Something significant
Feb. 23rd, 2006 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundOh, dear. It appears that large numbers of you were enticed at my mention of "something significant that happened to me last year". I should probably have made clear that this is not the story of an exciting adventure or a juicy mystery or a thrilling secret. It's really just a sad little aside - a thing that ... wasn't expected, and then didn't happen anyway.
However, I have wanted to write about it for a while (I referred to it in the "less good stuff" paragraph of my 2005 end-of-year meme), so here you go.
On 25 May last year we had friends around in the evening, and as I stood up to say goodbye to them I was seized by the overwhelming notion that I was pregnant. I don't remember any physical symptoms that prompted this - at least, nothing I'd noticed consciously. The chances, physiologically, were extremely slim: five days previously there had been, um, one of those proximity conditions that condom-users are warned about (... see me not go into detail about my sex life; run, Radzer, run), but neither![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niallm nor I had given it a second thought. Nevertheless, I found this sudden idea utterly arresting.
As there's no pee-based test (to my knowledge) that will pick up HCG five days after conception, I was stuck in an uncalmable fizz of curiosity. While Niall gave our guests a lift home, I did something I hadn't done in a long time: performed a sortes Parnelliana (sensupleidhce). By which I mean bibliomancy (stand in front of a bookshelf with your eyes shut, ask a question, pick a book, flick through it, place finger on page, open eyes, read the passage you've landed on with the assumption that the answer is contained in it).1
I wish I'd written down the passage I drew. I can't remember it verbatim, but the gist was "we were all there that evening, and there was someone else there too - someone we couldn't see". It made me grin as I went to bed that night. A few days later, still hopping with curiosity (and beginning, now, to accumulate a small heap of symptomatic corroboration), I tried again and got something along the lines of "you were the only person who knew me - who knew of my existence".
On 1 June I had to go to the doctor for something else, so I asked for a pregnancy test while I was there (at the time I thought that doctors' tests were more sensitive than the over-the-counter kind; I've since learnt that this isn't the case). "Just to eliminate the possibility," I said, because of course I wasn't believing my divinations - or my symptoms, for that matter. I don't, you see. Not my style.
And there it was. A faint, faint line - which is what you'd expect 12 days after conception. Congratulations and bewilderment - and also a profound, peaceful joy, which kept me floating through the rest of the week. Niall was away at a conference, so it was a few days before I was able to talk to him about what had happened.
This wasn't what we were planning at all. I mean, in the medium term, yes, we want more children, but even I in my wild-eyed maternal fervour wouldn't have pushed for trying again so soon (Oisín was just over nine months old at the time). Yet I was, as I said, entirely overjoyed. Entirely. It turned my world upside-down. I skipped to work. I found myself talking to Oisín about his little brother. I hugged the sweet silver nugget of happiness inside me as I went about my exhausting business. I even - you'll laugh - began to draft the LJ post I'd make when the time came. (It's still on my hard drive.)
The doctor (who was not my usual one, but his rather schoolmarmish colleague) had, as is standard, advised me to test again in a week to confirm. So I did.
Negative.
I rang the surgery. Could this be a miscarriage? Yes, it could: the original test was "very finely positive". Wait a few more days and test again. So I did that.
Negative again. Cold fear.
I did some more sortes. Why am I getting negative results? Some vague muttering to do with unhealth. Why, why, why? A passage with the corny message that "what's happening is for the best". What's going on in my womb? A blank page (that one always jolts).
Throughout those couple of weeks, I clung with decreasing hope to the faint line I'd seen on the sunny 1st of June, to the doctor's smile of congratulations, to my bright kernel of joy. Eventually, inevitably, I gave up. Threw away the positive test, which I'd taken home from the surgery. Symptoms faded. Later in the month, an ultrasound confirmed that my reproductive equipment was functioning normally - no leftovers: a straightforward reabsorption.2 Some time after that,kasku, whose gorgeous firstborn is two days younger than Oisín, announced her pregnancy. In August, I had a perfectly normal period, 108 days after the last one. (Actually, to be strictly accurate, it wasn't perfectly normal: it was completely pain-free. This I attribute to the Mooncup, but that's a whole nother panegyric.)
End of story. (Except, obviously, not really.)
I'm glad I knew about it (I needn't have: that August period was only my third since Oisín's birth, so there was no particular reason for me to be wondering about its non-arrival). I'm extremely glad that I seem to be sufficiently in touch with my body that I can have some confidence that such things will be brought to my attention in future. You'll have spotted, if you remember your biology, that the overwhelming notion seized me on the day when implantation would most likely have occurred. I like that.
I'm inexpressibly sad that it didn't happen. For a long time I didn't express, even to myself, what it had meant to me: I'm only beginning to, now. I went into a fairly severe decline over the summer, which for reasons I don't understand I refused to connect with what had happened. The baby would've been born some time in the last few weeks (around the same time askasku's beautiful new son, in fact). I would've been somebody else's mother right now, and I'm not. Some of you know first-hand how awful that is, and I hug you.
And there you have it. Sorry this wasn't a happier post. I'm relieved to have written it.
1 I'm an agnostic. This, for me, means that under certain circumstances I find it useful to privilege my own immediate experience over any [quasi-]coherent metaphysical model I might putatively espouse. If I cannot realistically discover whether something is "true" or "false" (and I confess that I often find those categories fairly questionable to start with), I am most comfortable in the blurry space in the middle. Thus, when I do a divination, I don't actually care whether the results are "meaningful" or "just a coincidence". Over the years, various techniques have provided me with some fairly startling insights. I'll take that, thanks very much - I feel no need to know whether it's "real" or not.
