Working on It

Hollow

Lately I haven’t felt like crying when I think about all the flavors of my grief; I feel like imploding. It literally hurts my heart to look at the belly holding a baby due the same day as mine. After the first loss I thought I’d be scared to be pregnant again. Turns out I wasn’t too scared, just cautious. Now I’m fucking terrified. I feel like it would destroy me if I lost another baby. Of course it won’t. But in some ways I’m already ruined, and I never get that back. I never get to be carefree about wanting to be a mom, or about taking a pregnancy test and thinking I’ll have a baby. Praying so hard for a healthy baby hasn’t done me much good yet. So what if I can get pregnant, if what follows it is death.

I ovulated this week, in my first “normal” cycle after the miscarriage. Maybe we hit the nail on the head. But I’m worried that my generally low temperatures mean that I have a thyroid problem. I wonder if I should request progesterone supplements right now, just in case I’m pregnant. I worry that my luteal phase is too short to support a healthy conception. All of the above three factors are on the low end of normal, like I’m on a scary precipice of FERTILITY PROBLEMS. My worst fear since long before I decided it was time for a baby. It’s hard to control my hypochondriac tendencies. 

Bad Week

Some weeks my grief is covered pretty neatly under other layers of my life. I work, love my husband, maintain the logistics of life, and feel pretty normal. But other weeks it’s like my grief is hanging right behind a very thin veil, the tears are always right at the back of my throat, and I’m not sure I’ll ever climb out of it. 

And I’m still stuck. There’s another month until the time when I thought I’d be welcoming a baby into my life and spending the summer on maternity leave. The week when I might have had the baby starts with Mother’s Day and ends with a Saturday at work. The thought of living through it takes my breath away.

Dread

The idea of living through my first due date in May fills me with dread. I’m trying not to stress too much about my desire to be pregnant by then, but oh my goodness I hope it happens. But it’s only two months away and even if I am pregnant again, it won’t mean that I’ll be able to have that baby. When I think about that time my heart jumps into my throat and I can’t imagine how I’ll get through it, and how I’ll bear having a new niece as a constant reminder of the baby I lost.

6 Days

For six days we tentatively allowed ourselves to get excited that we’d maybe be having a baby in November. I had a good feeling about this one. I prayed so hard to have the opportunity to meet and raise this baby, but instead I now have two anonymous angels.

The loss is different. It’s so very early, instead of relatively late like the last one. The physical symptoms were here and then just as quickly they were gone. My body didn’t really change at all this time. And I deeply understood already how possible a loss could be.

The grief is different too. It’s a familiar feeling. A feeling I already knew, that was only briefly interrupted by a serene happiness that helped me forget. I’m in pain physically and emotionally. I’m angry and railing against the unfairness of being struck by lightning twice. I’m so upset that my body won’t do what it’s supposed to do, and I’m worried that our road to a healthy baby will continue to be plagued with losses.

But it’s not as debilitating. We can try again right away, instead of having to wait three months. It was just as easy to get pregnant this time as it was last time. In this place where we’ve suffered painful loss and incredible bad luck, we can at least recognize how fortunate we are to be able to get pregnant.

Baby Showers

Since I lost the baby I have missed the baby showers of my sister, two for my friend Monica, my friend Sarah, my friend Norah, and just got an invitation to my friend Mary’s, which I will probably decline. The only one I actually wanted to go to was my sister’s, but of course I ended up with strep throat and couldn’t go lest I infect the multiple pregnant ladies in attendance, not to mention everyone else. That’s a lot of baby showers in 16 weeks for anyone, even the non-baby-grieving. I feel like I’m being bombarded with reminders of the cruelty of no longer being able to muster up much happiness over someone else’s pregnancy. I wonder when I’m going to be able to attend another baby shower. I think it will have to wait until after I get pregnant and pass my “big ultrasound.” In the meantime, I really can’t stand being surrounded by pregnant women all the time.

In other baby-and-water-related news, my new niece was baptized last weekend. It was joyous and sweet, but by the end of the church service I was fighting back tears, and between the service and the family pictures I couldn’t stop them from falling. It was such a sad reminder of our loss.

Magical

My good friend and coworker had her baby last week. Yay! I’m so happy for her, and her baby is lovely. But one of our other coworkers keeps asking me about her and how they’re all doing. Also fine, I guess, because I’ve seen them a couple times and can update the people who are really curious. But said other coworker keeps steering the conversation to how magical and wonderful the whole new parent experience is, and I just don’t want to hear about that. I want to be happy for my friend, not have a reason to dwell on a general experience that I’m grieving the loss of. I’m really surprised that she doesn’t realize that, because she knows exactly what I went through, and I have no idea what to do about it.

Sad Week

I had a rough week. I’ve been coming down with a cold and having some monthly hormonal upheaval, so that hasn’t really helped the emotional state. This morning I read on Facebook that YET ANOTHER friend of mine is pregnant. I’ve been feeling deeply sad. Like I said before, I was genuinely relieved that I didn’t get pregnant last month, but nonetheless it’s still been a little difficult. We were trying to conceive, and it didn’t work! I do think we were a little off in our timing, so hopefully we can rectify that this month.  A few weeks ago I felt like things had really turned around, but clearly I’m still grieving and that feeling of emptiness has come roaring back. And I feel like getting pregnant will help that, but really getting pregnant means that I have a long three months to survive before the sequential screening can tell us our odds of having a healthy baby this time.

