I contemplated posting baby updates to this blog. Most of the miscarriage blogs that I found during my days of loss had morphed into mommy blogs by the time I found them. I should have found this encouraging. Yes, these women have been where I am and emerged with tales of no-sleep and poop. Instead I felt rejected yet again. Everyone gets a baby but me, even the ladies who are supposed to be sharing in my experience.
So no baby updates on the Peabody Project. In fact, no baby updates anywhere for the last year aside from a hastily scribbled screed about the first six months of life with Purvis.
If you have stumbled upon this blog after experiencing pregnancy loss, I urge you to return to the beginning of the story, the early entries and move ahead chronologically. Also, I am sorry, very sorry for your loss.
As for me, I still do think about miscarriage mainly when I hear of friends’ losses or when I post a baby-related Facebook update. I hope that my updates don’t cause anybody the icky conflicted murk of emotion that used to befall me when I saw my friends’ baby updates. I have never felt so alienated from my friends, family, and culture at large as after my first miscarriage. I existed in a shadow world of things that aren’t supposed to happen, a world where support groups are the only place of normalcy. I was the cautionary tale, the whispered story.
Friends who shared my experience told me that after Purvis was born I wouldn’t be able to imagine life without her, that in a strange way I’d be grateful that she was the one who came into my life because only Purvis can be Purvis and as great as Primo and Dewey may have been, she is the only child I can imagine. At the time, I didn’t want to hear it. How dare they speak of my lost ones like that, but now I feel the truth of that. I can’t imagine another smile, another laugh, another bugged out I’m-taking-a-crap face.
Yesterday we celebrated Purvis’ first birthday (which she celebrated by pooping in the bathtub. My girl likes to party ALL the time.). We reminisced about when I took what felt like the biggest crap in the world a year ago. (Please see the previous entry for more on that.) We are lucky. Purvis is the shine in my eye. But I still remember Primo and Dewey. I mourn for the lives they missed. I remember the story our post-miscarriage therapist told us about the souls of miscarried babies being protected by the Buddhist bodhisattva, Jizo. Jizo watches and protects their souls until they can be born into another body. One day, when we get our garden in order (which means actually clearing away 2 years worth of dead leaves and planting a garden), I plan to install a Jizo statue in honor of Primo and Dewey. I will tell Purvis about the ones who came before her even though they never really existed beyond the form of our hope and love.
Thanks to friends and family who have supported me, my family, my blog, and now my life with Purvis. May everyone find peace in and beyond Miscarriage World. May we find a way to talk about miscarriage that is sensitive, dark, funny, and true.
Peace out.
