I plunk my ass in a chair next to an unassuming twenty-something hipster type. The writing workshop I’ve been waiting for with bated breath is finally here. Lynda Barry live, breathing, to be in front of me in mere minutes. The vibe is mellow. Mainly 30-something and older women ready to get our writing groove on with a few bespectacled fellows to keep things diverse. I feel more like myself today than I have in ages. I’m still adjusting to the post-miscarriage me and coming to terms with the fact that this experience has changed me in ways that I didn’t expect. Who knew that miscarriages would turn saying a simple sentence, a simple answer to “How’s it going? What’s been up with you all?” into a scramble for words. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to walk around laying miscarriage bummers on all my friends.
The pregnant woman sits down behind me. The matronly woman beside her breaks my concentration on my Pelecanos paperback, the leftover easy reader from jury duty earlier in the week that I brought to keep me company in the quiet moments between writing.
“So when’s the big day?” The woman asks from the table behing me.
“Any day now. I am so ready for Audrey to get here.” Her voice is sharp and nasally like Courtney Love.
“Audrey’s a pretty name.” The woman coos.
Of all the places I could sit in this room of 50 seats, I end up in front of the pregnant woman. Fucking great.
“Yeah, I was going to wait until I met her, but then I realized that I’d already been getting to know her. She’s an Audrey,” Courtney says.
I resist the urge to turn around and take her and her swollen belly in for a moment. Then I can’t resist. I steal a glimpse over my shoulder. The picture I have in my head of Courtney is not far off from the reality: late 20s, round, protruding belly (you can’t get anything past me), dyed black hair in crooked pigtails, wearing slouchy jeans and a faded black band tee. I give myself a pep talk. You cannot dislike women because they are pregnant, because they speak about their pregnancy like the majority of women who’ve never stared down the barrel of a bad ultrasound.
But I sure can dislike somebody for raising her hand to read aloud at every freaking opportunity.
This writing workshop is unique in that the class is instructed to keep our heads down, “working on our spiral” while people read from their assignments. As we doodle spirals and the alphabet, the teacher, Lynda Barry, goes around the room to call on people who have their hands raised and want to read. As you may have noticed, I have a definite sense of how things should be done. I have unspoken rules. I’m a bit of a Larry David without the clit to act on my code beyond a disappointed look or mutter. The same goes doubly true for writing workshops. The first day I (arbitrarily) decide that reading 1-3 times per day is acceptable. You have to give the other folks a chance. You have to keep some of your writing for yourself.
Courtney does not respect my code of the Lynda Barry writing workshop. She stomps all over it by not only reading every time, but raising her hand so fast that she is the first reader most times.
Before Mr. Crud dropped me off at the workshop, he spaketh these wise words, “Don’t be so quick to find a bete noir. Maybe try not looking for one at all.”
I snorted. “Yeah right. I mean, I’ll do my best.”
My best didn’t last very long.
That night I gave Mr. Crud the news. “I couldn’t do it. I have a bete noir.”
“Oh dingles.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But she read every time. And she talked about her pregnancy in that fake-complaining-bragging way.”
I reassure myself that it’s not the pregnancy that is bugging me so much as the breach in writing workshop etiquette. I want to look around and see if anyone else is annoyed, if any other eyes dart up from being bent over our spiral doodles, but fear attracting the attention and ire of my idol. Don’t be such a jerk, I say to myself.
Ahem, loving kindness anyone?
Day 2 begins with a group sing-a-long to the Underpants Gnomes theme song. Promising to say the least. I am in full-on brain crush mode for all things Lynda Barry. I scribble words that I hope will evoke the anecdotes and jokes she tells. Words to seed my retelling of the workshop to Mr. Crud later that day.
Our second assignment is to write something inspired by the word “Shock.” My first image is the darkened ultrasound room. Ah jeez, I chide myself, can we let that one be for a day? I have written recently and extensively on my close encounters with miscarriage shock. I write about something else.
After the requisite 8 minutes of writing, we bow our heads and begin our spirals. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the next reader and quickly look back to my spiral. She reads haltingly of the day that she learned she was pregnant and excitedly told her husband. Her voice grows quieter as she navigates the words, pausing to sniff back tears. I feel my eyes growing full. Oh no oh no oh no. I wanted to escape miscarriage for this weekend, for these precious 6 hours, but there is nowhere to run.
