Times five

Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of losing our first baby. The day came and went without much fanfare. I feel sad, but that lessens as time passes. I drafted this tonight for the N*P*R segment "This*I*believe." I'm not sure I'll submit it -- just seemed a good opportunity to reflect on where we've been...now to figure out where we're going!


I believe that my quest to have a child has taught me patience, compassion and humility.

What I can’t believe is that five years have passed since I lost my first pregnancy at nearly five months. A baby girl, perfect in everyway, yet too small to make it on her own. The doctor’s labeled my cervix incompetent. What does one say to that?

We soldiered on, hoping that one day we would grow our family. A year passed and I was pregnant again. I lost the pregnancy at eight weeks. There were two of them -- twins. The year between losing our baby girl and getting pregnant again seemed torturous. In retrospect, it probably saved me. Enough time had passed that I didn’t completely fall apart as I scheduled the operating room visit necessary to complete my miscarriage.

Another year passed. We still were desperate to be pregnant. We weren’t. I had to schedule another operating room visit, this time to remove an ovarian cyst.

When I think back to those days my memories feel heavy and dark. We lived our lives. We traveled. We loved each other. But we were pretty beat-up from our losses.

And then I was pregnant again.

At 13 weeks my doctor sewed my cervix shut with what is called a cerclage -- we called it “operation baby jail.” I expected to be on bedrest starting during the 16th week in my pregnancy; instead I worked up until the day I was admitted to the hospital – one week past my due date.

We are finally parents. Our son is a precocious and amazing little boy who just turned two.

I can’t help but wonder what life would be like as the mother of an almost five-year-old, or the mother of three-year-old twins. What I do know is that my life would be dramatically different, but I can’t imagine it being any better.

Most of all, I believe that the weight of our two-year-old son sleeping upon my chest, blond curls tickling my face, could replace the heaviness I still feel about our losses. But I don’t think that would be fair – our history is our history. It has made us the family we are.