Graduating to a new level

My period started last night.  I had 30 seconds of feeling very sad that I wasn't pregnant.  And then it was gone.  You see, I still dream of the miracle.

I have come to realise that I am beginning to lose the desire to have children, but the dream is still there.  I wrote this in the "Life Without Baby" community.

I still hold this fantasy that by an amazing miracle, I will get pregnant naturally and everything will be fine.  I think I may still live from month to month for a while.

I'm not going to be disappointed when AF comes around.  There has been too much loss for me to ever want to go through just a part of a pregnancy again.  And that is what would happen...

But it still exists as this little fantasy that everything is going to work out and we will get our dream and it will be good and life will be happy etc. etc.

The wonder of "what if" still remains each cycle.

Why am I feeling a change in my desire for children? 
I think that as I am grieving, I am partly healing and envisioning a new life, but I'm also finding reasons for why it is best for me to not have children.  Are those reasons excuses to help me feel better?  Maybe they are.  Probably a lot of them are.  I think they are a big part of my self-preservation thoughts.  "This is why it is best that I don't have children."  Yet the fact that they are there, shows that I still hold a big place in my heart and life that is meant to be filled with my children and I am needing to fill that hole with excuses in order to survive the heartache I feel. 
But maybe some of these reasons and understandings are also me finding my true path in my spiritual journey through life.  That is something to explore further.

The other thing I am feeling today, is a loss at never fully experiencing the natural bodily function of my reproductive system.  I will never know what it is like to feel my baby kicking inside of me, I will never feel my body swell as my child grows, I will never experience birth and breastfeeding etc etc.

As I sit here, I am so aware of my uterus shedding its lining to start afresh again.  I can feel the discomfort and the sensations of my reproductive system at work.  I feel connected to that core of my self.

At one time, my uterus held a growing child.  For 12 weeks, it did what it was meant to do.  Then it was gone.  Now as another cycle leaves me, I feel that loss again.  And I feel the loss of an important aspect of womenhood. 

My 'womenhood' is not something I have ever fully connected to.  It's always been a little elusive as I have dealt with the issues of my life.  In part, I saw having a child as a way of 'growing up', of 'becoming a woman'.  I felt that many of my problems would leave me as I enveloped the role of motherhood, as I shed my 'childhood'.  Maybe that was just a fantasy, it probably was, but it was real for me. 

Now that there isn't a child to help me 'graduate' to the next stage of my life, I have to find that new level myself.  I have to find my 'womenhood' in another way.

This is going to be an interesting journey!