Remembrance Day

Sometimes when I think with excitement about how very much I have to learn about Smudgie over the beautiful decades of our lives together, I remember you and then I realize how much I know about him already.

I never got the chance to discover that you hiccup almost as much on the outside as you did on the inside-- at least four times a day all through the third trimester. I never felt your knees or elbows through the barrier of a tight swaddle and recognized their familiar pointiness from their poking against a very different kind of enclosure. I never compared your ultrasound images to your peacefully sleeping form, marveling at the little hands that extend above your head in your crib, just as they did before you were born.

I knew nothing, but I loved you anyway and missed you like my best friend when you were gone.

Today, two years later, I hold your sleeping little brother on my lap and don't know how to wish for anything more or anything different. When I look at him, I see perfection. But I don't want to say "It all turned out for the best' or "Everything happens for a reason." Because once upon a time you were here and then you weren't, and it broke my heart for me and for you. I wanted you to live and love and be happy. It is still so sad that you never got the chance to.

I wonder sometimes if I would love Smudgie in quite the exact way I do if it weren't for you coming and going first. I think of you when I look at him. I think of you when I hold him to my chest at night and kiss that smooth, precious place where his neck meets his shoulder.

Be at peace little one-- little ones. You are knit into the love that makes our family everyday. So you'll always be with us.

June 26th; or, Juxtaposition

I was feeling off-kilter and out of sorts all last week. We had our 25-week growth scan on Friday, and I was worried, as always, though it took a different form than usual. I found myself dwelling on early losses--reading stories, reliving the key points of our miscarriage experience, crying in therapy about how sad and awful I felt in late '09/early '10. Even with Smudgie obligingly thumping away against my pelvis and ribs--hard enough for Lawyer Guy to feel a subtle little kick for the first time!-- I still kept returning to the past.

It's funny how these obvious things suddenly click: Yesterday was the m&m's due date. The date I calculated myself based on my late ovulation that cycle. The date I've both never considered "real" because it didn't come from a doctor and the date that felt more real to me that any other during those painful seven post-miscarriage months. June 26th--it seemed like the perfect birthday to me then and it still does, even as I anticipate October with growing excitement, impatience, joy, and worry.

Maybe my bad, morbid mood owed more to the post-V Day crash in hope and enthusiasm I was experiencing and that I experience after every successful milestone, but I have to believe it was somehow connected to that tenuous little thread the m&m sent out into my life. In one sense, this is natural and right, I suppose. I loved that baby and bonded more whole-heartedly and unabashedly with it than I let myself with Smudgie. Miscarrying was like being hit by a truck when crossing what I thought to be a deserted street--shocking, devastating, requiring an entirely new perspective on the world and my place in it.

But at the same time, I'm still surprised. Perhaps because I never let myself play the would have/should have game following the m&m's death. I immediately deleted the "Your Pregnancy This Week" e-mails I signed up for from Baby Center (and I just realized I never signed up for them this time around, did I?). I as quickly as possible taught myself to forget what week I might have been at any point during that phantom pregnancy, and I succeeded. If called upon or inspired to figure it out, I'd resort to a calendar and some calculations and then quickly put both out of my mind again once the task was done. I've never once in the year since last June thought to myself "I should have an x month baby right now," because I never believed I "should" or "would" have had any such thing. I didn't have a baby. That was the end of the story. The rest was just pointless wheel spinning*

* To my friends who do follow their lost babies' wished-for progress, this is not in any way meant as a slight against you. It's just what I had to do to keep focused on my IF/loss path and the way my mind and heart wanted to handle things.

I didn't and don't think that any of these feats of amnesia helped me to "forget" the m&m or how much I loved that baby. That's not possible and wasn't even the point. But they did help me to cope, to move on with testing and treatments, to direct my thoughts toward the baby I hoped for rather than the one I no longer had.

But I could never erase June 26th. All I think of when I hear that date is my m&m. (This is probably why I refused to calculate an EDD for Smudgie until the Ob's office told me one at 10 weeks). I suppose that date will always belong to my first baby, the one who never had a chance.

