The Journey of Becoming a Mom Without My Mom

One year ago, we found out we were pregnant with identical twins. Five weeks after that, we found out we lost both twins. I feel so blessed to be here now, at almost 27 weeks, pregnant with our baby girl, our rainbow child. During the years of our fertility struggles, I remember thinking that if I just got pregnant, I wouldn’t feel so lost and broken about my mom’s death, but what I have learned is that one thing does not cancel out the other. I will always think of my twin babies and wonder who they could have been and I am equally as excited and grateful for this miraculous pregnancy that I am currently experiencing, while still heavily grieving the fact my mom isn’t here physically to be on this journey with me.

Many people will say infertility is the hardest thing they’ve ever had to experience. And it really is brutal. The shots, the waiting, the devastating negative test that comes month after month, the pain, the hormones, the jealousy, the resentment, the fear that it will never happen, the war with your own body, the planning and the re-planning, the isolation, and the list goes on and on.

My main focus for close to three years was to get pregnant. I threw myself in this goal. Even when I was in my masters full-time at Penn while also working full-time from August 2018 to May 2019, I was still consumed with having a baby and having a baby QUICK. All of my friends and family had gotten pregnant easily so I wrongly assumed the same would go for me. Someone in my cohort at Penn announced their pregnancy during the timeframe that we were trying and I really thought that announcement was the most painful feeling. Little did I know what was to come. My life was not unfolding as planned and it was terrifying.

The only person who knew I was going through this war with myself at the time was my mom and obviously Henry. I remember in March 2019 opening up a little more to two of my best friends. My one friend recommended reaching out to a fertility clinic just because it could take months to get an appointment. I did just that and my appointment was scheduled for May 2019, the day after my graduation. I was scared but happy to have a plan. Most doctors will tell you to try for a year before seeking treatment but me being me, and knowing I had that gut feeling that something was off, I was not waiting that long.

What happened next in April 2019 was unimaginable. Right after midnight on April 9, 2019, my mom died suddenly and tragically. She had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm on April 6, survived a 8+ hour surgery, and for two days we desperately clung to every ounce of hope we had until we didn’t and she was gone. It still does not feel real. You can read in this blog the whole story of what happened but those three days would change the trajectory of my life forever. The hardest thing I was dealing with - having a baby - quickly changed to moving forward carrying the guilt and devastation of my mom’s death. I was already at a breaking point, but this officially broke me, and I was tasked with picking up the pieces.

The next few months to a year are a bit of a blur. I know I somehow graduated from Penn with that master’s degree. The fertility appointment the day after graduation got cancelled. My family and I still went on our annual vacation but we were numb and sad the entire time. I celebrated my 32nd birthday. I went to my friend’s beautiful wedding. Everything else is kind of a fuzzy. I know that I found a therapist and rescheduled my fertility appointment for August 2019. After that I received a series of tests, one of which is the dreadful HSG test. “An HSG, otherwise known as a hysterosalpingogram, is a special type of x-ray examination of the fallopian tubes and uterus. During the procedure, a thin catheter is inserted through the cervix into the uterus, and a special dye is injected.” (https://blog.scrcivf.com/hysterosalpingogram-how-to-prepare-what-to-expect-side-effects-hsg-test) This test gave us a potential answer - I may have endometriosis and I had a blocked left Fallopian tube. She recommended laparoscopic surgery. “A laparoscopy is a type of surgery that checks for problems in the abdomen or a woman's reproductive system. Laparoscopic surgery uses a thin tube called a laparoscope. It is inserted into the abdomen through a small incision. An incision is a small a cut made through the skin during surgery. The tube has a camera attached to it. The camera sends images to a video monitor. This allows a surgeon to view the inside of the body without major trauma to the patient..”(https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/laparoscopy/) It has been a beautiful thing to see my stomach, with all of its scars from this surgery, grow through pregnancy.

November 2019: Waiting to be put under general anesthesia for surgery. I was terrified but I put a brave face and smile on for a picture Henry took for my family.

