Learning to Live Without Another Baby

Three years ago, I veered off the career fast-lane and onto the mommy track. By choosing to do free-lance work at home, I could set my hours and focus on raising my family. I had two children at that time, and had learned the hard way about the difficulties of commuting while pregnant: praying to arrive at my destination before throwing up; and nursing: I couldn't wait for you to arrive, I had to give him a bottle. He was crying!

I took the plunge, trading status for time Chronically sleep-deprived and utterly depleted from walking the tight-rope between managing and falling, it seemed like I had no time for the things that mattered. So I took the plunge, trading status for time. I lost billable hours and gained freedom. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. When I quickly became pregnant with our third child, I took it as the ultimate confirmation that I had made the right decision, the decision that would allow for the unhindered expansion of our family.

Then I miscarried at six months. It seemed like a temporary, although heart-breaking, delay in an otherwise working model. The doctors assured me it didn't mean I wouldn't carry to term and deliver a healthy baby in the future. For awhile, I bided my time. I went to the gym, and met friends for coffee. I enjoyed these months without bottles and diapers because I knew that the next load waited just around the corner. Until a series of miscarriages convinced me that the time and space I had allotted for our family was no longer necessary.

My doctor sat me down and explained that I was experiencing clotting problems that created umbilical cord tangles, a phenomenon known as hypercoiling. Further pregnancies would be a roll of the dice, the fertility version of Russian roulette. There was a significant risk of a child with birth defects.

Rather than the medication-free nature girl pregnancies that had nurtured my older children, I could now expect daily injections, invasive monitoring, and bed rest from a future pregnancy. Even so, there was with no guarantee that these interventions would sustain a developing baby.

The space I had carved out was no longer necessary Of course there had never been any guarantees. Yet now, I was officially living in limbo. Life had thrown me the ultimate curveball. I had studied and worked through my twenties, and had integrated the births of my first two children into what I otherwise thought of as "my life."

Now that I was in my thirties, my focus had shifted to my family. I expected life and career to accommodate my family rather than vice versa. Yet the sacred space I had carved out was no longer needed. My older children had started school, and their wished-for siblings failed to materialize.

Suddenly, I had too much time, and was uncertain how to fill it.

I wish I could say that the future has resolved itself in one gleaming revelation of gold ribbon. Yet I have had no such prophecy, and I struggle daily with the question of how to assign new priorities in the face of such uncertainty.

How do I define reasonable risk? How do I separate medical doom-saying from accurate predictions? How do I decide how much energy to devote to another high-risk pregnancy, versus how much energy I should invest in the development of another life dream? How do I simultaneously pursue what I desire and appreciate what I have?

It's a tightrope, and it often seems like the more energy I invest in pursuing the dream of another baby, the less satisfied I become with the life I actually lead.

The choice becomes to savor each day I like to think that I have learned something from this journey, something that speaks of humility and gratitude. Certainly my present state of limbo has taught me that coping skills are often more important than goal setting, because in practice the life we lead is often very different than the one we design.

Yet mostly, it has taught me about the importance of living in the moment, and appreciating what we have even more than we focus on what we don't have. The clouds of my miscarriages that hung over our house for months have given way to a new lightness.

It is not a lightness that is created from having a clear sense of purpose and vision. I awake each morning to questions that seemingly have no answer, and I often feel that they are not meant to be answered at all. Yet this lightness that I have found is born of the acceptance that comes from knowing that this life is my real one, and that choosing to pretend otherwise won't actually change anything.

Rather the choice becomes to savor each day, and celebrate the family that I have.