Ready...Set?

December 5, 2008

This morning I awake grateful that I don’t have to make the three treks a night to the bathroom like I did when I was pregnant. That my bladder does not shriek at me every 5 minutes. Weird. I’ve been enjoying the luxury of not having to take bathroom breaks in the middle of the night for 2 months now. For some reason pregnant life has been coming back to me at odd moments. Yesterday a wave of nausea descended on me after yoga and I gagged just like the superfun happy days in preg-land. No way, I thought, it would have to be an immaculate conception because Mr. Crud and I are playing it safe these days.

“I’m not ready,” I say.

“Me neither.” He says.

“If I got pregnant, I’d have to get an abortion, I guess.”

Mr. Crud looks at me with furrowed brow.

“Kidding.”

Still, although my body has given me the go-ahead in the form of regular periods and bountiful cervical fluid (nice image, I know), my brain is still picking over such small details as will it fucking take next time? Can I handle another miscarriage? Another ultrasound of doom? Another abortion?

Yes, technically the procedure I’ve had is an abortion even though the critter they were taking out was no longer alive. In all the swirling debate about abortion rights—which I am more firmly in favor of than ever before due to my pregnancy experience—I wonder if the debate applies to me. Would the pro-lifers want me to keep lugging around a dead embryo until nature took its course and I had myself a nice, old-fashioned miscarriage? Would they endorse endangering my life and reproductive future in the name of making sure this was what their g-d wanted? Maybe not. Maybe I underestimate their compassion, their reasonableness. But if they can go hysterical about partial birth abortion—a procedure that does not medically exist—then I allow myself some hysteria in the opposite direction.

In all the literature I’ve read about miscarriage nobody ever speaks of the physical aftereffects. It is well-known that women’s bodies change after the birth of a child. My body had changed too even though my microscopic ones were never born. Specifically in the pooping arena.

(WARNING—if you are not a fan of poop talk or butts or hemorrhoids, perhaps call it a day on this blog post. Thanks for reading!)

Before my pregnancies, I took pride, private pride albeit but pride nonetheless, in my pooping prowess. I was a twice-a-day crapper and my BM-s were smooth and required minimal clean-up. Two wipes max, bitches. Pretty sweet. Thanks be to yoga and Dave’s Killer Blues bread.

During both pregnancies, the poop train slowed to a crawl. Constipation. Shits that vexed even the most powerful flushes and made me weep in pain. I remembered how when I was a kid, I’d pretend that I was giving birth when taking a particularly painful crap. My crush of the moment, Ralph Macchio for instance, would be my birth partner, chanting, “Breathe, breathe, you can do it, babe,” while I grunted and clawed at my thighs. Splash. Ahhh…another poo baby comes into the world. A precious moment indeed. But such heavy-duty stools take a toll on an asshole. Hemorrhoids flared. I no longer could skip to my loo without experiencing a minor sense of dread, a longing for the days of easy crapping.

After MC#1 and a month-long period of not being able to push with all my might because of the interaction of my D&C with my bowels—they are next door neighbors—things got back to normal. This time, not so lucky. Whenever folks ask how I am doing post-miscarriage, I give them some variation on the “Things have been rough, but I’m still standing” standard. Which is true. In the back of my mind ticks the phrase, “but it’s been hell on my pooper.”I don’t know if this problem is another one of my unique gifts or if other members of the miscarriage club have experienced the change in shitting patterns.

I hear the formerly pregnant—the kind holding swaddled babies in their arms—complain of the weight gain. I hear you, sister. I put on 10 pounds after MC#1, most of it bottles of wine and the snack food section of Trader Joe’s. I’d hoped to lose the extra pounds during pregnancy #2 as my wine consumption halted and snacking urge was greatly diminished by constant nausea. No dice. Maybe it’s my age and the attendant slow down of ye olde metabolisme. Dang.

Ever so slowly I am whittling away the extra poundage. Very slowly. Mostly in the name of fitting into my jean-and-cords uniform. The week after MC#2, my pants squeezed at my still enlarged uterus. Over time and many sweaty yoga sessions, the pressure has lessened. I wouldn’t have minded the weight gain so much if I had a squirming bundle of joy to show for it.

Do not quote me on that should I finally have a squirming bundle of joy and complain about my weight. I might be running on 1 hour sleep and come out swinging.