My friend had her baby this week, and we were over there meeting the little one and hearing the birth story, and her mother-in-law said, “So Anne, do you still want a baby after hearing all this?” Um, well, yeah.

Hard To See

There is a lot that has gotten easier for me, but I still can’t stand looking at ultrasound pictures. That’s the only way I ever saw my baby, and what they showed us was something bad. I never got the good one that everyone posts about, announcing to Facebook whether it’s a boy or girl.

I took a negative pregnancy test yesterday—which actually works out fine because it means I can participate in the leadership institute that I worked really hard to apply for, and was one of 30 people to be accepted to—but seeing my friend’s ultrasound picture at the top of my Facebook page today, I just felt bombarded. I wasn’t sad to not be pregnant this time, but I still have sadness and emptiness. I think these strange times of mixed feelings make me feel it most acutely.

Also difficult for me is people who weren’t even trying to get pregnant! And they’re so excited. Totally within their rights, obviously, but it just seems so cavalier. “I didn’t even want this to happen, but oh look, I’m having a baby and isn’t that great!” It’s hard to explain it without sounding like a crank. But I know I’m not alone in feeling like every pregnant woman in the world is flaunting their happiness over their healthy baby, which just leaves those of us who have lost babies in the cold.

Ugh.

No Results

I’ve been waiting for almost 12 weeks for the pathology results from my D&C. I finally got my ass in gear to try and track down what happened with them and why I hadn’t heard anything yet. Apparently my midwife practice was sent a letter about two weeks ago; not sure why they didn’t know what when I talked to them… but I talked to the doctor who performed the D&C and finally got an answer.

And that answer was “the tissue didn’t grow out.”

I will never know what was wrong with my baby. I’ll never have the opportunity to find out whether it was a boy or girl. There’s no way for me to know if what happened to my first pregnancy will have any bearing on any subsequent pregnancies.

I realize this is a VERY common predicament for women who have lost babies. But I’ve spent the last 11 1/2 weeks ASSUMING that I’d get an answer. They got a “clean specimen” (shudder) and the doctor was shocked that they weren’t able to do anything with it.

I don’t know what to think about it, or what to do with this lack of information. I cried a little at first, but I’m done now. I’m a bit shocked, but I feel pretty calm about it. It is what it is. And as that was the last unfinished piece hanging out there, it’s over now.

Unexpected

I had some really sad days over the holidays. Jed and I both found ourselves slogging through constant reminders of the unfairness of our situation, as only “happy” occasions have the ability to bring up. I was supposed to have been 20 weeks pregnant on Christmas Day, and would have had the opportunity to find out the sex of my baby, as I was so viciously reminded by my sister-in-law’s announcement of their baby girl. My cousin’s wife got pregnant unexpectedly and he announced it to us on the day after Christmas. After forcing out a happy sound, all I could do was cry. There’s so much camaraderie in the shared experience of pregnancy, and suddenly not being in that club just feels so wrong, painful, unfair. When I should have been there. As much as we try to be thankful for what we do have, the deprivation, the dashed hopes, just felt so intense.

So when we left for a vacation on January 2, I didn’t go into it with many expectations for how it might help my healing process. I was just happy to be getting away after the emotionally exhausting holidays. We went to Mexico, with a plan to spend the majority of our time relaxing by the pool and on the beach. On day 1, I sat by the pool and felt a strange sensation in my head—like suddenly I had escaped and my brain was starting to process all the broken pieces. I realized I hadn’t been away from the grind of my daily life since everything happened, and I almost had a moment of panic—like, can I do this? Can I relax without going crazy? Will the sadness let me?

(Illustration of my point: Though we certainly weren’t TRYING to get pregnant in December, we weren’t preventing it either. So we decided that it would be a good idea to take an early pregnancy test on New Year’s Eve, just so we would know—for that night and for our upcoming vacation. Well, as I capped the test my hands were shaking and I set it down upside down because I didn’t want to see if it turned positive right away. In those three minutes we both realized how nervous we were that it was going to be positive. It wasn’t, and we were relieved. I checked in with myself all day, a little surprised that I wasn’t just a little disappointed, but there was no disappointment there. We obviously weren’t ready.)

That moment of almost-panic passed, and I just went with it. Later in the week, after several long days of leisure, an 85-minute massage, and even after recovering from a nasty but thankfully-short-lived stomach bug, I realized I felt like myself. In a new way. Jed commented that he was seeing a version of me that he hadn’t seen in a long time. That he felt like I had just “been there” for a while now, and as much as he tried, he knew there wasn’t much he could do to draw me back out until I was ready. I guess I was finally ready. I started to actually FEEL grateful for what we have right now, rather than just reminding myself that I SHOULD.

That feeling has stuck with me. I still think of my baby every day. I don’t know if that will ever change. But I feel lighter. Happiness is much closer to the surface, edging out the pervasive sadness. And we’re ready to try again. I know that no matter what happens, I can survive.