Quadrennium (noun): A specified period of four years
This new month marks four years of us trying for a baby. Four trying years. Trying for years.
F-O-U-R Y-E-A-R-S
- 80% of our first TTC lustrum
- 48 months
- 208 weeks
- 1461 days
- 35,064 hours
- 2,103,840 minutes
- 126,230,400 seconds
I’m not even sure if my husband is aware of this sad fact. I won’t remind him.
I’m obviously not pregnant, but I’ve already told a few people, that if I go on to have another miscarriage, that blog will simply be called “Four” – our fourth loss.
It’s mean to have told people that, isn’t it? It’s mean to tell you that now, ahead of time. I suppose that it could feel, in part, like a miscarriage. The shock that takes your breath away as you see the blog title, that “oh god, please no” feeling. Then the eventual penny-drop moment as all hope slips away and the fear is confirmed “oh no, oh no no no”. I wonder if every new blog email alert will now be similar to me, as a pregnant woman, going to the toilet: the silent plea of “please, don’t let this new blog be called Four” reminiscent of the daily “please, don’t let there be blood”.
As you can probably tell, I spend more time thinking about a future miscarriage (“can I go through it all again? ‘At least’ the blog writing will help, even though it will be so painful to update everything from three losses to four. Perhaps that’s how I can spend my two weeks of miscarriage leave?”) than daydreaming about a future baby. Both are unhealthy, I know. It’s best to not think about these things, except that I’ve had a lot of time to ponder: 126,230,400 seconds. That’s a lot of time to not think about something.
I’ve just lost the game.
I’ve never really wanted something, that I wasn’t able to work harder towards. I don’t think James has either. We’ve just always worked to achieve our goals. And we succeeded. But now we can’t have what comes so easily to others, the most natural thing in the world. We’re the unusual ones. The anomaly. Once our forte, now our downfall.
It’s an odd feeling – a sinking realisation – that I just don’t know what to do with. I want something that I have no control over and it’s horrible. We have done the hard stuff and we now can’t do the “easy” stuff. It doesn’t make sense to me.
Four years.
Though each pregnancy has lasted longer (7 weeks, 11 weeks, 20 weeks respectively), they have also increased in trauma (a missed miscarriage, a horrific miscarriage at home, a neonatal death). Our first two babies were so loved, so wanted, but not long for this world. And our third baby was a second trimester wonder. So I can’t help but wonder “what next? How can this escalate further?”.
Or maybe it won’t. And maybe that’s it. Maybe our time is up, our experience ends here and I’ll never be pregnant again. The end. Although, does this actually only mark the half-way point? The glass half empty? I did say I’m giving it until I’m 40, so great (!), yet another:
126,230,400 seconds
2,103,840 minutes
35,064 hours
1461 days
208 weeks
48 months
4 years
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