on helplessness

The past week has been hard and sad. For the past month I have felt like I was in a very fragile place but doing a pretty good job keeping it together. But needing this surgery, the invasiveness of having no control over my body (again) and everything surrounding it really brought me to a low place. I think it is also the holidays and being surrounded by babies and children and families, too.

When I lost N&A, I was really worried about the bitter and jealousy returning. There was a stretch of time during our infertility struggles when I felt very jealous and bitter of others' good fortune. The jealousy and bitterness was something that came from a very dark place and honestly made me feel pretty crappy about myself. It was something that felt destructive and I made a very conscious effort to work through it. I like to believe I mostly succeeded on this front.

In the aftermath of their birth & death, I was relieved that the bitterness and jealousy didn't return, or at least not in the way that I feared. I didn't want any baby in some abstract sense; I wanted them - my specific babies. Other babies felt irrelevant.

Passover was the first time I was subjected to babies and young children in large doses since our loss. It was much harder than I expected, not because I was jealous, but because it was such a visceral reminder of everything I can't do for my babies. A screaming baby in need of soothing is enough to get me wailing. Because the baby can be soothed. Because there is something her mother can do for her.

I never got to do anything, really, for my babies. It is the most helpless feeling I can imagine, I think, to give birth to a living baby to whom neither you nor medical science can help. To give birth to a living baby who by virtue of leaving your body is destined to die. Perhaps giving birth to Aminadav was in fact doing him a kind of favor because of his suffering - but again, I always come back to it - when I gave birth to Naava I killed her.

I never even held Naava. Sometimes I wonder if I lack basic maternal instincts. One day a couple of weeks after their death, our cleaning lady pulled me close and said "Maybe your soul wasn't ready yet to accept them."

During more rational hours, this seems like a hideous proposition - after all those failed fertility treatments, our first miscarriage, all that longing - my soul wasn't ready yet to be their mother? But why didn't I know instinctively to hold my babies, especially my living one? No one encouraged me or told me to. I was in shock. It all happened to so quickly. I will know better for next time. These are my alibis. But why didn't I just intuitively understand to do it?

I wasn't able to do anything physical for my babies in this world. I love(d) them and think of them constantly. Winter is over and the days are becoming long and hot. I do not think it will rain again. G-d willing we will somehow bring a living child into this world (though that seems to become increasingly daunting to think about with every new complication). But nothing is going to bring these babies back; no amount of magical thinking or new medical knowledge or regrets realized & examined.