(un)Fair

It's the next to last day of our vacation, and the surrealism of life floating around me is starting to disapate, floating and falling on me softly like ash descending on the valley below a blazing hillside. The reality of the early miscarriage last week feels ephemeral, postponed, delayed into an entraped and suspended state of being, like a moment caught in a bubble that pops and splatters just outside your reach, denying you the sensation of the tiny, filmy spray.

But fancy descriptive words and complex similes are not enough, not real, not fitting. The real feelings are as sharp as the edges of the bits of seashells we found on Venice Beach--ragged and tricky. "It wasn't a real pregnancy." "It was over before it started." "At least you already have children." "Other people have more miscarriages and never have a child." "At least it didn't go any further if there was something wrong." "Other people have preemies who suffer pain and disability their whole lives." These voices (in my head) tell me how lucky (or unlucky) I am. I listen. I hear. I am numb, but I still hurt.

Five pregnancies. Three miscarriages. Two children. Thirty-five years. Advanced maternal age. Do I qualify as having secondary infertility? Why do I have to? What if I don't?