The woman takes a deep breath and reads the final sentence of the piece, her husband’s reaction to her pregnancy announcement. “Don’t get too excited. Sometimes these things don’t stick.” She breaks down into sobs. I want to run and sling an arm around her slight shoulders. “Did it take?” I want to ask her. Did it?
Tears are not uncommon during the course of the workshop. Men and women push back against the waters churning within. My turn comes during the lunch break. Lynda is signing books. I feel like a dope for forgetting my books. I’m not big on book signings. They feel weird to me. The purpose of the book signing is more a ruse to facilitate contact with the writer. Silly me, I have forgotten my ruse. Courtney plops down next to Lynda and inserts herself into every conversation Lynda has with the workshop participants lined up to get books signed.
“Audrey is totally going to read all your books,” she says.
“Do I sign it to you or Audrey?” Lynda asks.
Across the room I turn back to my PB & J and fume. It’s always the loud girls who command the attention of the writers I love. Likely because the writers are awkward and quiet like me and can relax into the feeling of not having to make conversation.
The woman who read her “Shock” piece sits a few tables over from me, picking at a bowl of noodles. Like me she is eavesdropping on Lynda and the booksignees. Her shoulders are stiff, her face closed and tight. Her lips are a thin lipsticked red line. When I look at her eyes I have to look away, the intensity of the sadness is so strong. I may cry if I look at her too long. Did it take? I still want to ask. Did it?
I crumple my napkin. Lynda is rubbing Courtney’s belly and kissing it. “For Audrey,” she says joyously.
Jealousy flashes. In different circumstances, Courtney and I might be bonding right now. I imagine our conversation.
“Yeah, I’m about 5 months along,” I would have said had Dewey lived.
“Oh girl, you are in for some fun.”
Sure, we wouldn’t have become best pals or anything but we could have had a pregnant lady bonding moment.
“I call Audrey my parasite,” Courtney says in real life. “My sweet little parasite.”
“Oooo, I LOVE parasites,” Lynda says.
That does it. I shoot out of my seat and bump into desks and chairs, but thankfully not any of the people in line on my way out the door. I walk the halls of the Convention Center and settle in a spot away from the hubbub of Wordstock and the 2008 Holiday Food and Gift Festival. My longing for my own parasite almost knocks me over. I want to break workshop rule #1 and talk to Shock Reader about her pregnancy. Did it take? Me neither.
I collect myself and return to the room for 2 more hours of writing exercises. Lynda gives us another word. We write. We spiral. Courtney’s voice sounds first.
She tells the story of the last time she saw Audrey’s father: He is in love with another woman, he doesn’t even want to know when Audrey is born. Courtney has shed her tough girl voice and breaks down into sobs. Still I feel hard towards her. On my spiral sheet I write “Y CANT U B KIND?”
Why indeed.
After the workshop Mr. Crud says, “You look happy. Really happy. I’m so glad.”
I feel happy too. A whole weekend of doing what I love with one of my favorite writers has put a spring in my step. I am exhausted and welcome the bed’s embrace.
That night I dream that I am getting an ultrasound after my D and C.
“The baby isn’t developing but it’s still alive,” the doctor says.
“How can that be?” I ask, upset that the D and C didn’t get everything.
The doctor shrugs his shoulders. My dream spirals into images of waiting rooms and the fluttering heartbeat on the ultrasound screen.
The symbolism is too heavy for even me to miss. My babies are still alive even if they aren’t developing, even if they are discarded cells in a biohazard garbage bag. I carry the weight of their absence. My embryos, my parasites.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Just Who the Hell Are You?
While we wait for my mom’s sandwich to be prepared at the deli counter, we flip through baby gear in the gift section conveniently located near the counter. Mom is buying a travel sandwich for the long haul across the country tomorrow. Earlier she was filling up on cute onesies and books for her granddaughter—and my niece—Lyla.
“Isn’t that precious?” She says as I hold up baby t-shirts with pictures of gnomes, owls, and flowers on them.
“So cute,” I say.
Although I am not beyond feeling weird and slightly out-of-place in baby stores, I make myself face them and let the chips fall where they may. I try to remember how it felt to enter baby stores when I was a new aunt, thrilled to shower the first baby in the family with presents. It felt weird then too, but a different weird. Back then, a question mark hovered above my head as I browsed through tiny pants and striped hats. Will I ever have a baby? Now the question mark joins with an exclamation point. Will I ever have a fucking baby?!?
Near the deli counter, Mom and I coo over the cute offerings.