In November 2019, two days before Thanksgiving, I was put under anesthesia for the first time in my life and had surgery. The outcome? Well, nothing much. My doctor confirmed I did not have endometriosis but I likely still had a blocked tube and we would have to see if the surgery worked to unblock it. The advice? Try naturally for three months and if you don’t get pregnant, we’ll check it out.

Three months went by and nothing. In February 2020, I had to have another HSG to see if the tube was still blocked and indeed it was. I was devastated, frustrated, and exhausted. But something happened the month after that HSG: we got pregnant naturally!

You can learn more about that pregnancy story here. Ultimately, we found out we were pregnant with identical twins and I found out in April 2020 at 11 weeks, one year after my mom’s sudden death and one week before the “safe” zone, that I had a missed miscarriage and lost both of the babies. “A missed (or silent) miscarriage is one where the baby has died or not developed, but has not been physically miscarried. In many cases, there has been no sign that anything was wrong, so the news can come as a complete shock.” (https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/information/miscarriage/missed-miscarriage/) Devastated is an understatement. I was giving up. This was just too much for one person to handle.

But, obviously, I did not give up. I kept going. Just like the timeframe of me coming off the pill, it took me three whole months to get my cycle back. It’s a weird thing to be anticipating your period after a miscarriage so that you can start trying again, and the relief you feel when the pregnancy test no longer says pregnant because that means the HCG is out of your system.

Finally, after multiple ultrasounds and so much bloodwork, while I was on vacation with my family in July 2020, I got my period. We decided to jump right into fertility treatments starting with an IUI. “IUI stands for in intrauterine insemination. It’s also sometimes called donor insemination, alternative insemination, or artificial insemination. IUI works by putting sperm cells directly into your uterus around the time you’re ovulating, helping the sperm get closer to your egg. This cuts down on the time and distance sperm has to travel, making it easier to fertilize your egg.”(https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/pregnancy/fertility-treatments/what-iui) My first IUI in July was unsuccessful, my second IUI in August was cancelled because all of my mature follicles were on my blocked side, and my third IUI on September 30th resulted in what is now this pregnancy. During the two week wait of the final IUI, I scheduled another laparoscopic surgery for November 2020 to remove the left tube. Obviously, that never happened and it still worries me.

We found out we were pregnant on October 13th, my niece Addie’s birthday. I had my first ultrasound at 6 weeks to confirm pregnancy. A few days after confirming that everything was okay, I noticed some spotting. You can read more about that experience in this blog but the spotting turned to intense, heavy bleeding and I was diagnosed with a sub-chorionic hematoma. “A subchorionic hematoma is the accumulation of blood between the uterine lining and the chorion (the outer fetal membrane, next to the uterus) or under the placenta itself. It can cause light to heavy spotting or bleeding.”(https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/pregnancy-health/complications/subchorionic-bleeding.aspx) . I was on strict bed rest until the bleeding stopped and I spotted for another four to five weeks. During this time, I went for weekly ultrasounds which were both stressful and reassuring because I was able to see my miracle. At around ten weeks, I “graduated” from my fertility clinic and moved on to the “regular” ob-gyn. Despite my best efforts to avoid having to go back to the office, where I learned about losing the twins, I ultimately wound up back in the same office with the exact same doctor at the recommendation of my fertility doctor, who I adore and trust. Coincidentally, this was, again, at 11 weeks. The fear was overwhelming. I told Henry it was like voluntarily walking back into a burning building.

I had become “good” at aching for a baby and grieving my mom. I stopped being so angry about my situation and started doing my own research and advocating for myself. I was still so sad but I was tired of feeling so broken. I knew this would not be easy so I had to train my mind and body for this fight, for this marathon. I had already trained for an actual marathon back in 2016 so I took that same mentality and applied it to having a baby. I was not going to give up. I plan on going into more detail in another post about all of the things I started doing to get my mind and body right to finally have a baby, which included books, lots of supplements, weekly acupuncture and therapy, exercise, and diet and lifestyle changes.

When I got pregnant the second time after my miscarriage, I was lost. What do I do now? I had become an expert at being in pain and being “okay” with my pain. People expected me to be happy but there were still so many factors paralyzing me from moving forward. I felt out of control and I really needed my mom.

I still need my mom.

I really don’t know how I am supposed to do this.