It's strange to remember something so sad while living through something so happy and with such potential for even greater happiness. It's strange to lie on the couch crying as I remember the exam room where the ultrasound tech told us the heartbeat was gone while feeling my (apparently) healthy, strong, 1lb 11 oz karate master whomping on my upper belly. Other women have written much more insightfuly and movingly about the experience of mourning lost babies while celebrating the one that perhaps would not be here if not for the others. I don't even try to reconcile the two thoughts. I love my Smudgie. I can't wait for his or her healthy (pleasepleaseplease) arrival some time between late September and mid-October. And I'm also sad--not crushingly sad, somewhat wistfully and surprisingly sad--when I remember how ruthlessly my hopes and dreams of 20 months ago were dashed.

That may be all I can give you now, m&m. I hope it's enough.

7 Weeks; or, Doomsday Approaches

I'm seven weeks today. I can't stop thinking about the fact that at this point in the first pregnancy, it was all over, or nearly so. The m&m stopped growing right around 7 weeks, though they couldn't know if it developed normally until that point and then stopped or if it grew slowly a few days longer and slowly faded out. Either way, by our 7 week 4 day ultrasound its heart had stopped.

Tomorrow's appointment looms large. It feels like the crucial one: like THIS IS THE POINT YOU FIND OUT YOUR BABY IS DEAD should be written across February 18 in my datebook. My mind refuses to believe that I could move past here to something better and safer and less fraught with fear.

When I would think back to being pregnant with the m&m, it always felt like an epoch in my life. The time seemed to fill several months. I remembered every detail-- specific meals, specific jokes, every single time I puked. We crammed a lot into those weeks.

While I can't say the time has flown by this go-around, I can say that it feels appropriately short. It's been just about three weeks since we found out we were pregnant, and it feels exactly like it's been that long, no more, no less. Maybe because I've been anticipating this point, this 7th (or is it the 8th) week since we got the BFP?

There isn't much more to say, is there? Once again, I'm scared. Once again, I'm facing a terminal moment which will either end happily or sadly (because even ambiguity at this point will make me sad). Once again, my heart is trying to prepare itself for a blow, wrapping itself in negative visions and doomed daydreams like packing peanuts and cotton wool.

But I can say this: we found out a few hours ago that Lawyer Guy's step-mother's mom passed away today. LG and I didn't know her well-- I'd met her fewer than a half-dozen times in the last ten years--but I know my father-in-law and step-mother-in-law will be devastated. I know we'll have a funeral to attend in the next few days. I would really, really, really like to be able to spare them more bad news.

Veterans of Another War

Today is Veteran's Day. It's also the anniversary of the worst day of my life.

Things are both harder and better today than I could have anticipated on November 11, 2009. I drove home from the doctor's office that morning, sobbing the whole way, and lay on my couch in a stupor of misery and over and over again I told myself that things would get better soon. As the weeks passed and I tried to recover and move on, I promised myself that "this time next year" things would be different. I knew we could get pregnant, it was only a matter of time until it happened again, I had just lived through one of the worst things I could imagine and life had to (had to) take a turn for the positive.

If I had suspected then what I know now--that a year would pass and find us still in the same situation---I would have been horrified.

And yet, I am better and stronger right now that I possibly could have imagined twelve months ago that I would become. I struggle continually to feel optimistic, but I force myself to carry on with trying to make a baby regardless, so there's obviously hope in there somewhere. I can face the thought of more losses, more waiting, more sadness without enthusiasm but with a knowledge that I'll survive whatever comes and confidence that I'll weather whatever storms I must until we have a baby.

I can look at my husband and know that we have seen each other at our worst and our best and we have held each other up when it felt like the ground fell away beneath us.

So I'm okay today. It's a sad day but ultimately it's just a date, no better or worse than the ones before and after it. I didn't want my journey to take this long. I didn't want to have to turn to an RE and ART to have a child. But I do and I did. And now there's a 16 mm follicle and 8 mm of lining in my uterus and an IUI scheduled for this weekend and just maybe a baby waiting to be created from hope and heartache and resolution.

Maybe Next Time; or, Revisiting the Past

I'm sad today.

I wasn't a few hours ago. Then I was busy, writing a few articles for my freelance job, thinking about starting to work on the paper I'm delivering at the conference next week (I'm so anxious about it I'm procrastinating something awful), and checking out some favorite sites online.

And it's not like I didn't know what date today was: October 20th, right? It's not like I didn't know what date yesterday was: I was staring at the big October 19th on my lesson plan all day as I taught. But I managed to forget that last year on October 19th I saw this and wrote this.

Until suddenly I remembered. Who knows what shook that thought loose? But now it's all I can think of: how happy--ecstatic--I was this day last year, how exhilarated and content and certain I had found my happy ending.

