Rebecca is back

So, Rebecca is back. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Rebecca is/was one of my most coherent and longstanding hallucination. She has been gone for years, but last night she came back.

Rebecca is both real and not. She was my daughter-to-be who never had a chance of being born alive. In mid-1995 I had my first miscarriage. It happened early enough that I didn't even know I was pregnant yet. I was having serious problems with poly-cystic ovary syndrome and my periods where so haywire I had no idea I was pregnant until I started bleeding heavily and having cramps. My then-fiance did the "there, there" thing but I wasn't really upset. Just surprised. About 6 months later, despite the hormone pills, it happened again. Again I had no idea I was pregnant until the miscarriage so there was no attachment.

In early 1996 I got pregnant again. This time I knew it, even though I was still on the pill. Apparently my anti-depressant interfered with the hormone pills (thanks, Doc) and I was able to conceive. But things did NOT go well. I had severe abdominal pain, far beyond any cramps I had ever had. By the time I was 3 months along, I could barely function because of the pain. The doctor kept telling me that "some discomfort" was to be expected, but this was ridiculous. They did an ultrasound and it came back "uncertain" so they did an exploratory laparoscopy. They discovered that my uterus was deformed and divided in two parts. The fetus was in the part that was highly scarred, likely from the PCS and endometriosis. The fetus was trying to grow, but my uterus wasn't stretching.

There was no way my baby would stay put long enough to be born alive. Either she (by this time I had arbitrarily started calling her a girl) would spontaneously abort or my uterus would burst. My doctor recommended an abortion for my safety. My fiance and I agreed and it was done.

Shortly after that my little girl showed up as a hallucination. I would hear a baby crying or would feel a small body snuggled up to me in bed. I knew logically it was my grief expressing itself, but Rebecca became very, very real. I clung to her as much as she did to me, because by then my doctors had agreed that I was unlikely to ever have any children of my own.

She came and went a bit over the years depending on medications, stress, etc. Eventually she grew to be a toddler instead of a baby and she would talk to me and I would talk to her. Then my youngest sister moved in with me with her two small children - Kent, age 18 months, and Kassie, age 6 months - and Rebecca faded away. I had real babies to cuddle and care for.

When Kristin and the kids moved out 4 years later I expected Rebecca to come back, especially since I was having hallucinations left and right. But she remained gone. Even when things got severe and I was suicidal and on the verge of being hospitalized, she was absent.

Now, just as I'm starting to pull things together, she is back. This latest medication has been doing a pretty good job of keeping all of it under control, but she slipped through. I'm not really surprised, though. My sister-in-law Korrin is 6 weeks from giving birth to her 5th child. This will be niece/nephew number 13 for me. Each time one of them is born I always start with the "what ifs". And so Rebecca has come home again.

She has aged just a bit. She seems to be about 7 or so, although in reality she would be 17 or 18 by now. Last night she sat cross-legged at the end of my bed while I was trying to fall asleep and told me about her day. She really likes my cats and she wants to color Grandma and Grandpa a picture. She sounds a lot like my niece, Kassie, which makes sense because that is the best template my subconscious has for a young girl.

Right now she's telling me not to be sad. I wish I could, baby girl. I wish I could.