Death Lives On

It's official. Failure. Again. There's nothing more depressing than to fail at such a fundamental thing as keeping your children alive, and at this point, even managing to conceive at all. I try distracting myself from this failure by trying harder to succeed in other things I have some control over, but I seem to fail at everything. And even if I did have some small successes, no success can compensate for the failure to fill my home.

This cycle generated more hope than I've had in quite some time. Four follicles - my personal best. Still, hope disappeared rapidly once The Wait began and by the end of it I couldn't even muster up enough hope for the one second it takes to, um, administer the progesterone. Just couldn't do it. I HATE that progesterone, not because it's icky, but because it encourages false hope with its evil side-effects, especially sore Milk Cups (this is what my four-year-old daughter calls breasts).  How pathetic is it to obsess for days over whether my boobs are sore from the drugs, from pregnancy, or from constantly being poked at to see if they're sore?

Hope is simultaneously killing me and keeping me alive. Every time it dares rear its increasingly ugly head, I do all I can to smash it down. It entices me with visions of happiness, and then drops me into progressively lower levels of hell. And yet I keep falling for it because sometimes that vision of what may be is the only thing that keeps me going on the darkest days. I have only one cycle left to try, maybe two. With Hope out of the picture, I'll be left to hang out alone with Despair. How's that going to work out?

WHY can't I just quit and do what soooo many people have told me soooo many times . . . "just be happy with the two you have". Ah, there's that "just" again - as if it could all be so easy if I'd only heed the advice of people who have no idea what they're talking about. My family is my greatest joy and I bitterly resent it every time anyone dares imply that if only I were more thankful for them, everything would suddenly be fine! I AM grateful for my family - I love them and live for them (though some days I feel I'm not doing them any favors by doing so). If I'd known what was going to happen, I never would have gotten pregnant again after I'd had David and Tania. Then I believe I could have been HAPPY with my two. As things are now though, with a body full of pain and a head full of horrific images, happiness is only a distant memory and my love and thankfulness for my two living children doesn't change that. I wish it did.

The last few years have destroyed me. The truth is that this is not simply about having a baby. Yes, I desperately want a new life in me and then in my arms, but I also want to be alive again myself. I felt death inside me when it came to take my babies and even after they were delivered and buried, death stayed with me, casting a cold dark shadow over every aspect of life.

One woman who has lost many babies once told me that the experience taught her a lot about death. Truly, you can't get any closer to death than to have it inside you and not die yourself. I've grown weary of having such a close relationship with death. Death lives in me, killing not only any child I manage to conceive, but also my friendships, family relationships, faith, and functionality as a wife and mother. Everything I touch seems to die.  Quite simply, I want life to drive death out of me. And that, quite simply, just isn't happening.