Right now, I miss the lost hope and joy of those days as much as I miss the baby I thought we were going to have. Those weeks of happy hopefulness feel like a story I read or a movie I sat through--perhaps they happened to me, but I'm not convinced of it. I'm so sorry for that joyful girl, knowing that she will soon suffer so cruelly. I'm sorry for myself, that the intervening year has ground me down inside to sand, with nothing left to give but endurance.

I don't have that kind of hope any longer. The hope I have is objective and detached. My doctor says I'll get pregnant soon, so I choose to believe she's right. Statistically, I know that I'm likely to have another pregnancy, one day or other. Pragmatically, I know that this situation will resolve itself eventually. I won't always be waiting, however the waiting may end.

But speaking of hope emotionally, those butterflies of excitement and certainty and trust that This is the Time! and Now is the Day! are gone. I know that this month didn't work. My body is telling me so. Maybe my heart is, too.

And I'm sad as well that I have to know this. That I know what it was like to be pregnant and what it is like to not be pregnant and that I can tell the difference. Or if I can't tell the difference, then I'm sad that my self-protective pessimism was so often on-target it ceased to be protective and just became true.

The time I was pregnant passed so slowly and I lived through a lifetime's worth of emotional highs and lows in it. But in reality, it was brief--3 short weeks of knowing I was pregnant and then it was over. I expect those weeks will shock me with their quickness on this side of the continuum. Which is okay. Fast or short, they don't change anything.

These days, three weeks just gets me closer to flipping another calendar page and making a different month the focus of my "Maybe next time" mantras.

Lighting Candles; or, October 15th

Last night, when I told Lawyer Guy that today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, he sort of wearily sighed and said, "Isn't that every day?"

Point taken.

But his saying so helped me realize that, no, it isn't any more for me. I actually have days--or long stretches of time within a day, at least--when I don't think about the m&m and losing him or her. I never have a day without thinking about our struggle and our desire to get pregnant, but I do sometimes cease to think about the pregnancy we lost.

This sort of feels right. I grieved so hard for that baby for so long and it felt like the weight of my sadness would crush me sometimes. Now the moments when I feel overwhelmed by the sadness of the miscarriage are less frequent than the times I think of it with acceptance and peace.

This isn't to say I'm "over" what happened. I'm frequently taken aback by how much remembering that baby still can hurt: recounting our story to Dr. Man and Dr. Wonderful at our initial consultations, for instance, and in each meeting feeling myself fight back tears I hadn't realized I needed to shed. And maybe part of my acceptance and peace comes from the fact that we've just started down this new path to having a baby and I'm optimistic about success. After several months of disappointment and stasis, I may have a very different outlook. The only thing certain in this process is that the situations we encounter and our emotional responses to them will never be predictable.

I'm going to light a candle tonight in memory of the baby I was just beginning to suspect I carried at this time last year. This time--late October, as the world drifts into autumn slowly like a turning leaf--will always belong to that baby, so I'm glad that October 15th falls within the anniversary of his or her short life.

I do love you, m&m. Not the way I thought or hoped or dreamed I would, but the only way I can.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Wine; or, Choose Your Own Ending

Last cycle (cycle 4 post-miscarriage, for those counting), I made a decision. I decided I was taking a break. I was packing up Pissy and putting away the basal body thermometer and reclaiming my life and trying that hot new "just relax" technique that gets the kids all excited these days.

And then I cracked and went back to peeing on things. As you do.

This cycle, I made no pronouncements. I made no decisions. I made no declarations. Nope. I just forgot to refill my box of Pissy's peestrips. And lost my BBT at a hotel.

Look's like the break's on me.

* * *
I truly thought I was going to be fine on the m&m's due date last weekend. By this point, I understand that my first pregnancy was not meant to be, that something else lies in my future, that I've got to look forward rather than back. I greet every month with possibly misguided optimism, even if I don't always convey that here. And I don't even think to myself, "I wish I hadn't lost the baby" anymore, because I don't know who I would be right now if I hadn't lost the baby. Acceptance, right?

On Friday, Lawyer Guy and I had date night at a steakhouse before the welcome cocktail party back at the hotel. We had a great time and drank some wine and laughed together and I looked very pretty and all was well. Then we made our way to the hotel and met my friend the bride's family and her wedding party, and since I'd had pinot noir with the steak at dinner, I broke my 9-year streak of never ordering red wine at a party and got a glass of cabernet.

