i wake and i find you asleep in the deep of my heart

(read part 1, dreaming, i was only dreaming…)

the next round  of the special dreams arrived a few years later when i was temporarily back in the States. in the first dream, i saw my friend Tanja with a large, obviously-pregnant belly. she and i had been very close when i was an exchange student at her German gymnasium nearly a decade earlier, but we hadn’t seen each other or been in touch in at least five years. the dream caught me a bit by surprise…i hadn’t thought of Tanja in ages. it’s almost always an unexpected pleasure to run into old friends while wandering Morpheus’ realm, though, and i just enjoyed the little swell of happiness the dream brought with it instead of thinking too much about whether it meant anything

two months later, i had another dream about Tanja. in this one, she was smiling and bouncing a baby on her knee. this was enough for me to put pen to paper. “did you just have a baby by any chance?” i wrote in the letter that i sent to her. she never did respond, but ten months later when i was visiting friends in Europe before heading off to the Peace Corps, i did get to see Tanja. yes, she’d gotten my letter, but she’d been too busy to respond. her ten-month-old daughter was smiling and babbling at me from her high chair as Tanja acknowledge that it was a pretty strange coincidence.

l’instinct de vivre

so why did i come back after all this time? why did i return to this strange little cyberworld that i’d completely abandoned nearly two years ago? i suppose you could say that a book brought me back. to be more precise, L’instinct de vivre a book by Laetitia Lycke, another woman who belongs to the club that no one wants to join. if you can read French, i can’t recommend this book highly enough.

but the story of my return to the babyloss blogosphere (and of how i even came to read the book in the first place) is a bit more complicated than that. it actually started with Skype.

here

i’m still here…somewhere.

i’m trying to find my words, or perhaps to liberate them, but it’s not an easy thing. silence has been my stony refuge these last two years, and i’m not sure how to chisel through these walls that i’ve constructed out of desperation and self-protection. but i will try…i must try.

a lot has happened, since i stopped posting on this blog. there have been new jobs.  there have been too many trips to other countries….for embryo transfers and tests and surgical procedures. there have been more than a few negative pregnancy tests followed by excruciating (but required) blood draws to confirm what was already painfully clear.

unpresent for an unbirthday

the 5th of June was supposed to be a special day… not as special as the 5th of December, but a day to celebrate, nevertheless. the idea came from my aunt, a lover of literature like me.  she called it an “unbirthday”, a word she stole from Lewis Carroll, and every year on her children’s unbirthdays, they got to choose something special to do. there were no cakes with candles or party hats or presents, but there were always smiles and laughter and (i imagine) the warm feeling of being a treasured member of a family.

waiting for a silver lining

today was my first lining scan.  i’ve been on estrogen patches for a week now, and i was hoping to see a nice cushy nest on the screen in my gynecologist’s office.  instead, the reading showed a meager 4mm.  for those of you unfamiliar with the finer details of assisted reproduction, my lining sucks.  the clinic in Barcelona wants at least 6mm, but most places look for 8mm and above.  when i got pregnant with little sun and his vanishing twin, my lining was hovering between 7.5 and 8.  with my last pregnancy, i had a whopping 10mm.  i haven’t had such a thin lining since my last gynecologist (the evil one) had me taking endometrium (and mood)-destroying clomid for months on end.

the gyn must have seen the look of shock and disappointment on my face, and she told me that i shouldn’t be discouraged…that the birth control pills i’d been on for six weeks had most certainly left me with almost nothing lining-wise and that it would just take a bit longer to build it up to a good thickness.  we’re on our egg donor’s schedule, though, so i don’t have the luxury of a lot of time.

i was able to contain my tears on the tram ride home, and i kept my face turned to the accordion folds in the wall so that i didn’t have to look at the laughing children and baby-filled strollers that were all around me.  the minute i walked through the door and Froggy said, “alors??”, though, i lost it and began sobbing.  i’ve been doing everything right….eating well, getting in at least 30 minutes of brisk walking a day, doing yoga every night and avoiding all the head-calming medications that have helped me survive since little sun died.  4 fucking millimeters….  Froggy put her arms around me and reassured me, and once i was able to stem the tide of tears, i sent my ultrasound results off to our clinic.  i expected them to write back and tell me to add more estrogen…another patch, pills taken orally or inserted vaginally.  they responded in typical laid-back Spanish fashion, and i could almost hear them saying, “tranquila!”:

“Dr. X  send to you regards and he is not concerned about the lining, he don´t want to add estradiol pills. You will see your endometrium need just a few more days.”

a second email told me to book another ultrasound “with calm”.  and strangely enough, calm is exactly how i felt after reading both of them.  for now i’m just going to trust that my doctor knows what he’s doing.  it’s not the easiest thing for me to have faith in medical providers, especially after what happened to our little boy, but these Barcelonians do a great job of inspiring confidence.

now we wait until Monday to see if they’re right.

Visca Barcelona!

we left in the dark, our plane ascending until the city became nothing more than a collection of tiny amber lights.  everyone around me, including Froggy, dozed as we slid across the sky, but even though i’d slept fewer than four hours the night before, i was too excited to close my eyes.

back to Barcelona

and so we come full circle…back to a place that i dreamt of before i ever visited, a city whose name alone inspires waves of warmth and nostalgia…Barcelona.

five years ago i called it home, that magical realm of Gaudi and Miro, that candyland of art and architecture, music, food, football and people…the wonderful Catalan people.  five years ago, i wandered it’s streets and breathed in its inspiration.

coming into color

i don’t feel like i have much to say these days.  mostly i draw.  unlike a few weeks ago, i don’t feel angry or crushed, just resigned, and i find myself putting one foot in front of the other without thinking too much about where i’m going.

we spent the week following the sad ultrasound mostly glued to the couch, waiting for something scary and painful to happen, and when, after nine tense days, it didn’t, i warily started taking the miscarriage-inducing pills on the date the my doctor’s replacement told me to.  

elpenor and little spindle

i’ve been thinking a lot about friends lately, mostly because i’ve lost so many since little sun died.  i’ve experienced an immeasurable amount of disappointment and hurt because of people whom i once considered my chosen family, and maybe one day i’ll write about that.  today, though, i want to tell you about two people who have truly been there for me…two people who epitomize that beautiful word “friend”.

away

i haven’t felt much like communicating lately.  i stay in my head most of the time, because that’s where i feel safest…least likely to be intruded upon by more bad news, new disappointments or the epidemic of strollers filled with six-month-old babies that’s recently broken out.  my well-padded list of friends has gotten rather gaunt these last few months, and there aren’t too many people left with whom i have the energy to share even a few of my words.