A Series of Unfortunate Events

A mutual friend of ours who lives out of state is getting married in a month.  Actually, it is the friend that formally introduced my husband & I 15 years ago.  Up until February, we had every intention of attending his wedding. We planned to make it about a week-long trip or so, in which we would see numerous friends and family members.  Some of the friends we see each year when we travel north, or when they travel south, yet others we haven’t seen in many moons.  Many of these friends were pregnant, just like I was.  The only difference is that they still are pregnant, and unfortunately, I’m not.

In addition to us attending the wedding on the trip, while we were there we would be celebrating one of our nephews birthdays, and my husbands as well.  Since I was pregnant, we had decided to drive rather than fly. As a recurrent miscarrier, I was scared to death to fly pregnant. I barely drove my car, so forget flying on a plane. No way.

Back in January, when I was around 9 weeks along, my mom and aunt started planning our baby shower. Yes, you heard right, that early the planning was already in the works.  The shower is something I haven’t talked of publicly. I guess I wasn’t ready to until now. It must have hurt too bad.

Since we have so many friends and family living out of the state we reside in, they planned to throw our shower up north so we could enjoy everyone’s company.  Kind of similar to what we did with our wedding.  They had already started looking at venues, food choices, and decorations.  My mom & I went and looked at some cute shower invitations one lazy Sunday afternoon during my pregnancy.  We even set the date for June 14th, the weekend prior to the wedding.  It seemed all of the events would fit perfectly together…a wedding, 2 birthdays, and a baby shower all in 1 trip!

I know all this shower planning may sound premature to some of you, considering I was just 9 weeks along.  But what you might not realize is that we had seen our baby’s heartbeat 4 times before it stopped beating that early February morning.  The chance of us miscarrying that pregnancy was under 5%.  The chance of us miscarrying 3 times was only 1%.  Both still somehow happened to us.

And just like that, with our loss, everything we had planned around the trip was ruined; the entire trip was tainted.  Maybe this seems selfish of us to think this way.  Two great people are still getting married.  Can’t we just go and celebrate that? A year ago, after 1 loss, we would have.  I’m confident we would have sucked it up and gone after the 2nd loss, too.  But not the 3rd.  We simply cannot do it.

Why can’t we do it? For one, the swarms of pregnant women that would be surrounding us if we did go.  And you must understand when I say surrounding us, I literally mean it.  I can think of 7 we would visit with in just 1 short week’s time, maybe more if we ventured off the beaten path. 3 of which I would probably be seated with at a table during the reception, and 2 due within a week of our due date.  I forgot to add that a newborn would be around us, too. And then, aside from all that, there is reason number two on why we just can’t fathom going– our baby shower that was supposed to be.

Does this mean we aren’t happy for these soon to be parents? No, it doesn’t mean that at all…we are happy for them!  Is it the couple’s fault getting married that we have been plagued by a series of unfortunate events? No, it certainly isn’t.  We wish nothing but a lifetime of joy for them! Do we wish the circumstances were different? Boy, do we ever! I wouldnt wish any of this on my worst enemy (if I had one).

What I wouldn’t give to go on this trip & be pregnant with all of my best friends up north. What my husband wouldn’t give for us to be expecting like his circle of friends up there all finally are.  What we wouldn’t give to be showered with love by our friends and family members in just a few short weeks like we planned. What we wouldn’t do to be out on the dance floor showing off our bump finally.  But for some reason, this all wasn’t meant to be for us right now.  Really hard to comprehend why, right? I know, because we struggle with understanding why too.

So, we have decided to put our feelings first with this trip. As you can tell, if we were to go, it would cause us a lot of unnecessary hurt.  A lot.  Who knows what other emotions.  The more we thought about it, and talked about it, we began to feel less guilty about our decision not to go. But to be honest, I still feel a little guilty inside.  I know how much my husband was looking forward to it, and I can’t help but think it is my fault we aren’t going anymore.  He assures me this isn’t the case, because he is a great man…but the truth is he wouldn’t tell me even if he really did blame me a little.

I would give anything to change things, but the truth is I have already given all I can.  I can’t change any of this path that we have to walk.  I can’t change the fact that we won’t be making the memories we had already played out and dreamed of in our minds.  The memories we have been waiting to make for years.  All of it is out of our hands and in his now. We just pray that one day, somehow, we will make up for all of this lost time.  And that we won’t hurt so badly when we look back on events like this.  Above all, we pray it will all work out in the end.