pregnancy

Learning Not to Turn Away

/ Anna

learning not to turn away

Turn turn away
From the weight of your own past
It’s magic for the devil
And betray the lack of change
Once you have spoken
Turn away
-Beck

It has become an almost automatic reaction.  See a pregnancy announcement – usually accompanied by photos – flinch, hide the announcement.  If the parents-to-be start to inundate my feed with cutesy photos, or complaints about the discomforts of pregnancy, then I am done.  I remove it from my sight until I am sure the baby is born.  I’ll provide the requisite “Congratulations” and then whether I bring that baby back into my feed depends on whether or not there are any accompanying triggers. Continue reading →

Triggers, Loud and Soft

/ Anna

mathieu-turle-33482-unsplash.jpg

Last week, I attended a Share meeting.  I found myself the “furthest out” in the room: the most time had passed since my loss.  Now heading toward three years ago this September since Nelle was born.  I was that voice from the “other side”: somehow survived.  The days are not awful.  The moments come and go, but are not constant. Continue reading →

Rebirth

/ Anna

And just like that, she was born. Autumn Nadine Taws. It was the moment I hardly dared to picture. 

Someone I love wrote to me earlier this week: “When your new one is safely in your arms, you will know that you have been on a hero’s journey and have touched shore.”  And what a long journey it has been.

After two losses, it agonizing to decide whether or not to continue along the path to a third child, but we did, and now she’s here, nearly two years after we were forced down a route that we could not imagine. She is my “chance” baby, taking a chance, a third chance at a third child. Baby Three.

Her middle name, Nadine, means “hope.” It was that hope that got us to this place. Holding our baby. 

Hope in Becoming

/ Anna

One day more. Another day another destiny. 
-from ‘Les Miserables’

I don’t have much to say, on the eve of my c-section.  I heard Quentin yell from his room this morning “ONE MORE DAY!”  One more day of kick counts. One more day of injections. One more night of anxiety-related non-sleep.  By this time tomorrow, we will already be at the hospital. 

I have had prompts planned out for myself for months, to help keep me writing, now down to the last one. Below are some lines I’ve compiled over the past few weeks.

 

Let the world stop spinning
Stop silently
Stop sweetly
Stop completely
Let me hold hope for a quiet minute
And shake dusty anticipation from my hair

How did I arrive in this place?
224 days ago, such a remote possibility that I would see this day
It was such a faint, faraway moment
A tiny glimmer, flicker of shape
Hope in becoming fully formed
A thousand tears and shaking breaths later
Pounding heart and aching limbs aside
Every day, every hour, a step

Now, final inches ounces pounds
Moments running out of time, into time
Into finality
Certainty in the unknown
Writing to anchor the moment in time
Heed the final space on the path
I can see it ahead, reach it
Touch it with only the slightest quiver
Fully formed, running out of time
Waiting for that final cry