Thankful for What?

Over the last year or so, since the miscarriage, my husband and I have worked hard to "get a life". Meaning, since we opted to not have children, we have created and built a lifestyle that blends us, our interests, and fulfills what did seem like a very empty house. As a result of our "project", I always have something to say or offer up. Have you seen THIS movie? Have you been to THAT restaurant? Have you ever been hunting? Do you like painting/reading/redecorating on a budget... ETC.?
We have done a good job in filling in the blanks and have become satisified with our lifestyle.
But a few weeks ago, there was some news from the female doctor about some "stuff". This "stuff" is very serious and out of left field. We have been coping and processing. We have been going to the doctor and I have three more appointments next week. It is slightly consuming and I am having a difficult time of not letting it get to me. It's hard to "forget about something for a while" when a large chunk of your free time is spent sitting in a waiting room. Flipping through crappy old health magazines and trying not to stare at the other patients waiting, equally as confused and thrown off.
I wish I could publish blogs about it, but at this point, I think I better keep it hush hush, at least until Wednesday, when I am going to see a specialist. I will know more. And I won't feel as if I am being too negative, or too hopeful. If I keep it hush hush, I feel I can stay removed from the truth, which is trying it's very best to upset my equilibrium. And while I have been writing about the experiences, I am keeping them to myself. I don't want certain people to read about it before I can talk about it with them in person. They may be offended, or unnecessarily upset.
It has occurred to me lately how precious our lives are. It dawned on me that until we got the news a few weeks ago, my husband and I were very happy, yet didn't stop to realize it. Life was good. Our jobs as a teacher and a public works employee, while not lucrative, are stable in the rocky economy. Our home is slowly but surely getting upgraded and fixed up to our liking. Our goals and dreams have just enough crossover to keep us connected yet just enough distance to give us space to grow as individuals. We have hit a pleasant rhythm in our marriage and life is good.
And perhaps it still is. We are both ultimately fine. But this recent "diagnosis" could change everything. Maybe for the better in the end, but also maybe for the worse. I am praying that God continue to show me that not only does everything happen for a reason, but that it happen in a way that I understand what that reason is. And sooner rather than later. I feel He has His hand in this. I am doing my best to not worry and fret about the future.
Since it's all very female and new and precarious, my husband and I are still working on making peace with it, therefore it's not the kind of thing we are ready to tell people in everyday conversation, particularly a holiday. When asked, lately, what I have been up to, I have found myself speechless for the first time in a long time. I think in my head, "You don't really want to know what I have been up to." and then hear myself say out loud out of desperation, "OH! Nothing! Really, not much at all," but really my life has been consumed and if I opened the floodgates I don't think I could stop talking about it.
In the meantime I am thankful I have my job and my supportive family and all of the other distractions that are keeping me from over thinking the possibilities and quite frankly, going nuts.
I know in the end everything will be okay. Our lives will realign and we will eventually barely remember this chapter in time. But for now, we are living it. Trying to be strong and mature and stable. Taking things one day at a time and waiting for the next appointment for more clarification.
*** Update: Everything is going to be fine!! Yeah!! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers!***

One Year Later...

When I first had the miscarriage, I allowed myself the precaution of setting up milestones. For example, I told myself that it was totally okay if I felt sad at Thanksgiving ( which I must have because I don't remember it ). I told myself it was okay to be sad on the due date. Which I wasn't really. I told myself it was alright if I felt sorrow when hearing the news of all of the babies being born that were in utero at the same time as mine. Which I sometimes was- depending on my womanly cycle, of course, which would exaggerate the sadness.

And now, I sometimes feel sad for no reason in particular, other than that I just do.

I have given up trying to control or understand all of that.

What I didn't expect was the onslaught of emotion I have begun to feel a year later.

It has struck me like a bolt of lightning.

I feel thick.

And in hindsight I realize that the one year anniversary of the death of someone we care about is hard. And while I may not have ever carried the little one in my arms, I carried them in my heart. And for whatever it's worth, I gave it my everything.

A while back I thought the sadness came from a selfish feeling of failure. Or maybe even more selfishly because I couldn't get what I wanted.

But I am realizing now that it is more simple. It's Mother love.

I am sure it grows stronger as our children age. Goes without saying can wax and wane through puberty. But overall, strong, unbridled, consistent. Unconditional.

And I felt that.

I feel like I lost my child.

It's annoying because I don't want to continue to deal with this. I want things to go back. But I feel like even though I have never had to wake up in the night to feed him or spend my last sixty bucks on diapers while eating macaroni that on some level I get it. I am wiser for it. I feel older from it. I am softer because of it and for that we can all be thankful.

And while it might be easier to move on from it if I "tried" again, we might not. So this may have been my closest shot at motherhood. And I don't want to forget the beauty in that.

