My uterus needs a vacation. I have been trying to ignore this fact for some time, but it’s the plain truth.

For a couple weeks now I’ve been trying to figure out how to let people in on the weird ride that is my life. I’m used to letting things out and sharing pretty much everything, but over the past few months I consciously – no wait – I superstitiously decided that I was going to keep things to myself.

And now I’m going to plunge in to break my own silence. This will likely be an ungraceful blurting of thoughts, especially if the first line is any indicator. Partially because I vowed not to edit this -otherwise I’d be on version 700 and looking for reasons not to post – and partially because I feel raw, strange, and not able to smooth out my narrative voice. C’est la vie. Buckle up.

Early September brought some amazing news my way.

I became Project Manager at YummyMummyClub.ca, a total dream job working with some of the most amazing women I have ever met. 3 days later, I found out I was pregnant. I know. I was beaming too.

The thing is, life never goes quite the way we plan for it. I was still recovering from a fairly traumatic miscarriage earlier this year, and my paranoia seemed to rule any joy I wanted to let loose. I focused on work and hoped for the best, sucking deep into myself.

Over the weeks, Hubs and I were told that we had a low fetal heart rate. And the rollercoaster car went screaming downhill.. We were told to expect the worst. We tried progesterone suppositories. We tried everything from distraction to meditation to plain, raw, prayer.

At one of our weekly ultrasounds we finally got some incredible news. The heart rate had normalized. Our little bean was hanging in there ..Up lurched the car as it started its ascension again..

The future finally seemed locked in. I became comfortable in my own mythic ‘good things happen to those who wait’ mindset. It’s not that they don’t, but I started thinking that somehow my brutal recent past loss would cancel out this next round. That I’d paid my own Karmic debt or something, and if I kept believing, and stopped feeling the brittle pressure of anxious potential on my pregnancy, everything would be ok. This was the universe teaching me that I would have my happy-ending and all I had to do was stay positive, right?

The thing is, that wasn’t the lesson I was learning. I’m still not sure what the lesson is, actually.

The rollercoaster car has run off the rails..

At first, my silence had to do with not wanting to tell people that I was pregnant until I was ‘sure’. When I felt that good news was imminent I started writing various drafts of my special announcement. How do I tell the world how happy I am? Especially after an almost 3 month hiatus from posts? I felt like I had been holding my breath for so long.

When I exhaled, however, it was in shock. Again, at 12 weeks and 2 days, I was told that my little bean’s heart had stopped. It was over. Again.

There was barely time for the wave of devastation to hit. Things had to move quickly because my last experience just a few months ago landed me in hospital for 4 days with an emergency D&C and a blood transfusion.  They couldn’t risk that again.

All of a sudden, instead of even looking at my grief or processing what had happened, I was overseeing the ‘Administration of Personal Crisis’. I had to tell work, make plans for child care, pack my hospital bag, make sure I had all my pre-op appointments and blood work taken care of.. I was numb and on autopilot. Everything felt mechanical – like I’d been plucked out of my own body and was being controlled by a joystick.

Days later my first real feelings started drifting to the surface. My numbness was thawing. One of my first emerging thoughts was ‘Oh. I guess I can’t post that I’m pregnant.. Now what am I going to write?’ It was a bizarre thought to have, but the closest I had been to admitting that I’d lost this baby too.

Since then, I’ve been living day by day. Everything seems slow and sticky since that news, and every molasses minute seems to pack a new punch: my Crohn’s has flared up.. my thyroid is out of whack again.. I have a post-op infection.. I sometimes feel like screaming ‘WHAT IS THE MESSAGE HERE?’ but I know that before I get any coherent answer I just have to stop and put myself first. That I should have come first all along.

I’ve had to step down from my dream contract with Yummy Mummy Club. I’ve had to rethink my next steps. I have to look after myself, and that seems easy when you know what’s wrong. When you don’t, however, it means your health becomes your full-time job.

So here I am now, ready to be open and move forward. I don’t know what lessons are ahead, and I don’t know why we go through what we do, but somehow I’m ready to start dealing with it.

I am making a new pledge to myself:

Every movement onward from this dark place will be taken as a firm, conscious step into the sunshine.

My health will come first.

I will not sweat the small stuff.

I will not be afraid of failing, or of any bad times ahead – I may not know why now, but one day those times will be the markers of where and how I changed my life for the best.

I will spend every minute I can with my beautiful daughter. I will sniff her sunshine hair, and leave her sticky fingerprints on my face all day.

I will have naps.

I will stop cleaning the house and go play outside instead.

I will stop ‘trying to achieve’, and just be.

I will embrace my life for what it is, and drink in the beauty of everything whether that’s hot coffee, the feeling of my bare foot on our creaky old floors, or the silent warmth that fills my soul when my own little family is together.

A big part of me believes that everything happens for a reason, but a bigger part of me believes that even if it doesn’t, everything will be ok. Whether it’s having to walk away from a dream job, slam the breaks on a plan, or start from the beginning again and again, that damn rollercoaster entices me. I gladly get on, and like everyone else, I scream and scrunch my face on the way up, and scream wide-eyed on the way down.

Maybe that means that we never truly learn. Maybe that’s the beauty of being human. Maybe it’s all we really know.  All I know right now is that I’ll be ok. I’ll keep sharing. I’ll keep trying. I’ll be.

Thank you for being with me.

Enjoy the ride.