When people learn about Ava it only takes a few minutes before they ask me if I think we’ll every try again. I never knew what to say to that. When I was in the hospital and still pregnant I announced with absolute certainty that there was no way I was ever going to do this again. It was hell. I couldn’t imagine ever willingly putting myself in that position for a second time. Travis agreed. The day after Ava died we sat on my hospital bed holding her tiny body and Travis quietly said something along the lines of, “well maybe we could try again.” A few months later, at home in our bedroom, I told Travis I was thinking about trying again in the future and he told me no, but then added, “but you can try to convince me.” I didn’t know what that meant. Was that an opening? Was that his way of saying not right now? I left the conversation there because I had been told by my doctors that for my safety I would need to wait at least a year before even considering another pregnancy and I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted anyway. I had an IUD inserted so that there was no chance of spontaneous decisions or “happy accidents” or reckless abandon. From now on all of my reproductive decisions were going to be well thought out and calculated. They would be intentional. We’ve never really been willy-nilly when it came to deciding to have children, but the thought of losing that spontaneity was sad for me. I’d see so many pregnant patients who didn’t really “try” to get pregnant, they were just having fun and open to whatever would happen. I envied them. I used to be like that. I wanted that luxury back. I wanted to go back to “whatevering” as we used to call it. I felt like Trav had left that door open just a crack for me so I decided I would build my case.

I spent the next year talking to my OB/GYN and the maternal-fetal specialists, and getting my blood drawn, and seeing hematologists, and then driving 200 miles to a specialty laboratory to get a LOT more blood drawn on my quest to determine if physically, I could (or should) attempt another pregnancy. After all of that no one could come up with any reason why not. But I still wasn’t ready. I wasn’t convinced that this was something I wanted and I wasn’t about to start a conversation with my husband if I wasn’t 110% sure. And so cue even more frustration, because who the hell is 110% sure about having a baby? I’m not 110% sure about anything in my life. I’m still not sure I made the right choice for lunch today! So I tabled the discussion in my mind. But it didn’t table it for everyone else in my life. It seemed like everyone had an opinion about whether or not we should “try again,” and spoiler alert…everyone thought we should try. Sometimes I would even try to explain to people that it would be really difficult for us to go through another pregnancy and they’d say things like, “every pregnancy is stressful,” because unless you’ve been there you just don’t get it. At all. Another pregnancy would mean another chance that it would all go very wrong, and yes, there’s always that chance for everybody but for me it’s different. It feels like more than a chance, because it’s been my reality. It’s different because I’ve been there. To willingly risk putting myself and my family through that kind of hell again was not something I was sure I was willing to do. I started to feel like I had to try again just to make other people happy. Because everyone worried about me so much and if I had another baby it would be this magical band-aid and they could all sleep better at night knowing that I was fixed, knowing that I was whole again, that I got my baby to replace Ava and everything would be just the way it should have been in the first place. If I had another baby, all would be right in the world…for everyone else. I worked through these feelings in therapy. I worked really hard and I got to a place where I knew and genuinely believed that the decision to have another baby was not about anyone except me and Travis and Logan, and our decision whether or not we wanted to try again was solely ours to make.

A few months went by and I still felt this tugging at my heart. I wanted more than one child. I wanted Logan to have a living sibling. I never gave up on that dream for him, that dream for us. No one could ever give us an explanation for why Ava’s placenta failed and I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t just accept that my body failed and move on, I had to know if I was capable of having another successful pregnancy. I couldn’t let Ava’s death be the end. I needed to try again. In May we went to Mexico as a family of three and after a few drinks I mustered up the courage to tell Travis that sometime soon I wanted to talk about the possibility of trying to have another baby. He was surprisingly receptive to the idea of a conversation at a later date and suddenly I was filled with a hope and happiness I hadn’t experienced in years. That week we marked what would have been Ava’s 2nd birthday with a day on the beach, a lot of drinking (maybe a bit too much?) and of course, chocolate cake.

Shortly thereafter the big conversation happened. It actually happened more than once. And it didn’t go well. We were at an impasse. We both agreed we wanted two kids, that was never the issue, but we couldn’t agree on how much we were willing to risk to make it happen. He was afraid of what would happen if we tried again, and I was afraid of what would happen if we didn’t. I always thought it would take an immense amount of courage for me to be pregnant again but for me, another pregnancy was kind of an act of cowardice. I was too afraid to live the rest of my life without trying again, afraid to live in regret, afraid to live out my days wondering if I could have actually done it. Losing a baby was horrifying, but I had already done that and survived, and I knew I could survive again. I wasn’t sure I could survive a lifetime of wondering “what if,” I wasn’t sure I had the courage. And so ultimately, together, with clear and level heads, we decided I would have my IUD removed.

Two months later, while on a family vacation in North Carolina I woke Travis up and showed him the stick with two pink lines. We did it. I was pregnant again. We couldn’t help but get excited and immediately started fantasizing about the baby that was going to join our family. About three days after that, just minutes before boarding our first of three flights home I went to the bathroom and saw a drop of blood. I stared at it and wanted to scream. This was how it all started with Ava. It’s starting again. I can’t fucking believe this is happening again! There wasn’t much more bleeding after that. It all felt too similar. Except it wasn’t the same. The next day, on my 35th birthday, while ignoring well-wishers and cheerful phone calls for a happy birthday, my body expelled what would have been my 3rd baby. I felt a sense of relief that at least history wasn’t completely repeating itself and I wasn’t going to spend the next 20 weeks terrified of what was to come, but mostly I just felt sad and stupid for ever believing that I could actually do this, and I was ashamed for getting so excited over nothing. We hadn’t told anyone we were trying again and I didn’t feel like explaining to people that I wasn’t feeling happy on my birthday because I was having a miscarriage so I suffered alone. Travis and I didn’t really talk about it that day, in fact we didn’t really talk much about anything. It was a pretty shitty birthday. When we went to the grocery store that day I felt like I should at least have a cake to celebrate (because if you haven’t figured it out yet, birthday cake is kind of a big deal to me), so I bought a small cake for us to share as a family. We never felt like opening it and we certainly didn’t feel like singing, so we didn’t. For the next week after that, while Travis was at work and on a trip out of town, I spent each night on the couch slowly eating my birthday cake by myself, quite literally eating my grief until the cake was gone and I felt almost whole again. And after that when people would ask me if we were going to try again I would gently explain, without going into too much detail that it just wasn’t that easy, and I’d feel my stomach rumbling looking for another fix of my lonely, chocolate birthday cake.