When are you planning on having kids? / Are you planning to have kids? / Do you want kids?
In my life before experiencing miscarriage / recurrent pregnancy loss, I’ve been guilty of asking this question, or at least one of the million versions of the question. I didn’t ask it often, because I knew it was kinda taboo, but now I really get it. I can now confidently say that I’ll never ask it again. Why you ask?
It’s asked innocently enough, but it hurts. It’s a reminder when I’m not expecting it, which makes it just a little worse. It’s like a tiny scratch on an open wound which means it just adds to the silent pain I’m already experiencing. After the question is asked, the rest of the conversation goes something like this: the gears start turning and a million thoughts run through my mind all at once – will we ever actually have a living child, do I want to tell this person the truth, I don’t have the energy for this right now, etc. So, after a weird silence (to accommodate all the gears turning in my brain), I end up stumbling through a response that goes something like “umm…maybe one day.” All the while, I’ve started awkwardly fumbling around in my purse looking for “something” just to avoid eye contact and then as quickly as humanly possible I start trying to change the subject. (Clearly, as I exhibit all these classic signs of lying, it’s clear that I am not a good liar and am positive that I would fail any polygraph test on any topic I’ve ever tried to lie about).
Actually, a quick side note this just reminded me of a few years ago when my husband’s mom was drilling him on our family plan. He gave the best response I’ve ever heard – “you taught me practice makes perfect, so we are just practicing, a lot”. Needless to say, my mother-in-law was stunned as this was clearly a bit too much information for her. Thankfully this seems to have scared her straight, and she has never brought up the subject again.
My only advice, if you are going to venture into this territory, be prepared, you may hit a nerve and get an answer you weren’t expecting.
So, I’m hung-over today. Oops.
It wasn’t planned. We didn’t even open a bottle of wine until about 11 last night. We were just going to have one glass before going to bed.
A few hours and too much wine later (less for my husband – he’s clearly a bit smarter than me), I had gone too far. I was a happy drunk, having a great time – chatting, playing with our dog and teasing my husband. The alcohol could easily have taken me to tears and sorrow, but thankfully it didn’t go that way.
So, how did 1 glass of wine turn into getting drunk? First, I rarely drink. One thing about having 4 pregnancies in less than 2 years is that we spend a lot of time in the pregnancy bubble which means no alcohol. We do everything possible to promote good health and life for our babies, so alcohol is definitely out. So, I simply don’t have a good alcohol tolerance and now it doesn’t take much for me to get drunk. One thing I know for sure is that my tolerance is definitely nothing like when I was a university student living in residence when somehow we managed to go drinking 6 or 7 nights every week (and somehow we still passed and didn’t completely destroy our livers).
Second, it seems after each miscarriage, we do this once and thankfully we seem to learn from the hang-over and we don’t do it again. Each time, the night starts out innocently enough, but then we cross the line to completely loaded in a split second, and I don’t seem to have the ability to see it coming. Some have been worse than others – for example, after miscarriage 3, I spent a good portion of the next day praying to the porcelain gods and literally didn’t move from the bathroom floor until after 8 pm the next day. My husband had it worse when he had to take a taxi to work the next day because we figured his blood alcohol level was too high to drive. Needless to say, after asking the cab driver to pull the car over so he could puke, he decided to circle back home and called in sick.
So, why do we do it? I don’t know.
Does it help? Nope.
Is it a successful coping mechanism? Not for us.
My Perfect Breakdown 