Fifteen minutes and one wildly gesticulating bridesmaid later, said glass of cabernet was empty and said cabernet was all over my hair, arm, chest, shoes, and the rather expensive, beaded, embroidery-embellished silk tunic I bought from a little one-of-a-kind shop on my trip to London last summer.

The bridesmaid felt terrible and frantically tried to find a 24-hour dry cleaner (none in Tampa, it appears), to dab the giant, blossoming stains with club soda, and to convince me it would come out when it was washed. But I knew the outfit was ruined (as indeed, it is) and was trying to hold it together until I could be alone. I didn't want her to feel worse about her accident than she already did.

After she left and I changed for bed, I pretty quickly began sobbing about my tunic, much to LG's dismay, and then somehow started keening "I miss the baby" over and over. The two things of course, as LG rightly pointed out, having nothing to do with one another. But in my mind, the fact that I was coated in cabernet rather than blood on the eve of my baby's due date had some deep three-in-the-morning kind of significance.

* * *
The break isn't quite as drastic as I made it out to be before. I had a few of Pissy's sticks left and was using one sporadically every few days, contrary to her methodical likings, as I waited for the new box to arrive. I took my temperature three or so times before losing the thermometer in Florida. And I added a new element to my already burgeoning pre-ovulatory routine: vitex (aka chasteberry root) in an herbal supplement, said to help regulate ovulation.

On Saturday, the due date, I went to the wedding. I wore my 30th-birthday purple petal dress. I danced to Madonna and Michael Jackson with my friends and Cole Porter and James Taylor with Lawyer Guy. I drank just enough and not too much. No one spilled anything on me. Everything that night was easy and happy and--yes--relaxed.

And then the next morning, with my very last peestick, Pissy gave me a Peak. On CD 16. About a week earlier than I expected.

* * *
This might turn out to be the ever-irritating story of The Accidental Break Cycle, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Got My BFP. This might turn out to be the amazing story of a Very Sad Day and Its Very Happy Ending. This might turn out to be your run-of-the-mill story of The Girl Who Spilled Wine on Her Tunic, Cried About It, Went To a Wedding, Woke Up the Next Morning, and Got Her Period Two Weeks Later.

As always, anxiously awaiting that last page.

I Miss You, M&M

from "Maud Muller"

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!

-- John Greenleaf Whittier

Nice Day For A White Wedding; or, Mental Games

Last spring and summer and fall, before I got pregnant, I would play a little game with myself, one of my many tricks to moderate disappointment if and when another cycle didn't pan out. I would think of something I really wanted to do 9-months from then--or an event coming up in the meantime--and decide why it would be much better to not be pregnant then. Missing my sister's college graduation in Maine would have sucked. Not being able to fly to England for a conference would be frustrating. And I really wanted to attend my friend's June wedding in Florida.

When I got pregnant with the m&m, missing my friend's wedding barely even registered as something I considered. I was ecstatic and relieved and overjoyed and I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do on June 26th than welcome a baby into my life.

I'm leaving in twenty minutes or so for the airport. I'm going to Florida for the wedding. I'm glad I'll be away from home, doing something fun and different. I'm glad I can drink and dance and snuggle with my husband and see some good friends from my MA program and get dressed up.

I still wish I couldn't go.

Naming Names; or, When Hobbies take Over [Edited]

Those last three days of the two week wait are the worst, aren't they? You've got a bit of hope left, but it's rapidly eroding. The testing date is so close (less than a week away!) but the odds are you'll never make it there. AF's calling cards are increasingly difficult to ignore. The only worse part of my cycle is when I'm waiting on a late ovulation.

So to distract myself, I'm going to post about one of my favorite topics: Names.

I have always been fascinated with names. I think a lot of writers are. Names are such lovely symbols-- or at least I've been conditioned to read them that way after years of reading fiction. Names are musical. Names are adaptable, changing like a face over time as relationships grow or alter. Names are such a beautiful gift from parent to child.

I'm the oldest of four daughters, and I was seven when my youngest sister was born. My parents never enlisted our help in naming their younger children. They never even let us know the potential names before my sisters were born. But I can vividly remember reading through their baby name books during my mom's pregnancies, making lists of names I liked and suggesting them to my parents.

