I was recently driving in my car and heard a song that caught my attention. Now, what’s odd is that the song was coming from my phone, which means I own the song. This is odd because I don’t often listen to this particular band, so I had no idea I even had them on my phone. In fact, I saw this ban live at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, and after hearing 10 year old girls on their dad’s shoulders scream “take it off” to the singer, I had no hope of ever liking the band.  So, I’m perplexed that I have a song by them on my phone. Anyways I’m starting to ramble, back to the point.

What struck me more was that this modern day rock/pop song really resonated with me – well, at least the first few lines did, and after that I lost interest in the song.  The song, We Are Unbreakable by Hedley starts off like this:

I’m beat but I can’t be broken
Knocked down
But you gave me hope
And I can see it now
Just gotta dig it out

These scars on my heart I own them
Dark days when my will was stolen
I can bring it back
Yeah I know it, I know it
And I’m starting to feel again

This is how I feel right now. 5 failed pregnancies in just under 2 years is pretty substantial. I really feel like some of the life changing decisions we made 6 months ago have been worth it. I feel like we’ve dug out, and we are starting to feel again – just like the song says.

Because we’ve had a few month break since our last pregnancy, the dark days of the last miscarriage and all the ones before that are behind us. Not that the pain is completely gone, nor will it ever be. The scars on my heart will stay, but the darkest days are gone and I am not broken. For the most part, I’m feeling more relaxed then I have in a few years. I’m feeling physically healthy and emotionally stable. I’m feeling pretty good on the whole. My husband and I are doing awesome together – although there have been tough days, we have come through this together. I feel calm, in charge of my emotions and really, I’m starting to feel again. I’m coming out of the RPL/miscarriage fog that I’ve lived in for so long. So, right now, I’m excited to just be me. I’m excited that I can see and feel happiness in non-baby stuff like going out for dinner with my husband or going for a walk with my dog. I’m excited that I can just be me, and be okay with that.

This isn’t to say everything is perfect. There are still things I want to work on – for example, I’d like to be more physically active again. But, I’m honestly feeling pretty good these days.

But, this actually scares me a bit. Actually, it scares me a lot.  We are committed to trying again, and we’ve taken a lot of steps to make the next try a healthy one in hopes that it will have a happy outcome (i.e. living child), but now I’m afraid of losing the calm we have worked so hard to achieve in the last few months. (Changes to achieve our sense of calm have included leaving my decent income, high-stress, professional career to give our next pregnancy the absolute best chance possible; I am writing this blog; we are working on arguing well when we do argue; and working to accept living messy, etc.). I can say, there is no doubt that I still desperately want to have a healthy child, and therefore I desperately want to be pregnant again to know if all the changes will help with a successful pregnancy. (And of course, today I’m very frustrated because we just got a BFN).

But here’s the problem, I’m really feeling a yearning to return to work in some way, shape or form. It’s one thing to be not working if we are pregnant, but if that’s not going to happen, I don’t see the point on sitting at home. But remember, the whole point of leaving my job was to try one more time so that we’d have no regrets, so by returning to work before we even get pregnant again, I could be hurting our chances of a successful pregnancy.

And even if I continue not working, what happens if the next pregnancy goes wrong? I hate living through a miscarriage and dealing with the physical and emotional hell that ensues. I despise watching my life and my husband’s life turn into complete chaos while we wait for the baby’s heart beat to vanish – there is no sorrow quite like waiting for your baby to die.  And I honestly don’t know how to do it again.  I’m petrified of reliving the absolute horror of our third miscarriage, and I just don’t know that I can survive that twice.

So, while I’m feeling peace and contentment right now, what happens when we get pregnant again? How do we hold onto this calmness when we will be in the midst of a very high risk pregnancy? How do we get through and survive another miscarriage, if that’s what in the cards for us? If everything actually seems to be going okay, how do we handle all the fears that go with RPL.  How do we get through 9 months of constant fear.

And probably more importantly is that today, for the one of the very first times, I’m even questioning if I want to risk losing where we are in pursuit of trying again when we know the statistics are not in our favour. I love being chill. I love feeling healthy. I love being happy. Is it worth trying again and risking all of this?

Often this is where I find the silver lining, and I write about why all these risks are worth it and why we need to try again regardless of the fears.  But today, I’m just not feeling it. I’ve worked so hard to survive this journey in a healthy way and to come out a changed, but better person for it. But, today, I’m truly afraid of losing myself to all of this and becoming permanently broken.  I am afraid.

And today, after confirming that our last cycle did not work with a BFN, I am going to accept these feelings of fear and dashed hopes.  I am going to let them linger, likely wallowing in them and feel sorry for myself.

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