Milestones

Last week in therapy, I told my therapist I was 28 weeks pregnant and she said, “wow that’s amazing, so you made it to your goal!” I started laughing and I said, honestly, I’ve made it to a lot of my goals, but I keep moving the goal post.

Later in the week, I had a similar conversation with a friend who was a college athlete and she told me that my mindset was an athlete mentality of taking things one step at a time to mentally push through hard things. That’s exactly how I feel. First hurdle: AFP test. Second hurdle: Maliyah’s gestational age. Next: 7 months. Next: 30 weeks or “still be pregnant on my birthday.” My absolute ultimate goal is to make it to July, which gets closer every day, but I’ve also come to a sense of peace that it may not happen and that’s also ok, because my REAL ultimate goal is a living, healthy baby.

But this post isn’t about simply gestational age milestones. First of all, that’s boring, and second of all, every single day is a milestone for PAL moms. Shit, every single minute feels like a milestone on some days!

Today I wanted to talk about other milestones. There have been a lot, and there are many more to go.

Let me start by saying, much of this post is an ode to myself. Just like my “Proud of Myself 2023” post, I am proud of myself for each and every one of these things. To a non-loss parent, some of these things may seem inconsequential. But for a loss parent, each one of these was like Everest and sometimes the mere thought of scaling the task took my breath away. I’m not seeking congratulations, affirmations, compliments or well wishes. I’m writing this to open the eyes of those who may not realize how small things seem HUGE, and how important it is to recognize small wins.

Interestingly, I had a conversation about this (recognizing wins) in therapy this week, too. I go to a lot of therapy. I was lamenting all of the things I haven’t been able to do (create a registry, have anything related to a baby in the house, call our baby by name) and all of the things I have had to scale back on (going to the gym, hanging out with friends). My therapist spent a full three minutes reminding me of all of the things I have done, how far I’ve come, and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, I was setting the bar too high for myself to ensure I’d never reach it and set myself up for failure. It’s possible. I have high expectations!

I guess she has some good points.

So anyway, I decided to dedicate this week’s post to my personal achievements relating to this new baby. The first milestone happened before I was even pregnant.

My first milestone for myself was following Pregnancy After Loss Instagram accounts. The thought of entering another pregnancy was daunting. The idea that I would willfully engage in the content was a huge step in and of itself for me. Long before I took a pregnancy test, I was favorite-ing inspirational quotes about “one day at a time” or “different pregnancy, different outcome.” I was hoping that by swiping by these mantras on social media, they would somehow mind-meld into my thoughts. Osmosis works, right? It’s how Chandler thought he was a strong, confident woman (there is ALWAYS a Friends reference). I’m not sure if any of it worked, but the mere following of accounts that mentioned alive babies, or ongoing pregnancies, as opposed to following solely loss-parent accounts and muting anyone with a child, was a big step for me.

The next milestone came in the form of feeling movement from baby boy. With Maliyah, I had an anterior placenta, so I didn’t feel movement until much later in pregnancy, and I was never able to feel her from the outside. This also meant that Chris was never able to feel her moving. The first few weeks of movement for this pregnancy, I was in a bit of denial. First, it started a lot earlier! I wasn’t sure if I was making it up. For a while, I ignored it. Then eventually, I would put my hand on my stomach at night (another mini-milestone) and see if I could feel him kicking around. Eventually, I knew I could. Again, I waited a few days-weeks until I said anything. Then, I told Chris. When I finally told him and let him put his hand on my stomach, that was a massive milestone for me. The idea that we were both in on this, and we could both fall so so so far, was something that took me a long time to reckon with.

Some people are excited to be a cute pregnant person in cute pregnant-people-clothes. They take photos holding their bump, they make little hearts with their husband’s hands. They purposefully wear form-fitting clothes. Not me. Not me one bit. If I showcased my pregnancy, that would mean acknowledging it. Worse, that might mean someone would TALK to me about it. That was/is the very last thing I wanted. I imagined the day that strangers would approach me on the street and ask when I was due. When you are just trying to make it one day at a time, that is a LOADED question. But eventually, I didn’t fit in my jeans. And it was getting too hot to wear leggings every day. Also, leggings are tight, and the bruises on my stomach were more and more pronounced as my blood volume was increasing. I needed clothes. I held out as long as I could, but eventually, I dove in and purchased some maternity clothes. I talked about this in support group, and someone suggested that perhaps it was easier to think about buying something for me as opposed to buying something for the baby. That reframe actually helped me a lot. Whether or not this baby survived, it was hot, and I needed to wear clothes. I wasn’t jinxing the baby by having clothes, I was just… living in a world that requires clothed people. I decided I would become an “overalls girlie” because having no waistband means having no pressure on my stomach bruises. Thank god for Amazon returns because my tall self needed to try on a LOT of shorts overalls before finding a couple that worked. #LongLegsBruisedCity. If you thought I’d be including photos here, you’d be wrong.