Over the years I made constant name lists that stand as a record of my obsessions and changing interests. Then in college, the internet revolutionized the way we name children. The SSA began releasing the annual Most Popular Names lists, parents started debating names online, google searches allowed immediate calculations of the incidences of a child's potential full name not only in his or her locality, but across the globe. I became interested in the sociological aspects of naming, the reasons certain names trend up or down, what names parents are drawn to at a particular time and which names they reject. Names are fascinating to research from that perspective, because they are both intimately expressive of parents' class, cultural, and other affiliations and also totally free!

Eventually, a few years ago, after becoming an active member of a community of "Name Enthusiasts," I was picked to co-write an advice column about names for an online publication (under an alias, not my own by-line, as it's a corporate endeavor).

So, suffice it to say, I've spent a lot of time thinking about names.

And naturally, after almost ten years with my husband, we've talked about names together. We hadn't even been dating a year before I started throwing "potential children's" names around, and once Lawyer Guy realized this was just a hobby of mine and not an indication of my desire to get pregnant at 20, he played along. I've even infected him with my name interest. He now remembers noteworthy (or appalling) names he hears on the street or given by acquaintances to tell me about them and has his own firm favorites and strong dislikes.

Our chosen names have changed over time: we started nine years ago with Eloise and James and moved through several other permutations over the years. But four years ago--after we became engaged--we finally settled on a different set boy and girl name. We loved them. When we started trying to conceive, we would talk all the time about what we would do with X or Y, where we would take them, what they would be like.

We purposefully left the middle names undetermined-- until I got pregnant. Roughly a week later, we had those pinned down, too.

After we lost the baby, we still kept those names. Since we don't know the gender of the baby we lost, I think of it only as "m&m," and I'm comfortable doing so. We feel no compunction applying these names to a new baby. They were always potential names, chosen for a potential baby, and they can wait until the actual baby arrives to fill that potential.

But maybe I did attach them to my first pregnancy more than I think I did. Or maybe (what I suspect is more likely), having the same mental names for my hypothetical, non-existent children has grown boring. Much of the fun of discussing names comes from the debate, the discovery, the moment when you and your partner realize that you both love the same special sound. We had those moments four years ago. Talking about these names isn't fun any longer.

So I've been cheating on X and Y. I've been pondering other possibilities. I've been filling out online stationery order forms for baby announcements (shut up, we all do it) with other monograms. There's a boys name lurking in the background, not ready yet to take center stage, but the situation is quite different for the girls. A new contender has emerged, a name we both adore, that is sweet and short and lovely: Nell Isadora (the middle for LG's grandfather).

I'd really like the little zygote to show up already, so we can hammer out this debate. I'd really like the pang that accompanies every column I write to disappear. I'd really like to comment on name blogs and message boards again, something I haven't been able to do since the miscarriage.

I'd really like to not get bored of another set of names before the baby arrives to wear them.


[Edited 1/21/12: Now that we do have a baby and have given him our favorite name, I have removed the distinguishing details from this post to protect his privacy]

Six Months Later

Dear m&m:

Today it is six months since we found out you were gone. These six months have been the hardest of my life, and I have missed you every day. I don't often think to myself what you would have been or could have been or should have been. I try not to let myself imagine how big you would be by now, how much you would be kicking, how many of your little things would be waiting for you in your nursery. I don't know how many weeks you would be or what size fruit you would correspond to. I didn't follow your growth after you left us because it hurt too much to pretend like that.

But I do remember how happy I was when I was pregnant with you and you were growing, however slowly and unsteadily. I often think about the night I ate so many berries and then threw them all up again not even an hour later. Every bit of discomfort or pain I felt then is precious to me now, because it meant that you were alive.

You weren't meant to live, I suppose, though I will never know why. And yet I am so grateful that I had the chance to love you, even if only for a few weeks. Those weeks were a brief spot of joy in a long, sad year and I will remember them all my life. I hope that they were weeks of peace and joy in the fact of being alive for you, too. I hope that somehow you felt my love.

Eternally,
Your Mother

15 Weeks Later; or, Normal

15 weeks after my D&C, 8 weeks after I began weekly phone calls to two separate doctors' offices, 5 weeks after I first cried on the phone, 4 weeks after I learned I was never given the release form I needed to sign, 3 weeks after I faxed the release form in, 1 week after screaming at my doctor's receptionist over the phone...

I finally got the lab results from the genetic testing on the m&m.

Normal.

My doctor said this is good news, that we don't need to worry about karyotyping and that future pregnancies are highly likely to be healthy.