I was thinking to do something to commemorate the experience. Not to dwell but something I can seek when I need to. I just have no idea what.

One lady sells pillows? Not really my thing.

I could get a necklace, but I have the feeling that it would get lost among all the others.

I would plant a tree, but we live in a condo.

I don't know, but I think it would help.

The Depression

I have had some dark days in the past year. Literally dark. Not that I didn't pay my Com Ed bill, but more like I was hiding in my bedroom with the lights off kind of dark. Deep under the covers. It's called depression.
Last winter, after my lifeless baby was sucked from my body, and my husband began to work no less than sixty hours a week, and the days were cold and dreary, things took a turn for the worse. My solace became my bedroom. Where I would flee to, like a Jamaican runner, every single day after work. I cannot tell you what I might have been doing. Nothing inappropriate, but certainly not anything to brag about. It's not like I knitted scarves or took up needlepoint. I just sort of layed there. Wondering when and if this horrible weight would ever go away. As a matter of fact, lack of activity perpetuated the weight and I packed on an additional twelve. Hence the current need for Weight Watchers.
Anyway, it became so out of control ridiculous that I actually referred to the place UNDER the covers as my "house". Like if my husband came home and resumed any sort of normal life, for instance watching TV in the living room or eating in the kitchen, I would text him from my "house" and ask him if he wanted to come over. And clearly, the space ABOVE the covers was not my house, it was our "bedroom". Because when you become so desperate, you lose sight of reality and cling onto these details because you actually have control over them.
The days after "the procedure" were dark indeed. Within two weeks I was blessed with the fact that EIGHT people close to me were pregnant, which at any other time of my life would have been cause to celebrate. And my sister-in-laws baby shower was two days away. And I felt like a monster. Because I skipped the baby shower and layed in my "house". To this day I have no recall of weather or not I even managed to send a gift. And when I said congratulations to the others I was faking. And the girls were all sensitive and would look at me with puppy eyes and would say, no, really, it's okay if you are not happy for me. And to salvage the friendship and do what I knew was most right I would deny them my truth. Which was that I would go running home and cry and hide in my house. And feel mad and angry and pissed that I didn't get to do what they are were so happy about.
And I remember being a little girl and being pissed that my older brother got to go and see Sixteen Candles at the theater and I could not. And even though I was SO mad and jealous I just had to hear about it first hand and pretended to him like it wasn't to save face and to also get to hear ALL about what I missed. So I could feel a little bit like I was a part of the moment, and not waiting anxiously for months for it to come out on HBO or VHS.
The worst part of all was the isolation I felt when thinking about how I would feel if someone told me when I was newly pregnant that THEY had managed to lose thier own baby; It's contagious. Like an STD or something. That's how I would feel. Like the miscarriag-er would somehow rub off on me and get me all miscarriag-ee or something. Like... OMGOSH, what did she DO? I want to know what she did so I don't do that. You know, as if I sat around and smoked crack and ran 40 miles a day or something. It was another reason I hid. So know one would have the opporunity to act bithcy like I might have. Feigning conern for ME when really they just didn't want to emulate me. The WORST form of flattery.
So I am not depressed any more, but again, there is more. Much more. But for today that is enough.

*SAD STORY ALERT*..... The "Incident"