The next huge milestone I looked forward to was having our baby boy surpass the weight of his older sister. She only weighed 634 grams when she was born, or 1 pound and 6.4 ounces. I didn’t have a scan for this baby at the exact gestational age of Maliyah’s birth (25 weeks 4 days), but I did have one a week prior, at 24 weeks, 4 days, and he was already 728 grams, or 1 pound, 10 ounces. This was huge news for us. Trust me, I know most moms aren’t jumping for joy at a baby under 2 pounds, but the fact that he was growing bigger was a sign that things were already going better. That measurement put him in the 58th percentile, which was MASSIVE as far as we were concerned. No wonder I needed maternity clothes!

Our next milestone was one I put off for a long time: picking a name. Chris was all in on choosing names. Last time, we used an app called Baby Names, which is like Tinder for expecting parents. You tie your account to your partner’s and then you swipe left or right on names and it alerts you when you have a match. The idea is fun, it’s gamified, and it’s easy. But… it’s only really fun if you think your baby will be alive. It’s not a “fun” task to pick a name for a baby you still believe will likely be dead. Chris had more confidence than me. He also probably remembered how hard it was for us to pick a name last time, so he thought we should start the process early. He redownloaded the app and told me to, too. He purchased the upgraded account so we could filter different names by national origin, celebrities, all sorts of things. I put off downloading the app, and put it off some more. I wasn’t ready to call this baby anything other than “baby.” Or “maybe baby.” Finally, after much cajoling I downloaded the app and forced myself to swipe a little bit every day. As you read in the post about our “maybe babymoon,” we picked some front-runners. We have a name we have been test-driving in the house. By we, I mostly only mean Chris. We picked a name, but I can’t bring myself to say it. I cannot acknowledge him by name because what if…

I’m working on it. Let’s call it a milestone-in-progress.

The final milestone I’ll mention for now, was when I decided to tell my coworkers I was expecting a baby. I put this off for a WHILE. When I was pregnant with Maliyah, we had some worries about her before things went south for REAL for real. So I put it off. I didn’t tell my work until I was 22 weeks pregnant. I waited for our anatomy scan, and once that was clear, I thought we would be smooth sailing. I told the whole staff on a zoom meeting, with all cameras on. 3 weeks later, to the day, I checked myself into the hospital and my supervisor had to un-tell the staff.

I swore I would never make that mistake again. I thought I had waited a long time last time, but this time, the idea of telling anyone at 22 weeks felt like tempting the universe in a huge way. I needed to wait longer. And I could not imagine looking at anyone’s face while I said it. I assumed I would see either sympathy or excitement, and I didn’t want to see any of it. I didn’t want to be forced to react to any of it, either. Also, I am now so keenly aware of many others’ silent struggles, and I wanted to minimize the pain that I might cause them as much as possible. I decided I would wait until absolutely necessary, and then I would send an email. I wrote and rewrote that email 5 times. Then, I asked Chris to proofread and approve it. He told me it felt “cold.” It was. I didn’t want warmth in return, I didn’t want ANY response in return (in fact, I even said that). I wanted to simply make an informational announcement. I made Chris stand next to me while I sent the email. My heart was racing, I got zone minutes on my Fitbit. But I did it. Then, I immediately went to the gym and locked my phone in a locker, which has become my standard way to avoid the world and human interaction.

I am on to the 4^th page of this blog. Those are a lot of milestones to celebrate! Again, I will reiterate that to some, these things may seems small. So what, I followed an account on Instagram? Obviously, I would let my husband feel our baby move. Of COURSE I told my coworkers I have leave coming up in 3 months (hopefully). But none of those things were easy, small, obvious or straightforward. To me, those things were huge. I hope to have more milestones soon… as my therapist would say, even a tiny step forward is a step forward.

(Written at: 28 weeks 4 days)