But now I don't know why this baby didn't make it. It's much, much harder to accept this miscarriage as "not meant to be" when the baby likely would have been healthy and normal and fine if he or she had progressed.

Yes, he or she. We asked to not be told the sex.

My dad says this will just be one of life's mysteries for me. Holding a healthy, living, cuddly baby of my own, I think I'll be able to accept the mysteries of life better than I do right now.

Updates; or Odds and Ends

A huge and hearty THANK YOU to everyone who commented on yesterday's post or e-mailed with advice. You have made me feel less alone, less like one half of the freakish couple with sex problems. Taking some of your suggestions to heart, I had a calm, difficult, but loving and productive chat with Lawyer Guy last night before bed, and we have made some decisions about what to do to make this process less stressful on both of us.

Rereading my post, I'm struck by the anger in my tone. Truthfully, I do not usually feel that way about my husband, not even around this issue. I suppose that's why the feeling shocks me so much when it springs up in the aftermath of a difficult moment--I am pretty much the least anger-prone person alive. I'm in a much better headspace today (probably as a result of our good conversation last night) and am back to my usual loving self.

Also, out of respect to my husband, I won't be discussing this issue again. He knows of my blog and has agreed not to read it, but I still feel some guilt about sharing a concern of his that he would NOT like the world to hear about (that was a pretty constant refrain as we talked about our husbands, wasn't it? If only they could all get together and have this chat). So know that I appreciate your advice and support and that he and I are working on this as we move forward.

* * *
I've been through the wringer the last few months with trying to get the tissue test results back on the m&m following our d&c. Unreturned phone calls, misleading information, multiple calls to multiple doctors offices. I thought the situation was FINALLY resolved yesterday when I called my office to get the results (12 weeks after the procedure). And yet another road block has been put in my way: I never signed a release form for the office that performed the d&c to send the results to my regular doctor's office. And I never signed a form because they never told me to or gave me a form to sign! And it took a month and a half for them to let me know this (the results were in after 6 weeks)!

Now I need to fax a letter giving them permission to release the forms, wait for them to send the forms to my doctor, and I'm sure hurdle over another carpenter's horse before I learn what made us lose our baby. At this point, it's not even about the results, which I doubt will be all that informative, surprising, or helpful. It's the principal of the thing--don't make a grieving non-mother wait a FULL TRIMESTER to put her dead baby to rest.

***
Finally, today it has been three months since we learned we lost the m&m. I had a little breakdown yesterday, brought on partly because of the stressful marital situation but mostly because I just miss my baby.

Days get easier and the world seems brighter all the time. I'm committed to my schoolwork, loving my marriage, and finding a peace through yoga that feels enriching and well earned. I'm truly hopeful that I'll be pregnant again sooner rather than later and will have a baby at the end of those nine months.

But I will never have my m&m. I can accept what life has given me and still mourn what might have been.

Conversations; or, Confessions

I've been talking a lot about the m&m recently. Immediately after the miscarriage, I felt like this wall of silence was put between me and the people around me--I was grieving harder than I'd ever grieved in my life but I felt like I couldn't tell the people I interacted with on a daily basis--not my students, not my classmates, not my teachers, not my Junior League committee members.

That was probably smart. I found it hard to even think about the baby without sobbing--talking about him or her was probably beyond my ability at that point.

Now, however, I've been telling people about the miscarriage frequently (though I hope not indiscriminately and not in detail--merely the fact that it happened). And with each person I tell, it's like a little weight is lifted off my chest. I hate the burden of secrecy. I hated not only feeling loss and sadness but having to hide the source of those feelings.

I know why others choose to keep their emotions private and conceal their pain. But I've learned how healing it is for me to share my experience, and so I refuse to feel guilty for talking about this. I'm also lucky that none of the colleagues and friends I've told have given me the crappy, standard post-miscarriage responses. They've all responded with compassion and understanding.

I've learned that my former Junior League chair had a miscarriage two years before her toddler daughter was born. I've had a fellow grad student, the mommy to two little girls, tell me that the mommy part of my life has started now, even though I don't have a baby yet. I've had lots of hugs. And even when all I hear is, "I'm so sorry," it feels nice to be open and honest, nice to acknowledge that there was a baby, a baby who is gone now, a baby who left a sadness behind that will always endure.

So for my gals out there starting that long walk back to recovery after a miscarriage, I don't suggest you do things my way. But sometimes it's good to give people the opportunity to surprise you with their kindness and sympathy.

