My fifth pregnancy was a total surprise– we weren’t even trying. We weren’t even thinking about trying. We had stepped off the roller coaster of counting days, chlomid, and ovulation strips almost two years prior. If you haven’t had to do any magic tricks on your pregnancy journey, rock on. It sucks and the obligatory, timed out sex is as terrible as it sounds for all involved. For the sake of our sanity and our marriage, we stopped the madness and moved on to IVF (Oh, the irony!). Our first appointment was a week away.

I thought, this must be IT…this had to work…we deserved this…we weren’t even trying.

Turns out, we didn’t get one of the stories. You know…The STORIES…they typically go something like, “The Smiths tried for years and when they finally gave up / adopted / stopped stressing / sprinkled magical fucking pixie dust, they got pregnant — just like that!” Those stories give me shivers, the bad kind, like nails on a chalkboard – but I was absolutely willing to sell my soul for one.

While things played out (many people don’t realize it can take several days, even weeks for a miscarriage to be diagnosed / conclude –full of visits to the ER and the doctor, blood tests, ultra sounds…and the waiting, good god the waiting…) I decided I would enjoy whatever time I had left to be pregnant. I would concentrate on being with my baby, carrying my baby and I would send it so, so much love…

After the love fest, I lost it. This one tipped me right over the edge. I felt wronged and I was raging. I wanted to hit things. I said to (read: barked at) a friend, “I just keep thinking, this is so UNNECESSARY! We’ve done this four other times, FOUR TIMES. We get it! Babies are miracles. Life is precious and all of that shit! We fucking get it! I mean just stick the knife in and keep twisting. What the hell?!?!”  To which, my wonderful friend replied, in total solidarity, “Yes, completely un-fucking-necessary.” I felt sucker-punched and I could not come up with any meaning or remote justification for why I ever got pregnant in the first place or why this kept happening over and over and over…

I’ve not ever been driven towards one passion, one career, one hobby, one…anything. I’ve looked for all of those things…oh, man, have I looked. I’ve bounced around like a pinball (to put it mildly) searching and inquiring and roaming about for the most uniquely perfect place I could plant my flag and say, “This is me. I am here.” This nomadic drifting has been a source of shame and pure frustration for me. But, I never found that elusive destination, so I bet it all on the only constant goal I’d ever had, the only thing I’d always (save for a year or two after the junior health class video) known to be true…I was born to be a mother. I was going to make motherhood my place.

But now, my last piece of solid ground, the spot on which I was determined to plant my flag, just big enough to support my two tiny feet, had exploded. I was free falling, in shock and chanting, “un-fucking-necessary…un-fucking-necessary…” So…um, pretty much the poster child for healthy coping.

Between all the internal raging and chanting and screaming (screaming on the outside? Why no, never, that is quite too undone…uncivilized, I tell you. I only do undone on the inside. Much too messy for show.) a question nagged, but only for a blink, then I proceeded with the losing of my shit.

Eventually, I smacked into the hard ground — battered, bruised, and utterly exhausted. Full of hate, shame and sad – lots of sad – so, so much sad — I wondered if I was going to get up, if I could get up. I’m not sure how long I laid there, long enough I couldn’t keep that question from bugging me: Does this keep happening because I haven’t learned the lesson(s) I’m supposed to?

Let me pause and acknowledge, this question can get us into all kinds of religious and spiritual spirals.  To that I say–no, nope, not gonna do it — not braving that rabbit hole today or possibly ever.

But, I might believe this idea, I might believe I kept missing something, so life kept punching me in the face with the same heartache.   I also might not believe this idea, in which case, I could choose to make my experiences relevant  (“fucking necessary,” if you will).  Either way, I needed to change something or be destroyed.  By now, I felt perfectly justified in being destroyed –one hundred percent. So, I stayed down a bit longer…

Then I got up.  And got to work.