I Had a Miscarriage by Jessica Zucker (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

there is something wrong with their bodies in general or their wombs more specifically, and that loss will invariably happen again if/when they become pregnant. Some might become, as Ella seemed to be, fueled by an unconscious competitive drive or a game of comparing and contrasting. They unknowingly take stock of the women in their lives—who’s lost a pregnancy and who hasn’t, who’s gotten pregnant quickly and who hasn’t—and make some sort of unwitting goal to beat their competition in order to prove to themselves that they can. All these different reactions are common and normal amid the transition—especially when there is such a profound mismatch between what we want and what we sometimes do or do not receive.

• • •

Within the confines of our own home, the topic of expanding our family was one my husband and I didn’t truly contemplate until Liev was over three years old. I wanted to take things one step at a time: Start with one child and go from there. See how it felt. Parent for a while. Discover who Liev was and who I would be as a mother. And then, from there, decide what we wanted for our family.

When I was pregnant for the first time, it thrilled me to think about how both Jason and I would rise to the task of becoming parents, and how we’d undertake this as a team. What a playful and inspiring parent he will be, I’d think, and I, the practical and grounding force. We’d do this well together, I trusted, and could hardly wait to see a cooing baby in my husband’s loving embrace, and the eventuality of him coaching some sort of sport eight years down the road. Jason’s vision for our family was similar, except he has a twin and as such, he saw great value in our son having a sibling—and us as a couple being at the helm of a larger clan. For him, this was sort of automatic. For me, it was a process. He and his brother are so close—they work together, they consult with each other on decisions big and small, and they harbor a connection that’s both inherent and a result of intentional effort. Jason saw nothing but boundless benefits to being a sibling and therefore having one for Liev, and for us as parents too.

• • •

Getting pregnant with my son was easy. The subsequent months of his development were filled with surprising enjoyment, international travel, and wild anticipation of who this little person would be and what the journey of motherhood would feel like. I adored pregnancy—I relished my growing bump, the fetal hiccups, napping constantly, and daydreaming about the unknown.

As the years pressed on, I marveled both at how complicated mothering could be and how simple it was to love him beyond definition.

Soon, I became an avid proponent of having “only one” child. Why steal attention and focus from him by juggling two? I thought I was onto something novel, as if I had just realized I had a choice in the matter. I wondered, if I had more than one, whether I might invariably meld into an overwhelmed soup of mismatched ingredients by adding another personality to the mix. Why would anyone opt for that? I thought to myself on numerous occasions while glancing at harried moms with two children fervently running in opposite directions at the park. “One and done,” I enthusiastically declared whenever questioned about whether or not I’d be joining the multiple-children set. I spoke with a certain sort of pride and commanding resoluteness about focusing on my son, my work, and some version of a balanced existence between those.

And then I changed my mind. Or, perhaps more accurately, because my husband had envisaged raising two children, it was time for me to think through, in a more serious and nuanced way, what he wanted. What we wanted. What we felt we could handle. I took some months to marinate on the idea of growing our family in the context of my age and our imagined future. I wanted to excavate my decision-making a bit more, to delve a little deeper into what it might be like to rethink the family arrangement. Could I recalibrate the picture I had so firmly become used to in my mind of our thriving family of three? Would I have the emotional stamina to raise another human being? And if so, who might this person be, and who would the three of us become as a result of this change in dynamic?

I came to realize that for me, having a second child somehow signified committing to adulthood even more so than I already had. Not that I fancied myself a perpetual kid by any means, but somehow, I was resisting—staving off—the next phase of my development by foreclosing on the idea of engaging in motherhood a second time around. It meant growing up a little more, I thought, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. So I urged myself to look into previously unexplored places in my psyche to get a handle on where these thoughts were coming from, who I was, and who I wanted to be, maternally and more generally. There was a lot to consider. This identity conundrum required me to deliberate long and hard.

I ultimately decided that I wanted to find out.

Almost as quickly as the first time around, I found myself holding a welcomed positive pregnancy test. Unlike my pregnancy with Liev, however, my head was tucked in the toilet bowl morning, noon, and night. Sick as a dog, I dragged myself around, hoping the second trimester would grace me with less ghastly symptoms and some much-needed peace. But those late-morning drops of blood that appeared in the bathroom of my dermatologist’s office at sixteen weeks along signaled that calm wasn’t coming. A relationship that had barely begun was no longer. My four-month-long pregnancy was done. I had been so pleased by how swiftly this