Back to Zero; or, Crumbling

I'm having a really bad day. Woke up early from upsetting dreams. Lay in bed restlessly reliving the experience of the d&c. Thought about my baby and where I'd be right now if we hadn't lost him or her.

I haven't cried like this in weeks. Everything feels too difficult, too empty. I can't stop thinking about what I've lost and how much I want it back. I can't see a happy future behind the blackness of this moment.

I thought I was doing better. I actually felt proud of myself for getting over that hump of grief and facing the future with optimism. I told myself I was really strong. Better at dealing with this than most people.

But I'm not. I'm weak and pathetic. And sad.

And tired.

Edited to add: Thank you. Your words help so much.

And I just noticed the date. The 11th. 2 months. Fuck.

Happy New Year

"Visualize a being you are responsible for," she said.

I thought of my m&m--a little pink shrimp curled around its own tail with big black spots for eyes, safe in a gelatin sac.

"Think of something you can do for this being. Some way you can improve your care of it."

Hope, I thought. I can have hope.

I breathed in (baby) and breathed out (hope). I'm not very flexible and I'm not very strong, so sometimes I thought more about my body, more about the pain of the stretch or the stiffness of the joints, than about my breath. But whenever I remembered, I breathed in (baby) and breathed out (hope).

Lying on my back in the dark, eyes closed, the room still, the m&m floated through my interior vision, a crystal champagne bubble on a field of black.

"And now, let that image go."

The sac drifted away, melted into darkness. I felt my cheeks wet, but I didn't try to keep it with me, to hold it back from where it needed to go.

Goodbye.

Hello.

Numb

The baby is not viable any longer. The heart beat is gone. Only limited growth in the last week. Once again, I felt nothing when they gave me the news, but it didn't take long for the tears to start.

I feel very reasonable and calm right now, other than the fact that I keep crying. All the rational explanations make sense. All the platitudes and comforting things people say. I'm totally on the "at least we know we can do it/it's better for nature to take care of its own" train right now.

Of course, I feel completely dead inside and I can't even begin to let myself start to think about trying again next cycle, or how unfair this is, or how much it fucking sucks that I'm still puking my guts out an average of five times a day when there's no baby to show for it.

Nope, right now I feel a limited range of emotions: a numb sort of disconnect with the situation. A huge amount of love for my husband. Overwhelming gratitude that I got this news today and not last Friday, when it would have ruined the baby shower. I'm truly so thankful to God for that gift, the gift of being happy and celebrating with my best friend. Nothing can take those memories away from me.

And a calm sense of inevitability. Did I always know this would happen? Does it just feel that way because it did?

I'm also really tired and would like to go to sleep until 2010.

November Showers; or, Time with Friends and Family

I threw my best friend her baby shower on Saturday. My mother and I did it together, and for a while last week, I was desperately afraid that I'd be hosting this shower while anticipating a miscarriage. I would have done it, because this is my best friend since childhood who I never see, and she deserves it. But it would have been a kind of pain that I'm afraid to even imagine.

As it turned out, I was able to host the shower in a much different state of mind. My parents knew about the pregnancy, so my mom was really sweet to me all weekend, making sure that I ate and rested and took care of myself. And my best friend also knew--and knew about all our fears and worries of last week--so she, too, was a great source of comfort. She reassured me that even though the doctor wants us to have another u/s this week, everything sounds great and normal to her (my bf is a doctor, as well as pregnant herself, so I take her medical advice with more trust that I would most of my friends').

In all, it was a really nice weekend. Nice to see my friend get so many nice presents to welcome her little boy when he comes in January or February. Nice to spend time with my family and people I love. Nice to be away from the city, from job and school stress, and from the worries that have bedeviled us these past few days. And nice to have other people know what we've been going through.

The one not nice thing: I was horribly sick on Friday and Saturday. I puked three times in the car on the drive down to my parents' Friday night, and Saturday I puked about eight or nine times from the afternoon to right before I went to bed. I also made the terrible error in judgment of eating a carton of raspberries and a carton of blueberries at midnight after vomiting so I'd have something in my stomach. They burned like hell on the way back up ten minutes later.

I've noticed that my morning sickness isn't in the morning at all--it starts about mid-afternoon and is at its worst around dinner time. In the mornings I feel fine! As hard as it is to puke so much, I am so grateful this baby is giving me trouble and causing me symptoms.

Please be healthy and strong on Wednesday little baby!