Most days I feel okay, that I am going to be okay, but then there are days like today where I truly do not know how this is my life. How can one possibly become a mother without their mother by their side guiding them?

I started listening to music again, which to most is probably not a big deal but to me it means I am starting to let myself feel again. Most of the songs I gravitate towards when I am working are inspiring songs about life, songs that make you really feel. I feel hope slowly starting to make its way into my existence and that scares me. Hope is scary. I used to be full of hope and ready to take on the world, and then I saw what the world can be and I was not ready for that.

I am starting to realize that my problem with hope is that it represents moving forward, which inevitably means you are trading your past for the prospect of a better future. But what if the past is the only thing you are clinging to because the future does not hold the person you need most? Would you let go? I’ve been desperately holding on to the time my mom was still alive.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that my niece and nephew no longer have their “Cak Cak.” It’s not fair that my child(ren) will not have their Cak Cak. I’ve blocked out the memories of how my mom was with my niece and nephew because it is SO painful to think that that won’t happen for my children.

After my last blog post, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of “safe.” I long to feel safe again but when I was telling Henry how I felt, he helped me realize that I may never feel safe the way I used to feel safe because there was only one person who made me feel truly safe, and that was my mom. I am trying desperately to find a feeling that is no longer possible. He’s right. Even though everyone around me is telling me everything is going to be okay, I can’t believe them because it’s not coming from my mom. I have only ever believed my mom. She was my north star. She was my protector. And now I don’t have that.

So where do I go from here? I’m not sure but I know I need to fight like hell for this baby because that’s what my mom did for me.

I’ve passed the long awaited viability week - 24 weeks - and am a little over 26 weeks right now. I thought the worrying would end but it hasn’t. It has just manifested to other things like worrying about her movement and waking up on my back. I put off planning anything or buying anything for so long because I was paralyzed with fear and now I feel like I am a terrible mother because I am scrambling to get things done. Trauma is not fun. I used to think that when I got pregnant, everything would be okay. What I am learning is that my definition of “okay” is not what it used to be. I don’t think I’ll ever be “okay” in the sense where I won’t be worried because let’s face it, once you’ve been exposed to the type of trauma that comes from sudden death and grieving, you are never the same again. You learn to build a new version of yourself that is sustainable to the new life that you are living without your person, but you are never “okay” again and that is perfectly okay!

Mom, I miss you like crazy. I’ve realized that the transition to spring weather will inevitably always cause me intense grief and pain because my body recognizes that the worst times of my life happened in the spring. We just passed the year mark of this quarantine life and it’s wild to think of everything that happened in one year. We passed the milestone of your one-year anniversary on April 9th. I got my first pregnancy test on March 5th, found out it was twins on March 20th, and found out I had a missed miscarriage on April 23rd. It took the whole summer for my body to heal from that trauma and then on September 30th we got pregnant again through an IUI. The first year after your death was a blur and now, what I am realizing, is the second year was all about actually feeling and that was tough. Quarantine forced us into isolation to deal with those feelings alone and, in the beginning, I saw that as a blessing. I didn’t have to pretend that I was okay or put on a face for the outside world. But, if I am being honest, I think we all got too comfortable isolating in our grief and now we are feeling the effects of not having connection. I am not exactly sure how I am supposed to do this mothering thing without you but I feel confident that I will do okay given I have my experiences with you to lean on. It tears me apart that you’re not here physically but, as I’ve said before, I promise you I will talk about you every single day and I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter’s first words are “Cak Cak” because she will know exactly how important you are to our family, and how critical you’ve always been to being the glue that holds us all together. I will teach her all of those famous one-liners you taught me, that I think Grandpop passed down to you, like “two wrongs don’t make a right” and “mind over matter.” She will be caring, strong, honest, thoughtful, resilient, and empathetic - all of the values that you passed on to me. She will take pride in her character and what that means. She will never give up. She will always place herself in another’s person’s shoes and never judge them. She will think of you every time she hugs knowing you gave the best hugs. She will take chances just like you taught me to do. She will dance and laugh and love life, just like her Cak Cak.

I love you infinity, Mom.

Love,

Your Sweetheart

xoxo