Almost a year ago I found out I was pregnant. We had been married less than one year. We had moved, me twice. Having a baby seemed like the next good thing to keep the momentum going. I experienced everything that I assume most women experience in some variation or another.
I was tired. Really tired. I slept all the time. My house got messy. I gained weight, like about ten pounds almost immediately. I was craving onion rings. All the time. I felt sick and couldn't eat the onion rings I just ordered. My boobs... well, let's just say someone needed to get thee to a department store and make that stat. My mom came and helped me and so did my husband. Bra shopping at 34 with your mother and your husband? I don't know. I still don't get why I did that. I left with a bag of over two hundred dollars worth of underwear and crocodile tears streaming down my face. The sizes were bigger than I was used to.
I bought some books and borrowed others. We began plotting and planning the next year. We made peace with the fact we were not going to be able to afford the fold-out couch I wanted for overnight guests ( namely my parents ) or the SUV my husband feels I need so if and when I get in an accident, the insides or our armored beast would be safe.
My due date was the last day of school for me, June 7th, so child care was a worriless year away.
We planned on telling everyone at the twelve week mark. Well, I meanwe hadn't told, which included my family. And some work friends. And Billy's family and some of his friends. Heck, we were excited, we basically even told the check out girl at Dominicks. But, we were going to "make it public" on Thanksgiving. We started planning some special dates with special friends we really did want to tell in person.
Those dates never happened. Well, they happened on the calendar and all, but I never met up with those people to tell them my news. Because by the time the dates were there, the news was different. And I was most likely laying in bed. Under a blanket.
Around the beginning of November something changed in me. I didn't feel pregnant anymore. I felt fine. I recall now researching miscarriage on the internet. Not once, but like... all the time. I hid the pregnancy books from view. Like under the table in a fashion reminiscent of my five year old self hiding dirty clothes underneath the bed.
My ten week ultrasound was scheduled the night after my husband started his new job. The night I had parent-teacher conferences. He rushed to the Dr.'s office after work. I told my principal that I had an appoinment during the dinner hour break, and if I was back later than the normally rigid 6 PM that would be the reason why.
We met there and after a short wait went on in. The lady gave me an "exam" right in front of my husband. I couldn't believe that! I thought the "overexposure" crap would come much, much later. Anyway- she did an ultrasound and could not get a hearbeat. ( It was the kind with no picture- just noise). She said we should go to the ER and she immediately ordered up a real ultrsound, just to be safe. "Yeah right", I told my husband. "I am carrying a dead baby and I know it. " Just like that, because that's harsh and cold and my sick sense of humor in a very bad situation. Needless to say, he didn't laugh at my joke.
They made me drink a lot of water beforehand and told me I couldn't pee. I had to hold it. It hurt. We played pencil games in my puzzle book to stay busy. The nurse called us in and then stuck an object I didn't believe would fit right into me. I have since learned this is called the internal ultrasound. It made me want to punch her. Humiliating me like that when I was feeling so devastated. straight away she noticed on the ultrasound that my bladder was ridiculously full. I said it hurt! She let me go and pee out a little.
Then I watched her take a bazillion pictures of this tiny lifeless dot on the screen and I knew. I was strong but didn't hear myself make any more jokes. She didn't seem to be in a good mood either.
Then we sat and waited for the x-ray guy to call our doctor to then call us, sitting and waiting like two anxious puppies. My phone rang and it was a co-worker. I had forgotten about work. I told them things weren't looking too good and could someone please let the boss lady know I wasn't going to be back in tonight? Like at all?
We then got the call we were waiting for. She said that the baby died at six weeks. I crumpled in sadness. The saddest moment of my whole life.
We drove home in stunned silence. We ate McDonald's for dinner. I do believe, aside from car trips, that is the ONLY McDonald's my husband and I have ever eaten together. We don't eat like that much around here. I took the morning off from work and idiotically actually thought, despite the inability to stop crying and my resistance to taking a shower, that I could make it in by noon. I called around ten saying I would be out all day. And all week for that matter.
The Dr. told me I needed to make a decision. To either let "it" pass naturally ( wait around for the thing to fall out-? ) wait and see if "it" absorbs back into my body ( ummm... gross ) or to have "it" surgically removed. I opted for door number three and asked when was the absolute soonest I could schedule what will henceforth be referred to as the "procedure"... ( mostly because it's actually a D&C and that sounds like abortion to me, and that didn't seem fair! ).
So the next day it was. My Mom came with my sister-in-law in tow. My husband also came after some serious discussion. I mean, it was like day FOUR of his new job! I thought he should just go to work. His boss disagreed. Later, I would admit it was better he was by my side.*
Before the "procedure", they brought me a funeral packet. They asked me if I wanted to make a funeral for the little guy. I kept thinking that it would be weird. "It" just needed to go away to the place where they put that kind of stuff. Wherever and whatever that grody place is.
I remember very little about it because I was put under. They put me in these huge nasty white depends underwear which as a precaution it should be mandatory you are told about before hand. They are too scary to just wake up in. I thought maybe they removed my whole ass or something.
We came home. I slept. And slept. And cried. Basically my daily journal for the next month would have looked like this:
Work. Home. Cry. Eat. A lot. Sleep.
I went to the library to try and find some "recovery" books on miscarriage, becuase I am that kind of girl that believes in mental health and positive thinking and well... I picked out the cutest books. Because as a rule of thumb I like books that have pink or purple colors. I tried to read them but they were devastatingly mundane and boring. I FELT the sorrow of the written word creeping off the page. I think they were actually making me sadder. But yet happier, because I thought I finally found a subject for the book I have always wanted to write. A funny miscarriage book. Or at least a book that when you opened the front page you didn't think you were hearing pipe organs. But then and again I realize that my dark dark humor( which I am even resisting here ) would not be appreciated en masse.
It was right around this time that my husband's hours at his new job cranked up. He was working sometimes 70 hours a week. And they were random and sporadic. He was never home. It was not his fault. But I became lonely. Very lonely. I was depressed. And who wouldn't be? I barely remember anything about last school year at all. It's a blur.
And there is so much more to tell. But that is the basic story of the "incident"...