Emotionally Drained; or, Still Hanging In There

This has been the most emotionally exhausting 24 hours of my life. I apologize for leaving you (or just Stef, if you're the only reader) hanging, but I needed to process and deal with my emotions and fears before I could post.

We went in to my gynecologist's yesterday at 4:30. My doctor performed an exam first and found the cervix closed, so she said the blood had not come from my uterus. Then she did an u/s. Almost immediately, we saw the embryo--big and totally obvious. My husband gripped my hand with relief. I felt oddly detached. And then she said, "Let me just find the heart beat. Hmm, I can't find the heart beat."

She referred us to a diagnostic sonography place for today. She said she gave our chances at a viable pregnancy at 50-50. She spoke a little bit about our "options" if the pregnancy wasn't viable. But then she stopped herself. "Don't think about it any more tonight," she said. "Just go home and rest. We don't know what's going on yet."

My poor husband had almost fainted when he heard her say there was no heartbeat. Literally, he had to go lie down in another exam room (Can you tell we're cut from the same anxious cloth?). I felt numb and calm. We left the office together around 5:30 and began walking down 2nd Avenue.

Our close friends had given birth the day before and were in a hospital 30 or 40 blocks south of my doctor's. We had planned to visit them after the appointment to meet the baby, but at that point we didn't know what to do. I suggested we just walk for a while. While we were walking, I called the other doctor's office and set up an appointment for this morning at 8:30.

After I made the appointment, all my fear hit me. I started crying, gripping my husband's hand. At the same time, I was aware more than ever of how much I loved him and how grateful I was to have him at that time.

We walked, and sometimes I cried, and sometimes I didn't. We decided to visit our friends--who suffered a miscarriage about 2 years ago, then tried for over a year afterward before conceiving this child. We are both so unadulteratedly happy for them, it seemed like the right, unselfish thing to do. And the visit was good. For a little while, I put what was going on out of my mind and just felt happy for two people I care a lot about and their very cute little baby boy.

And then we went home. And I fell apart. Sobbing, vomiting, I was a mess. I wound up calling my mom and I spoke with her and my dad for about an hour. They were comforting, reminding me that we can't know God's plans for us and just have to trust in him. And that hardship comes to every life, but that I'm strong and will survive it. My mom said she would go to morning mass for me today.

We fell into an exhausted sleep at 10, and then I woke to pee at 2 am--I didn't sleep again until 4 or 5, waking for good at 6. I puked all morning and cried into my tea as I got ready for the drive back into Manhattan.

Even though my doctor had given us 50-50 odds, I felt like they were 90-10. I was sure this was not a viable pregnancy. I sobbed the entire car ride to the office. I imagined how difficult hosting my best friend's baby shower tomorrow would be, and attending my husband's family wedding the following weekend in California, and getting through Thanksgiving and Christmas. I felt heartbroken. But I also knew I'd be able to survive whatever came.

We had our ultrasound with the doppler. It lasted forever, at least 10 minutes, and was actually painful by the end of it. The u/s tech didn't say anything throughout. She had told us she wouldn't, but she spent so long looking at everything, I was certain she was searching fruitlessly for signs of life. She stopped the exam then, went to find the doctor, came back and said, "I see an embryo. And I see a heart beat."

My husband started to cry. I just felt--nothing. Not sadness, not joy, not even relief. Nothing. Tired. Spent.

We met with the doctor after I dressed. He was concerned that we were measuring two weeks behind based on my last menstrual period. I tried to explain that I always have longer than average cycles and this cycle I ovulated especially late. Even so, he wants us back next week to check on the progress.

And he told us the heart rate. 92.

I came home and ate McDonald's with my husband and slept for two hours.

I feel like I've had a stay of execution. I feel released. I don't feel happy or sad right now. Just peaceful. The baby is still alive for now and that's a good sign. I honestly did not expect to get this news today. So it's enough for now.

Though my cervix is letting me know it did not appreciate 2 vaginal ultrasounds in as many days.

Still Spotting

This makes the fourth day. It was a little heavier last night than it has been. It's still brown (ranging from dark to light) and still accompanied by cramps. Both the spotting and the cramping are intermittent.

I'm waiting to hear back from the doctor again. I'm praying that God will keep my baby safe. I'm trying not to cry too much, trying to get some work done before class this afternoon.

I'm reminding myself to be thankful I'm pregnant at all. But I'm really scared.