i want to believe

I haven't written anything here in a couple of weeks, but it feels much longer than that. A lot has been happening, in life and in my heart. I have been by turns focused, frazzled, and fragile since the calendar rolled over to 2011. There's been a lot of fodder for posts, but I can't bring myself to write - I'm afraid that too much reflection will bring my fragility to the forefront. And sometimes the idea of editorializing makes me sleepy.

I'll just say this: turning 39 has been hard. Really hard. Infertility grief, which I'd been holding at bay, has been my constant companion this month. It demands my attention. But what does it want me to say? I am sad. Really sad. I want a baby. My baby is dead. There is no new baby. I am sad. This is my background noise.

Last week I walked into a room that I thought would be a safe space for my vulnerability, and instead I found a four-week old baby girl in her new mama's arms. I left the room crying. I left the building crying, and did not go back. It's been a long time since I've had to run away from a trigger, but there I went, right out the door....

This is not the person I want to be. I just want to be a normal mother. Not a dead baby mama, not an infertile mother, not "just" the stepmom, not the woman who runs from sweet and anonymous newborns. But that woman is me. I am still learning to live with her.

It's not over yet. IVF lies ahead, if I can get our insurance shit worked out. Adoption is a possibility hovering like a thought balloon over our heads. Every day I read something about some woman in her 40s having a baby. I need to convince myself that 39 is not a huge brick wall.

It's not going to be easy. For one thing, I am not a person who believes that women having babies in their 40s is the most simple, natural thing in the world. I know it is gauche to say so. It sounds negative and discouraging and terribly unfeminist. But I worry about the "advanced maternal age" crowd - how we can be preyed upon by drug companies and snake oil salesmen, how we can be bitten in our most vulnerable spot by profiteers. I don't want to drink their kool-aid.

At the same time, I want to believe. I need to sip the kool-aid, just a little bit, or it will never happen. I need to be told, every day: Do not give up hope. Do not, do not, do not. I should get a sticky pad and write this note to myself - stick it on my laptop, my fridge, my bedside lamp.

Where is my baby? Why won't she come to me?

Write it in lipstick across the bathroom mirror: don't give up.