22 March 2017

First written as a note to myself, and sent on to my husband, on 22 March 2017. I want to be ready to try again. Physically ready. I don't actually know if I'm ready otherwise. I am currently focusing on the waiting to be ready, to be told we can try again. I know it will be crushing if we are told there is an issue. A barrier. A stumbling block. Issues can be worked through. Barriers can be taken down or broken. I can get back up.

The difficult part lies in the number of people telling me I need to wait until I am mentally ready. They make me question if I am. I thought I was, but do I think I am? The past and present tense are in contradictions, and what of the future? I am not having sex with my husband. I miss the closeness of that. I am barely even kissing my husband. First to not catch his cold when my immune system was so weak, and then to stop passing the oral thrush that developed with my antibiotics back and forth. I would like to be able to be close again, to not have those barriers, to figure out if what is beyond them is somewhere I am ready to go. Barriers can be taken down.

I can get back up. I can move forward. I can remember the child that we did not meet.

I am ready to find out. I am ready to know if I am physically ready. I am ready for someone to show us what has been making up those barriers. A scientist to look at the chromosomes and tell us what they were looking for, a doctor to explain to us the future possibilities. I am ready to be looking at the road ahead, ready to take my foot off the brake. Am I ready to be doing that without full control of the steering wheel?

I know one thing for certain. I have always been impatient, and this waiting to find out is hard. The waiting to try. The waiting for each significant date to pass. I want to be pregnant again. I want to be looking forward to the future I envisioned for us. I want to be pregnant before my due date passes. I don't want to replace my child. I worry that I will be trying to if we try again too soon; if I am pregnant before my due date. However, I don't think that worry is founded. I will always love my first child. I wanted a future for that child. We have a future in another direction. The steering wheel cannot go full circle to take us back. We can only move forwards.

I hope the issue is that our child was a one off, something with a low chance of repeating. And yet... I do not want to say that, as it seems as though I am admitting that our child would not have been loved with their disabilities. Our child was loved from the moment of conception.

I hope that the barrier is simply a haze of smoke, not something that requires heavy machinery to conquer.

I hope that the only reason I have not been able to get back up since stumbling is because someone is holding the information just beyond my grasp. The information that helps me jump over that block. As whatever that information is, I will be taking my foot off the brake, and letting go of the steering wheel.