About a week after I saw my doctor who confirmed I was pregnant with Radha, I boarded a plane for a conference in Boston. I remember asking him what I do if I start to miscarry on my trip. He stared at me, and scolded me for not being more positive.
"
I need practical advice.
You can be positive, I need to know what to do if I start to bleed," I said firmly.
He sighed, and instructed me to go tp the local ER if that happened.
I spent a few days, walking around Boston, really trying to grasp what I was about to get myself into. The worry was already palpable. I was remembering my deal with God---if it is not meant to be, let it come early. No stillbirth this time. I made a million trips to the bathroom, checking.
On Thursday, Peyton flew out to meet me. We were going to spend a few days in Rhode Island and in Maine. We walked around the
Swan Point Cemetery looking for H.P Lovecraft's grave (Peyton is a fan). It was a dreary, overcast kind of day, and there weren't many people around the property. We snapped a few pictures of the flowers. It was a wonderfully peaceful place.
This particular statue resonated with me. The Nightingale Angel. A turn-of-the-century art piece symbolizing the angels that are watching over the children. And there were so many children with the same birth and death dates. So many children....
And when I walked around that cemetery, I wondered if the child I was carrying would make it. The angel haunted my dreams for many, many months after we left Rhode Island.
I think about taking this journey again, and how insane it would be. I am an only child, and I did not like being an only child. My parents were not doting (in the least), but it has made me the person I am now. I make friends pretty easily, and I have some very good friends that have been with me since I was a wee child.
But I have to tell you that as I sat around my friends' dinner table when I was a kid, I found myself quite envious. Of the dinner table. Of family. Of sister/brother; sister/sister; brother/brother interactions. Deep down I wanted someone to get me like that, and share my history from as long as they could remember. I wanted funny, humiliating stories shared about me when people were visiting. I wanted to laugh so hard about a memory from childhood that my sides ached. As good as my friends were, I still had leave them to go home to my lonely house.
I feel that I owe Radha the chance to have that. But then I worry that she will be angry that she is not the only. That her parent's attention is split. How many people wished that they were only children?!?!
I know that if we
cannot have any more, for whatever reason, she will be ok.
The question is, will I be ok? If I can. If I cannot. Am I ready to have this internal battle again? The daily demons, the fear, the loathing, the high blood pressure, the 10+ anatomy scans.....all of it?
I don't know yet. Do you ever really know for sure?
