I Was a Mom of Two, and I Got Pregnant With an IUD
To top it off, my IUD was lost inside my body
--
I drove myself to the hospital the day my daughter was born. She’s my third, and logistically it made sense to go it alone as long as possible, so as not to leave my mother-in-law with our two little boys for too long. That would have been unheard of back when I was about to have our first, but things change.
I tried to stay in the moment on the drive. I don’t remember if I listened to music, the radio, or if I put the windows down because it was mid-May and the weather was feeling less apocalyptic.
My boys were both born in the winter, my postpartum trudge toward the light feeling unfairly cold and gray and, well, wintry. But this, a spring baby! A girl! My third! I was a pro. I was determined to remain a pro.
Giving birth has this way of resetting things. With your first, you’re reset into a primal, raw place from which you must forage for reasons to go on. Small, minuscule, barely meaningful reasons. Like, I changed my underwear today. Or, I drank a hot cup of coffee today, instead of something I reheated from a pot made days ago. When I had my second, it reset me back into the darkness I thought I’d learned my way out of. “I know this is going to suck,” I remember the logic going, “therefore it won’t suck as bad.” With each baby, I found myself attempting to run in waist-deep mud. Looking around going, “Why can’t I run?” Forcing myself onward until the ground began to rise, the mud to thin. Then looking back and wondering, “Did I survive? Or will there be more?”
I got pregnant with my third despite having an IUD. That is, it was the first pregnancy I’d experienced that was not my choice. I didn’t try to become pregnant; it wasn’t my fault! Or my husband’s. Or my doctors’. Or society’s. Or even the manufacturer of my IUD. I cast about looking for someone to accuse. Who did this to me? Why? I was finally getting sleep again; the mud was only at my ankles. I could run; I could breathe. I was starting to believe I’d made it out alive.
I was waving goodbye to the woman I was, releasing my grasp on the few moments a day I had that were mine, only mine.
