Year of Losses

Emotional-Reflective — Personal Narrative

A Personal Essay

I considered giving it away. I had packed a box of baby items – milk storage bags, bottles, breast pump. All those implements that seem so essential during the first few months of life, but then gradually make their way to the dusty corners of the closet unless the new lives come quickly, one after another.

I had never imagined these things would sit unused for so long. Two years, perhaps, and then we would pull them out again. Sterilize the bottles, wash the burp cloths, begin the routine again. And yet they had been taking up space in our closet for four years now, and there was no due date ahead, marking the time when they should come out again.

A year before, such an end to their storage had seemed possible. I was pregnant, though tentative about it. Six weeks I spent unsure, my own intuition telling me something might not be right. And indeed, after weeks of uncertainty and doctor’s visits, the possibility faded. It was not to be.

Following the loss, I galvanized my strength and looked toward other avenues for new beginnings. I began applying to a PhD program. For years, the future had seemed to mock me. I would never live up to its requirements. We would never meet the growing expenses of our family if I did not pursue higher education and find a way to increase my earning potential. Two prior attempts at entering master’s degrees programs had either been thwarted by unemployment or abandoned when I couldn’t see the point. This would be my third and most serious attempt.

I spent several months doing hours of math online every day. I read through and summarized advanced research in brain science. I arduously crafted a competitive personal essay, tailored to pique the interest of the professor I was applying to.

The program was in Boulder, Colorado. I thought if I got in, I might solve the two major problems of my life in one fail swoop – by moving us out of expensive Los Angeles to a place where we could find affordable housing, and setting myself up to pursue a cutting edge career. The question of the next child lingered uncomfortably in my mind. What would I do? How would I pursue a PhD with a newborn? Would I push off additional children, if not physically then emotionally, by not desiring them and not bringing them into being?

I forced myself to pray for another child, despite the uncertainty it entailed. And indeed, I became pregnant again. I was invited for interviews for the PhD program. One of only three students. When my thirty-minute interview extended past ninety, I was convinced the professor felt good about my application. And then the program rejected me. It became the second new life that year that would not be born.

My bitterness was such that I could not express. Not because I had wished to move to Colorado and leave the city that had been a home to me for most of my life. Not because I deeply wanted to get the PhD. But because I felt like my options had run out. Because I saw no feasible way to step confidently into my and my family’s future.

I was ready to lash out at God. To rage against Him for leaving me, I felt, without a path to tread. But even with my own crushed spirit, I held back from that. I could not forget the Jews, who in the desert accused God with the words, “Is there Elokim in our midst or not?” Immediately they experienced what God withdrawing His presence truly means as their arch enemy attacked. Let Amalek not attack me, I thought. I know God still guides. I know He still protects. I know He has not abandoned me.

The weeks of the second pregnancy wore on and my husband told me about a property he thought we should look at. It wasn’t as far as the others we had seen. It was inside the eruv. I was skeptical. We had been looking for so long. We had thought we would have to leave the state. But I agreed to go see.

The night before, I saw the first sign of another loss. Blood – that great symbol of birth, of life, of death – it provokes fear in a pregnancy. The next day, we saw the property. A duplex. I was grateful that we had to wear masks because I hoped mine would conceal the sunken state of my spirits. Uncertainty, doubt, and the growing sense that all promise must end in nothing.

We continued our investigation into the property and made the first offer we had ever made on a property. It was countered. We countered. And throughout, I kept my hope in check. Nothing will come of this, I convinced myself. I have been defeated by hope too many times.

As the negotiation for the property wore on, the initial sign of loss in the pregnancy grew heavy, the hope became slim. I would add a third loss now to the year’s count.

And then on Erev Shavuot, that holiday that echoes the great Jubilee when we remember that all the land belongs to God and that land, like God, can be a great protector in a man’s life, our realtor called. “Congratulations!” he said. “They accepted your offer!” They had chosen us over an all-cash offer because they liked our family. Escrow began.

When we began to pack and prepare for our move, I packed the baby things first. Somehow, after the previous year, I had lost confidence in my body. We might have another child. Eventually. I hoped. But no – it could not be soon. We would not need these baby things. I could store them away, somewhere deep in the garage. No, I could give them away, I thought. How long can one hold onto something, without using it, after all?

We moved. On our moving day, I was expecting more than just movers, expecting a cycle to end, yet again without life. But though the movers came, the other thing did not. Could a seed have taken root? By the end of the week, I had taken another pregnancy test. It was positive.

Emotional upheaval and nausea followed, forcing me to walk around our new and unfinished home faintly clutching my stomach and gagging at the subtle smells emitted by our mini-fridge and make-shift kitchen. Several near emotional breakdowns convinced me to take the hormones of pregnancy seriously and not to skip meals. And all the time, I waited. Waited to see what the future here might be.

The nine-week ultrasound was normal. “Is it measuring the right size?” I asked the doctor, probing for reassurance that I would not discover a fetus measuring seven weeks, when I was supposed to be ten, as I had in the first of the lost pregnancies.

“It’s measuring about two days bigger, but we don’t adjust your due date unless it’s more than a week,” she said.

The fact that there was a live fetus was already better than the last pregnancy when the ultrasound, after bleeding had already started, mysteriously revealed no fetus at all.

Still, I waited. I did not want to tell. I did not want to allow false confidence to set me up for more bitter disappointment. Twelve weeks came, and another normal ultrasound. At sixteen weeks, I began to feel the early signs of movement.

Slowly, my belly swelled and I began to feel the vital signs of kicking inside. This one will live, I thought. How strange.

It has been eight months now since that first early sign. I can feel the baby becoming more massive as the weeks pass. As the due date approaches, I look toward the threshold. Birth. A great and terrifying uncertainty. To know that one must bring forth a creature from within. To know that one must break through the limitations of the body, with all its resistance to pain and to having a full-sized baby squeeze through the narrow straits of the birth canal. No amount of experience makes birth less daunting. If anything, more experience has only made me more afraid.

The fruit has not yet ripened. The time is not yet sweet. So much remains uncertain. And yet…hope returns, haltingly.

I cannot know that we will make it. Live up to the daunting requirements of our lives. And yet, it is enough that I need not raise my white flag. There is new life ahead.

Tone: Emotional, Reflective

Text Type: Personal Essay/Personal Narrative