2 Either that, or the first test was a false positive, of course. Like I say, I'm agnostic. There's no way of knowing. But my own immediate experience says false positive, schmalse schmositive, and I'm running with that.
However, I have wanted to write about it for a while (I referred to it in the "less good stuff" paragraph of my 2005 end-of-year meme), so here you go.
On 25 May last year we had friends around in the evening, and as I stood up to say goodbye to them I was seized by the overwhelming notion that I was pregnant. I don't remember any physical symptoms that prompted this - at least, nothing I'd noticed consciously. The chances, physiologically, were extremely slim: five days previously there had been, um, one of those proximity conditions that condom-users are warned about (... see me not go into detail about my sex life; run, Radzer, run), but neither
niallm nor I had given it a second thought. Nevertheless, I found this sudden idea utterly arresting.As there's no pee-based test (to my knowledge) that will pick up HCG five days after conception, I was stuck in an uncalmable fizz of curiosity. While Niall gave our guests a lift home, I did something I hadn't done in a long time: performed a sortes Parnelliana (sensu
pleidhce). By which I mean bibliomancy (stand in front of a bookshelf with your eyes shut, ask a question, pick a book, flick through it, place finger on page, open eyes, read the passage you've landed on with the assumption that the answer is contained in it).1I wish I'd written down the passage I drew. I can't remember it verbatim, but the gist was "we were all there that evening, and there was someone else there too - someone we couldn't see". It made me grin as I went to bed that night. A few days later, still hopping with curiosity (and beginning, now, to accumulate a small heap of symptomatic corroboration), I tried again and got something along the lines of "you were the only person who knew me - who knew of my existence".
On 1 June I had to go to the doctor for something else, so I asked for a pregnancy test while I was there (at the time I thought that doctors' tests were more sensitive than the over-the-counter kind; I've since learnt that this isn't the case). "Just to eliminate the possibility," I said, because of course I wasn't believing my divinations - or my symptoms, for that matter. I don't, you see. Not my style.
And there it was. A faint, faint line - which is what you'd expect 12 days after conception. Congratulations and bewilderment - and also a profound, peaceful joy, which kept me floating through the rest of the week. Niall was away at a conference, so it was a few days before I was able to talk to him about what had happened.
This wasn't what we were planning at all. I mean, in the medium term, yes, we want more children, but even I in my wild-eyed maternal fervour wouldn't have pushed for trying again so soon (Oisín was just over nine months old at the time). Yet I was, as I said, entirely overjoyed. Entirely. It turned my world upside-down. I skipped to work. I found myself talking to Oisín about his little brother. I hugged the sweet silver nugget of happiness inside me as I went about my exhausting business. I even - you'll laugh - began to draft the LJ post I'd make when the time came. (It's still on my hard drive.)
The doctor (who was not my usual one, but his rather schoolmarmish colleague) had, as is standard, advised me to test again in a week to confirm. So I did.
Negative.
I rang the surgery. Could this be a miscarriage? Yes, it could: the original test was "very finely positive". Wait a few more days and test again. So I did that.
Negative again. Cold fear.
I did some more sortes. Why am I getting negative results? Some vague muttering to do with unhealth. Why, why, why? A passage with the corny message that "what's happening is for the best". What's going on in my womb? A blank page (that one always jolts).
Throughout those couple of weeks, I clung with decreasing hope to the faint line I'd seen on the sunny 1st of June, to the doctor's smile of congratulations, to my bright kernel of joy. Eventually, inevitably, I gave up. Threw away the positive test, which I'd taken home from the surgery. Symptoms faded. Later in the month, an ultrasound confirmed that my reproductive equipment was functioning normally - no leftovers: a straightforward reabsorption.2 Some time after that,
kasku, whose gorgeous firstborn is two days younger than Oisín, announced her pregnancy. In August, I had a perfectly normal period, 108 days after the last one. (Actually, to be strictly accurate, it wasn't perfectly normal: it was completely pain-free. This I attribute to the Mooncup, but that's a whole nother panegyric.)End of story. (Except, obviously, not really.)
I'm glad I knew about it (I needn't have: that August period was only my third since Oisín's birth, so there was no particular reason for me to be wondering about its non-arrival). I'm extremely glad that I seem to be sufficiently in touch with my body that I can have some confidence that such things will be brought to my attention in future. You'll have spotted, if you remember your biology, that the overwhelming notion seized me on the day when implantation would most likely have occurred. I like that.
I'm inexpressibly sad that it didn't happen. For a long time I didn't express, even to myself, what it had meant to me: I'm only beginning to, now. I went into a fairly severe decline over the summer, which for reasons I don't understand I refused to connect with what had happened. The baby would've been born some time in the last few weeks (around the same time as
kasku's beautiful new son, in fact). I would've been somebody else's mother right now, and I'm not. Some of you know first-hand how awful that is, and I hug you.And there you have it. Sorry this wasn't a happier post. I'm relieved to have written it.
1 I'm an agnostic. This, for me, means that under certain circumstances I find it useful to privilege my own immediate experience over any [quasi-]coherent metaphysical model I might putatively espouse. If I cannot realistically discover whether something is "true" or "false" (and I confess that I often find those categories fairly questionable to start with), I am most comfortable in the blurry space in the middle. Thus, when I do a divination, I don't actually care whether the results are "meaningful" or "just a coincidence". Over the years, various techniques have provided me with some fairly startling insights. I'll take that, thanks very much - I feel no need to know whether it's "real" or not.
2 Either that, or the first test was a false positive, of course. Like I say, I'm agnostic. There's no way of knowing. But my own immediate experience says false positive, schmalse schmositive, and I'm running with that.
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Date: 2006-02-24 08:26 am (UTC)