me?" The one where I can't help wonder, "Why are so many babies being born to people who don't want them, and why can't someone like me who wants one, have one?"

The priest challenged the congregation to pray on these words before they challenged him with their opinions on abortion and birth control. He said he knew there were people who disagreed. I wanted to stand up in church and shout, "I AGREE. HERE IS SOMEONE WHO AGREES! WE WANT A BABY! WE ARE TRYING NATURALLY!"

I kept my seat. And listened. As he spoke, I watched this family two pews in front of us. The mother was there with her four children, one who I taught as a sub in the religious education program and two who I have baby-sat in the church nursery. I noticed them, recognized them, smiled and waved when they recognized me. The youngest, a two-year-old boy named Randy, patted his mother and lifted his arms in the "uppy" sign, and she lifted him in her arms. He laid his head on her shoulder and gave me the most contented smile, blissfully happy and calm to be in his mother's arms.

I melted from that smile. And suddenly, something opened up in my heart. A feeling entered, and I realized that what was holding me back from really grasping this desire, from letting go of my worries (do I really want another needy baby? what if it's not healthy? what if I'm too old? what will happen to my doula business?), that my biggest obstacle was that I was set upon having another girl. I have been wanting another girl. I have been afraid to be the mother of a boy. It has been easy to claim to have had a son, even though he was lost yet feel his presence around me, and be somehow, strangely satisfied with that.

I am a girly mom. I love their clothes and shoes and toys and sassiness and spunk and sensitivity and joy. I love how they come to me and I can tell them how to grow up a girl. I have always wondering how I would handle having a boy. Boys are so hard. Boys grow up and get into trouble and forget important things like birthdays and calling their mothers. Boys are rough and endless mysteries to me. I am married to a man who I love, yet to have a son like him? I wouldn't know what to do.

So my epiphany yesterday, after all this angst, is that to open myself to having another baby, I have to open myself to having a son, and mothering a son, and giving my heart out again. Little Randy's smile told me that he loves his mama more than anything in the world. I had forgotten about that, that boys are mama's boys. That no matter how many moody fights you get into with your daughters, that boys will always honor their mothers.

I have to let go of my expectations. Of conditions. Of saying, "As long as the baby is healthy. As long as it's..." What would it matter what the gender? Or if we have a baby with Down's? What is the point of saying "As long as" when it doesn't matter what happens? Everything else--gender, chromosomal makeup, whatever--doesn't matter. So what if I have six years worth of girl clothes in the garage saved for the next girl. We get rid of them. Oh well. No more conditions, no more asking for specifics.

Maybe this was what God was waiting for me to realize. Maybe not. But hopefully, this little bit might be enough.