A year later

Last week, when I got AF on the one year anniversary of my BFP, I thought I was actually handling it all pretty well.  I thought "well, this anniversary isn't feeling so bad.  I'm moving forward, we're getting started on a new cycle and it will be good." 

Unfortunately, I didn't count on the fact that I work in a world that is incredibly cyclical.  Maybe this happens in other jobs, too, to some degree but in education, by design, the exact same thing happens every single year but with only a slightly different student lineup. 

So, this past weekend we had our department's Senior Banquet where we give out academic awards and then good-naturedly roast the graduates.  And, most of the evening, all I could think as I joked with some of my favorite students and hugged them goodbye was "last year this time I had just gotten back from my second beta."

Then, today is the chemistry fraternity picnic where the seniors turn it around and (often not quite so good-naturedly) roast the faculty.  And, all I can think leading up to it is "last year I was 4 1/2 weeks pregnant, had just found out my third beta was good and was secretly smiling to myself as I watched my 6 month pregnant colleague and now I'll have to see her with her 9 month old and her 3 year old." 

And, this weekend is graduation and I remember being pregnant for that last year.  Then, Sunday is Mother's Day and I remember being cautiously optimistic as we waited for our ultrasound that I was now, finally, a mother.  In a month it will be time to move the students in our summer program into the dorms and I remember begging out of lifting heavy things while not saying why.  Then it will be time for summer orientation/enrollment sessions where, after the first one I worked in mid-June, I started spotting but the doctor said it was all OK.  Then it will be Father's Day where I went to a picnic for my summer program feeling confident that this was the last time my DH wouldn't be a father but then I started to bleed the next day and Father's Day was the last day that I thought my baby was OK.  And, finally it will be the day I was supposed to work the second orientation session, where I started bleeding after class that morning and had to find someone to take over so I could rush to the hospital to get an ultrasound.

I don't mean to wallow in this.  I really don't.  I didn't think these would hit me so hard.  And, maybe as the summer goes on they won't.  But, right now, I'm looking toward so many anniversaries and so many "if onlys" and it's making me sad.  I'm trying to remember how happy I felt back then and bring some of it back, but I'm having a hard time.

Now, it's time for a meeting where I'm going to propose a course for next Spring semester that I hope desperately that I won't be able to teach because I'll be on maternity leave.  Please, ovaries, feel that great FSH rushing over you and do your thing.  Please body do what you were "meant" to do.  I need new anniversaries.  I need new dates that remind me of happy things.