The Empty Womb

"Empty But for Love"

When I miscarried last August I wasn't ready to get pregnant right away. A nagging feeling kept telling me that it was a bad idea. Right after the loss I set a tentative date of January 2011 as the time when we would probably be ready to try to conceive again. And yet, here we are in January and there is no baby making going on, nor any in the foreseeable future.

At the moment not being pregnant just sucks. It seems like everyone that I know and love is pregnant (even my favorite blogger recently announced a pregnancy) and it hurts. I doesn't hurt in a jealousy kind of way; more in the way that I felt when I was infertile. It is lonely. That is why I titled this post "The Empty Womb" because that is really the only way to describe the feeling. Having experienced a pregnancy before I sometimes feel "ghost kicks" or muscle twitches/gas bubbles/whatever you want to call them that remind me that at this moment I would be less than a month away from my estimated due date and instantly I am overcome by sadness at my lost experience.

I just found out that one of my best friends is expecting a girl later this year. On Facebook. This is the same woman who told me she was pregnant the first time before she even tested! While I am not sure this is the case, I wonder if she would have told me earlier if I had not miscarried. I hated learning through a website. If I wasn't on Facebook would I have heard about it ever? Maybe next year we would get a Christmas card from them and there would be a baby! Surprise!

While I am still occasionally bitter and sad, I am growing to appreciate my currently empty womb. It has given me an opportunity to work on healing myself that I wouldn't have had if I had been pregnant/nursing. The empty womb has opened doors for us and the journey that Andrew and I have been on in the last few months has been amazing in so many ways. It has been so difficult and yet we know we are now on a path that we would not have otherwise gone to if we had not lost the pregnancy. I might even dare to say that this is a better path...but more on that later.