Aliya’s due date passed, I was due with her on April 22, 2020. It was a difficult week prior to her due date. I was balancing my emotions of reliving the pregnancy journey including all the trauma around delivering her and managing to be okay at work by simply showing up. To my surprise, COVID-19 and staying busy at work was the perfect distraction to not fall in a downward spiral of sadness. There are a few truths, I was/am still battling sadness, trauma, loss of hope, and an urge to seek fulfillment. Sometimes I crave to be alone and go back to the days of being isolated. The loss of Aliya was a different loss than Amir’s loss. I am struggling to cope and accepting all the things that happened with a great deal of hopelessness. It really was hard for me to rise, my spirit is not the same. I lost a part of me when I lost her and this time I saw myself fighting with the person who’s been there for me.
I am grateful to have an amazing husband. The good thing about our relationship or something that’s important to have in someone, is the person who loves you and will stick by your side no matter how much you push them away. I struggled and sometimes I still struggle, my punching bag unfortunately has been Tanvir. I can’t help it, from an intellectual point of view, I understood why I was pushing him away. When you love someone so much and you know what it is they seek, you want to make whatever sacrifices needed for that person to get that. Tanvir would make an amazing dad and I know deep down he would be an ideal father. This is some real old school maybe not realistic point of view and I get it. I unconsciously was fighting a battle with myself and what I felt society expects from me. I was being mean to push him away so he can find someone else to have that perfect family. I was putting pressure on myself and I felt sad because I can’t believe I’m the reason why we don’t have our baby.
Tanvir wants a baby, he wanted a baby from the very beginning of our marriage but never uttered a word about a child because he knew I wasn’t ready right after marriage. When we got married I was in the middle of my Masters program plus working full-time and he wasn’t in the United States yet, so for me a child at that moment wasn’t good timing. After Tanvir came, we didn’t rush the baby process because we also wanted to enjoy our marriage as a couple before we have kids. We went with the flow and when it was time to conceive, we were more than ready. Aliya is my 5th pregnancy and that’s after losing Amir at 22 weeks. Never did I think I would go through this again even though it was a possibility, I didn’t think it was going to happen again. I was very hopeful and excited. I was willing to do anything and everything to keep her going.
Due to my losses prior to Aliya, I was recommended to take blood thinner shots every single day in my belly. I got early gestational diabetes which now included controlling my sugar and diet, mind you pregnancy makes me lose my appetite and lose weight. Amir was the size of an 18 week old due to not getting enough food and honestly I also wasn’t eating much, so for Aliya I didn’t discriminate on food because I didn’t want a small baby. I wanted a healthy baby normal to size and I forced myself to eat the stuff I liked. This is when the problem came, I couldn’t control my sugar even with controlling the diet. And FYI, diabetes is different in pregnancy than it is for normal diabetics. So diabetes runs in my family and my dad really struggles. I thought pretty much if you didn’t eat your sugar goes down, cause that’s what my dad did when his sugar was high and it regulated. Well in pregnancy, if you don’t eat, your sugar will rise because the pancreas I believe will release the sugar to support your baby. I was new to this and the diabetic diet during pregnancy was a little difficult to get use to. I needed to take medication to help me control my sugars because my body was not adjusting with the controlled diet only.
This pregnancy was difficult because here I am suppose to be on bed-rest and now I’m diabetic which required walking after meals to control the sugar. It was a big balancing act. I was successful in controlling the sugars , Alhumduliah (Thank God); Aliya had a echocardiogram the day before my anatomy scan. My baby’s heart and her size was perfect. These DAMN freakin’ anatomy scans keep bringing bad news to me. It was at the anatomy scan that I learned my cervix was completely open, I felt nothing at all. No aches or pains. My body just opened up and I was asymptomatic. I had to go to the emergency room in hopes the doctors approve an emergency cerclage stitch (that’s when they stitch your cervix in hopes to keep the baby from coming out). With Aliya, just like Amir’s time, we waited to find out the gender. With Aliya, I had the nurse write the gender in an envelope in case I wanted to have a gender reveal. However, since we were already in crisis, I didn’t want to know the gender because I didn’t want to get attached, rationale number 1. I thought what’s the point of knowing whether I have a boy or girl when all these things are happening, with Amir I decided to know if he was a boy or girl once I found out I was losing him. I didn’t want history to repeat itself so I didn’t want to know what I had until delivery. I felt if I knew then I am assuming the worse so that was another reason to just wait, rational number 2 for not knowing the gender. What’s the point of celebrating what gender you have when you don’t know if your baby will survive.
