Twin Grief
The last month and a half have been hard grief-wise. The twins were due August 19th. When you consider my family history of premature births and the fact that twins are often early anyway, it's pretty safe to say I'd have two babies that were more than a month old already.
Reminders seem to be everywhere. My sister-in-law was due 12 days before me. She had her little one three weeks ago today. I also have several friends that have had babies in the last 3 weeks. While I love my niece (and my friend's kids), it is going to be extremely tough as all these babies start reaching milestones and reminding me of what Kat and Sam should be learning to do at that point.
Speaking of reminders, owls. I can't go ANYWHERE without seeing an owl. When I first found out that I was pregnant a fifth-time, I joined a due-date-club (DDC). The DDC referred to the babies as their "Owlets" until they found out genders. Every owl thing I see is a reminder that I should have two owlets. The most recent "owl sighting" was at the Renaissance Faire.
Chris and I have gone to the Faire every single year since we met. (We even got married there!) Yesterday was our trip for the season. It was harder than I expected. Never with any of the other lost pregnancies did I feel a sense of grief and longing while there. I think it was because the twins were due so close to the opening of Faire that it was one of my early thoughts in pregnancy. I looked forward to taking two tiny babies with us. It didn't help that I spotted newborn twins there which just served as an "in your face" moment. :(
Lastly, school. School starts tomorrow. With school starting I got to thinking about how things would be if we had all six babies alive and well. (Now of course I know that never would have happened. We wouldn't have had Gwen so soon after Dominic. Wouldn't have tried for Jill if we had two/three already. Never would have had five pregnancies before a vasectomy.) Anyway, if we had all 6 here: Dominic would be homeschooling for Kindergarten this year. I'd be trying to get Gwen to do Kinder too since there was only 9 months between their due dates. If Aiden was at all interested, he'd be doing preschool at home. Jill might possibly be potty-training at 22 months old. And we'd have two newborns. INSANE!
Trying to Conceive
Since losing the twins I haven't been at all willing to even consider trying. The whole experience was so traumatizing. The recovery, so horrible. The mere thought of a hospital birth (and therefore, likely c-section) was terrifying!
Almost eight months later, I think I've found a way around that. We met a midwife last week and fell in love. She made me feel so at ease that we're going to try again. We are taking a laid-back approach and want to out-right say that if and when we conceive, we will tell you. Do not ask us how it's going. That just adds stress to an already stressful time. (Also, never, ever, tell us to "Relax and it'll happen" or anything similar. You do not know our full array of fertility issues, relaxing won't help a bit. Don't patronize our efforts.)
If/when we conceive we will be delivering at a birthcenter with our midwife. The first trimester of pregnancy will be done as dual care. We will see my OB/GYN that I've used in the past for the incessant bloodwork and ultrasounds for the first trimester. When I hit 12 weeks, I'll switch over to the midwife exclusively.
Foster Care
Yes, we are still planning on doing foster care. For all we know it could be another two years to conceive (I hope not!) or we might have more losses (again I sure hope not!). There's not a lot of update here. We're still waiting on final approval before we can do anything. It's frustrating because we'd been led to believe we'd have a kid by now, but there's not much we can do at this point other than wait.
Monday, August 27, 2012
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