In Which I Pause to Remember the Children I Never Met

It turns out there are a lot more than 12 things that we need to be aware of, so every month seems to be awareness month for dozens of different things. I know from the Facebook posts of friends that October is also Breast Cancer and Down Syndrome awareness month, but I haven't been personally affected by either of those things. I've been focusing on Dyslexia and ADHD because they're both a part of our family's story, but there's a somewhat lesser known awareness cause this month that's also a part of our story.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and October 15 is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. Kittygirl is the second child I gave birth to, but she is at least the fifth child to have begun growing inside my body. People often wonder why we have only two kids six years apart. In short, it's because for several years my body seemed to fighting against the idea of nurturing another child.

My pregnancy with Squirrelboy was pretty uneventful. I did suffer from hyperemisis gravidarum, which is a fancy way of saying that that morning sickness stage that's supposed to go away after the first trimester lasted for my entire pregnancy. I actually lost weight while I was pregnant. At one point my doctor told me to eat whatever I could keep down, even if it was only milkshakes and chocolate chip cookies. However, my own sickness never stopped Squirrelboy from getting the nutrition he needed in utero and the pregnancy was problem free, even if uncomfortable for me.

After an annoying but otherwise uneventful first pregnancy, I presumed that we could have a second child whenever we wanted to. However, we decided we wanted at least two years in between our children and after Squirrelboy's birth I went on a progesterone based birth control pill because my OB said it was the safest one to use while breastfeeding.

My use of that pill may, or may not, have been in factor in the fact that my next baby, instead of settling into my uterus where he or she  might have been successfully nourished for 40 weeks, settled into one of my fallopian tubes. I discovered I was pregnant right around Mothers Day when Squirrelboy was one. I went to my OB to confirm the pregnancy and the nurse happily announced that I was right and that my due date would be around Christmas. It was a bit sooner than we'd planned to have a second child, but I was more than willing to work with it.

When I went in to see the doctor, I mentioned that I was concerned because I had experienced some spotting. She assured me that everything was almost certainly okay but offered to do an ultrasound "just to reassure me." It turned out that ultrasound did the opposite. There was no evidence of an embryo in my uterus and an ectopic pregnancy was suspected. After a close look at the images confirmed the suspicion I was scheduled for surgery the next morning, but told to come in through the ER earlier if I started to experience abdominal pain, because that could mean a burst fallopian tube. I did indeed experience pain that evening and the surgery ended up being performed around 11pm.

At my surgical follow up visit six weeks later, my OB encouraged us to put the past in the past and begin trying to conceive again right away if we wanted to. We decided to give it a whirl, and a month later I was pregnant. This baby did settle into my uterus, but my body was bound and determined not to nurture it. At about 8 weeks I suffered a miscarriage.

To their credit, neither Mr. Engineer nor my OB pushed me to try for another pregnancy anytime soon. In fact, Mr. Engineer and I decided instead to pursue the adoption of a little girl from China. We had friends who were most of the way through the adoption process and it had been a very smooth process for them. Unfortunately for us, shortly before we finished our paperwork, China began to greatly limit the number of healthy babies it offered for foreign adoption.

In one sense this was good. There are now fewer Chinese girls who are ripped from their culture and raised in another country. No matter how wonderful the adoptive family and what a wonderful life the adopted child has, there is a still a sense of grief when a child is raised outside of the culture he or she (most often she in the case of China) is born into. However, for the many potential adoptive parents who had pinned their hopes on the smooth adoption of a little girl from China, this was heartwrenching. Children labeled with "special needs" (some of which were quite minor) were still readily available, but because (somewhat ironically it turns out) we were not interested in adopting a child that qualified as a special needs child, we eventually gave up on our dream to adopt from China.

About two years into our interminable wait on China to change its policy, we decided to try the homegrown route again. It took me quite awhile to agree. I prayed about it, asked others to pray, and came to a point at which I believed God was telling me to go ahead. I again got pregnant quickly (conception is not our problem) and again miscarried within a month of learning of the pregnancy. At this point I was just ready to be done. I proclaimed that I would  not attempt to carry another child and started searching the pictures of special needs child on the adoption agency's website to see if there was a picture that "grabbed my heart."

There actually was such a picture, a little boy who was just about a year younger than Squirrelboy, who was 4 by this time. However, when I showed the picture to Mr. Engineer he agreed that it was a picture of a cute kid, but he felt no particular draw to the kid. I researched adoption from other countries, but Mr. Engineer and I were never able to come to an agreement about pursuing another adoption, despite my pleas and prayers.

I was ready to give up and just accept that Squirrelboy was going to be an only child, but, when Squirrelboy was 5 Mr. Engineer asked me to consider trying again. I shared my concerns with my OB, who suggested I get some blood tests done to see if there might be a reason for my two miscarriages. I tested as heterozygous for the Factor V Lieden gene mutation, which means that my blood clots more quickly than normal and I'm at a higher risk to develop blood clots. The theory is that women with this mutation might be at a higher risk for miscarriage because the develop blood clots that block blood from getting to their babies in utero. My doctor recommended that, if I wanted to try to conceive again, I start taking a low dose aspirin.

With a possible solution in hand, I decided to give Mr. Engineer's hope for a second biological child one more chance. I told him he had one month. If I wasn't pregnant at the end of the month we would either have only one child or acquire a second child through adoption. Spoiler alert.... a month later I discovered I was pregnant. I can't say for sure if it was the aspirin that did it, but my pregnancy lasted beyond 8 weeks. The hyperemesis gravidarum came back with a vengeance and at one point I was so dehydrated my doctor admitted me for an overnight stay for IV fluids. The timing turned out to be perfect, because while I was in the hospital I developed blood clots all the way down one leg.

The surgeon told me that the surgery necessary to remove them would put my baby at risk, but that it offered the best chance for me to make a full recovery. I decided to take the risk, and the result was that the surgery was successful and my baby, who (another spoiler alert) turned out to be Kittygirl was perfectly fine. I was put on stronger blood thinners for the rest of my pregnancy, and, at 39 weeks my labor was induced so that my doctor could be prepared in case the blood thinners caused excessive bleeding during labor. Everything went smoothly, however, and Kittygirl was born just 6 weeks before Squirrelboy's 6th birthday.

Eight years on, now with two amazing children facing challenges I couldn't have predicted when either was born, I wonder about those other three children, especially on this day, which is also the day I learned of my second miscarriage. I wonder what those children would have been like. I wonder if, had my second pregnancy gone as well as the first, Mr. Engineer and I would have decided to have at least one more child. We both come from families of three children, and originally I wanted four.

I also wonder if any of those children would have faced the same challenges the siblings they never met have faced, or if I actually would have had at least one child with no disabilities, invisible or otherwise. Would that baby who started growing in the wrong place have been born without dyslexia or ADHD and never developed diabetes? Or, alternatively, would the child conceived shortly after him or her have had an even more profound manifestation of dyslexia with a severe peanut allergy thrown in just for fun? What about that child I was sure God wanted me to conceive but nevertheless my body was unwilling to sustain? Would that child have been the little brother Squirrelboy long desired? Would he have surpassed Squirrelboy academically and created cause for resentment?

I'll never know the answers to these or many other "What ifs" about the children that enjoyed such brief lives within my body, but I'll never forget about them either. Miscarriage and infant loss is an all too often forgotten grief in our society. Unlike some women, I have not chosen to name the children I carried so briefly. It just never felt right to me, not even having known their gender. However, I hope I never forget to remember them and to let others who have suffered the same pain know that they're not alone.