So, I was able to get the emergency cerclage and that was after I had to absolutely consent to having another amniocentesis test. I had much reservations about this test because it takes fluid from your womb to be tested, they wanted me to take this test because they wanted to make sure I didn’t have an infection. There was so much going on and I consulted with my high risk doctor along with a friend to go over the odds. Basically, I had a higher chance of losing Aliya without the cerclage and if this was the only means I was cornered into doing a test that already gave me a failed result in my last pregnancy. The difference between Aliya’s pregnancy and Amir’s pregnancy was that Amir didn’t have enough fluid and with Aliya I had more than enough fluid so taking some out was apparently good cause it will take out some of the pressure from my uterus. I was dilating while I was hospitalized, prior to my cerclage, I dilated 3 centimeters, which was a risk to do an emergency cerclage. They did do it, they gave it a go due to me not having an infection although the weird part is my white blood cell count remained elevated. I have a problem in general with WBC being high in general and pregnant women usually have a little elevated WBC.
Cerclages are scary!, I’m a chicken man! everything frightened me. But I did what I needed to do for my unborn child in hopes to bring her into this world. Did you know Aliya was brought into this world, she came! She was alive, she moved her arms when the nurse checked for her heartbeat. Her dad was so proud of his daughter even though this was short lived. She stayed on my chest and my only thoughts was to do what I needed to make sure my daughter was properly given everything she could be given in our faith to make her a Muslim baby. I kept on grilling Tanvir to say the Azan (call to prayer) to her ears and it was the hardest thing for him to do. Can you imagine what my husband is going through? He really had no idea we were losing our girl and she was coming to this world with life and that we will have to say goodbye? Background on Tanvir, December is a rough month. He lost family members in December which included his Dad, Grandmother, and now his daughter. Tanvir suffered a lot with our babies loss and this time he was there for me because I was no longer the strong one. I was numb and I was mean. After losing Aliya, I was so irrationally mean to Tanvir. I tried to push him away because I felt shame. My body failed me and it was because of my body I am losing a healthy baby. Incompetent Cervix sucks!, the cerclage apparently worked but my body still went into labor. When I broke my water, all hope was lost. I pleaded with the doctors to try to keep my pregnancy going by giving me fluids/medicine to stop the contractions, I fought with them too. I saw in blogs how other women were able to carry their baby in longer even with a water breaking, I just wanted to reach viability. I wanted to just get to 24 weeks. They seemed to have given up on her and didn’t try. I had to accept my fate again of having to lose another baby.
You know it was soooooooooooo hard to survive with losing Amir, now you add another loss, that’s tough. My view of life and the world is not the same and it wont be the same. I see things so different, I see people different too. I can understand trauma, loss, the cruelty of the world. I do see beauty, but I’m not looking for it. I prefer to be alone and to feel alone. I prefer to be sad alone, to be with my emotions cause I don’t like being the downer or making my family feel the pain I went through. There’s something about loneliness that once you get use to it, you want to be there.
My mom was with me more than Tanvir during the pregnancy and delivery of Aliya. She witnessed seeing the baby moving on the ultrasound and the doctors telling me they won’t be able to save her. Can you imagine the pain my mom had to go through because of me, she cried so much, her tears weren’t just for her grandchild, they were for me. Being a mom is so amazing. I understood my mom’s pain when I had to lose my babies and it is so hard to put that pain on your family even though it’s not by choice. I don’t care what people have to tell me, I’m the one who lost the baby so because I’m the one who is going through it, their pain is a lot less. I’ll handle my pain, but spare my family. Why do we all need to feel this pain? It’s funny, I like to be alone and go through my sadness by myself, but my family members will remind me that they are here for me too and don’t want me to go through the pain alone. Jay, my youngest brother reminds me that I’m not alone and to stop doing things alone because the family also wants to see Amir and Aliya. Shormi, she always checks in and she consoles mom’s sadness along with mine. My older brother and Bhabbi, they pull through. My little niece, she’s only 5 years old and she knows about both my babies and gives comfort to my loses. Tara is such an old soul and so affectionate. They all provided comfort to my time of loss. My dad was strong this time around, he felt so much pain with Amir he almost passed out. With Aliya’s time, he came to see me after the delivery with Jay. Tanvir is understanding of my pain, he hung in there when I would just give him anger and attitude. I told him I knew I’m not being nice but I couldn’t help it. It’s the loss, it’s the pain, it’s just so much and he had patience with me and continues to have patience. I am grateful overall for my family and Tanvir.
In a Blink 