This weekend marks the 4th anniversary of my miscarriage. It becomes less painful every Valentine's Day that passes, and this year I have the added benefit of having had a very healing birth experience that helped me dealt with a great deal of pain from the last one. A friend of mine is going through a miscarriage right now, which is another reason I'm remembering what it was like.

I waited three years after my miscarriage to get pregnant, which was one of the hardest things I've ever done. My mind and body desperately wanted a real baby to fill the 'ghost' baby's void, but I had a degree to finish, a marriage to start, and knew that we were not ready for kids (that pregnancy had not been planned). So, we waited. I know Ryan was grateful that was the decision we made, although he would have gladly had a baby with me then if it helped me heal faster. But I am a cerebral person, and my brain overrode my emotions. And I spent three years wondering if I could carry a baby to full term.

I was surprised as I approached labor how many feelings and fears from my miscarriage resurfaced. I am positive that the invasive and unnecessary procedures I endured at the emergency room contributed to my disinclination to birth in a hospital. I was uninsured at the time, so Ryan and I were burdened with a stack of medical debt four months before our wedding. I was reminded of all this (and I still have a very real anger toward the doctor at the emergency room that I've been slowly dealing with for four years) when we toured Menorah, our back up hospital. A lovely facility, but I realized I had a deep distrust of every medical person in the building, and I needed to be in a situation where I felt I had, not more control, but more power. I had felt powerless and mishandled in the emergency room.

Something else I dealt with as labor approached was the similarities between miscarrying and giving birth, and how all the bad things were now good ones. My miscarriage involved days of waiting and pain, a birth in my home that was a death. Bleeding in that pregnancy had been a sign of something wrong. As I neared labor, I realized I was looking for blood as a sign of coming life. This time it didn't mean death and an ending. It was a surprising feeling when I realized how similar two very different experiences could be. For your body it's so similar, but for your brain and heart, so different.

This time when I birthed in my house, it wasn't on to a tissue, and I wasn't shell shocked by what I saw. Rory's birth is a little bit hazy, but I will always remember three things. Suzanne, my midwife, telling me how close I was getting and hearing the excitement in her voice when another push brought Rory closer to crowning. Hearing Ryan say he could see her head. And feeling her head with my fingers as she was crowning (which gave me the strength to push her out). And these memories so totally eclipse the dark, sad memories of my previous birth experience. That experience provided a counterpoint, the positive that much more positive because of the previous negative. I could have a healthy baby, and I could make informed decisions about who does what to my body in a birthing situation.

When I planned a home birth, I imagined it being empowering for a variety of reasons, but I did not expect to be catapulted over these memories into a place where the miscarriage is so far behind me and the pain of it so dulled and impotent. Even my anger toward the doctor seems irrelevant to what I accomplished and proved to myself. After the miscarriage I told Ryan that now I would be one of the people who always has sadness in their eyes. I don't think that's true anymore. It's something painful and tragic that happened, but it doesn't define me anymore.