Waiting for You.

I haven’t written in awhile.  It’s been such a busy beginning of the year.  Next week we’re heading on vacation with 8 of our best friends.  I’ve been looking forward to it since the idea was first mentioned sometime late last year.  April.  Vacation.

At the end of the year last year it took pressure off of feeling like I wanted or needed to be pregnant.  It gave me what I’ve now considered, a healthy break from getting my hopes up and having them torn down.  I’ve told myself since we booked our trip that all I needed to do was wait until April and then we could try for a baby.  I wanted to go on this trip.  I wanted to spend a week away with my very best friends while they leave their babies behind at home.

Then a few weeks ago I got a call from our OB’s office who reminded me of the risk we were taking by traveling.  Zika.  There’s a very slim, but very real possibility, that Ted or I will contract zika on our travels.  They followed by recommending we abstain from getting pregnant for six months.  Another half-year.

Slim possibilities will always scare me.  Especially now.  I’m no longer the type of woman who can blissfully ignore the small percentage of something happening to us.  Not after losing Sam and then losing Lion.

But we’re still going.  Ted and I discussed all of the pros and cons of going and not going on the trip we’ve been so excited for all of this time.  Mostly though, I think of our friends John and Jessica.  I wrote about John sometime ago who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  They’re heading out on vacation with us.  Recently I was chatting with Jessica about life and death and all the beautiful things in between.  She shared with me that they’re choosing to really live life; and not live as though John might die.

How do we be so bold as John and Jessica?  Maybe by continuing to live, whatever that looks like, on an individual basis.  I’m choosing life with my friends.  They’re what’s here now.  And I want to enjoy our time together.

Heartrendingly, a baby is not.  My island continues to get smaller and smaller.  Loss mama without her rainbow.  I remember when we were trying to get pregnant and I came across an article with the caption Not Everyone Gets a Rainbow and feeling very sad by it all.  I still do.  Whether it’s because we’ve chosen to wait until April to now be told we must wait another half year without serious consequences, is hard.  I don’t like being told what I have to do.  I also have to mother any future child as responsibly as I can.  And my heart still aches for my Mama Sisters who were told no rainbow will ever come; or that their chances of being with child are slim.

Almost two years later and I’m still mothering myself.  Loving myself, supporting myself, taking care of myself in the simplest and most complex ways as I should be mothering Sam or now, Lion.

Maybe my heart is feeling heavy by it all, especially now, because this is the week our Lion should be born.  Yet our hearts remain empty and our home silent, still.