“I think I’ve gotten her enough already,” my mom says as she attempts to resist the ghome onesie.
A fifty-ish woman of the aging urban hippie variety approaches us, holding a card. “Excuse me, are you a new mother?” She asks me.
I shake my head.
“Are either of you mothers?”
I point to my mom. “She is.”
“I’m her mother.” My mom squeezes my arm.
“Can I get your advice on something?” The woman asks.
A friend of hers is recently pregnant. She is hunting for the right card. She pulls her hand back to reveal the one in her hand. A fat baby with “Alive” printed on its diaper and a mushroom plopped on its head stretches its limbs. It was exactly the sort of card that I would have loved to receive. Strange but joyful.
“So, what do you think? Is this a good card?” She asks.
“I like it,” I say. “It’s weird for sure, but good-weird.”
She holds the card up to my mom. “You’re a mother. What do YOU think? Too weird?”
I don’t exactly reel from her segregation of the two of us into mother and non-mother camps. I steel myself as I have been doing all weekend. I wanted my mom’s visit to be all silly family stories and laughter and shopping for shoes and baby stuff for Lyla. Whenever miscarriage threatens to intrude on our weekend together I grit my teeth and mutter some seemingly emotionally present thing like, “There are ups and downs, but we’re good.”
At Lauro on Friday for Mom’s birthday dinner, I remained seated throughout the entire dinner although my bladder threatened to burst. The one server, our favorite server, who we told about the pregnancy—more accurately she dragged it out of me when she didn’t believe my blithe comment that I drank cranberry juice instead of a martini due to “doctor’s orders”--is working.
As she zips by our table, I conjure an awkward conversation about how she really should not have pressed me about the cranberry juice.
“Why couldn’t you have chalked it up to some sort of cleanse?” I want to ask.
I drink my martini in salty slurps. Does she see me? Has she put the pieces of the puzzle together? Whatever happens, I pray she doesn’t throw me a pitying looks. I’ve had my lifetime fill of pitying looks.
I don’t want to let my mother into this mine-laden wasteland of undeveloped fetuses and tears. The misery in her voice when I told her of the first miscarriage haunts me still. I can only imagine how hard it is to witness your children suffer. Maybe this is my rationalization for my temporary denial. Maybe I really am my mother’s child and am not as comfortable expressing my emotions as I’m always claiming. At least not with her.
My mom considers the card in Aging Hippie Woman’s hand, casting a sideways glance at her for her disregard of my childless opinion.
“It’s cute,” she says.
“Oh, but it’s so early. Maybe I shouldn’t.” The woman says. “You know—“
Her trailing off voice contains the sum of my pregnancy experience. I am a boogeywoman. All the “you know” happened to me.
“That’s always a danger,” I say, forcing my way back into the conversation.
My mom rubs my back quickly, a band-aid swipe for all the “you know.”
“Well, you could always get it now and then keep it for a few months,” Mom says.
“That’s what I’m going to do,” the woman smiles. “Sorry for bothering you. Thanks.”
She walks away with her card. I lead us out of the baby stuff aisle and pick up a box of cute dog stationary before Mom can say anything about the interaction. “Isn’t this adorable?”
Only cute can save us now.
“Isn’t that precious?” She says as I hold up baby t-shirts with pictures of gnomes, owls, and flowers on them.
“So cute,” I say.
Although I am not beyond feeling weird and slightly out-of-place in baby stores, I make myself face them and let the chips fall where they may. I try to remember how it felt to enter baby stores when I was a new aunt, thrilled to shower the first baby in the family with presents. It felt weird then too, but a different weird. Back then, a question mark hovered above my head as I browsed through tiny pants and striped hats. Will I ever have a baby? Now the question mark joins with an exclamation point. Will I ever have a fucking baby?!?
Near the deli counter, Mom and I coo over the cute offerings.
“I think I’ve gotten her enough already,” my mom says as she attempts to resist the ghome onesie.
A fifty-ish woman of the aging urban hippie variety approaches us, holding a card. “Excuse me, are you a new mother?” She asks me.
I shake my head.
“Are either of you mothers?”
I point to my mom. “She is.”
“I’m her mother.” My mom squeezes my arm.
“Can I get your advice on something?” The woman asks.
A friend of hers is recently pregnant. She is hunting for the right card. She pulls her hand back to reveal the one in her hand. A fat baby with “Alive” printed on its diaper and a mushroom plopped on its head stretches its limbs. It was exactly the sort of card that I would have loved to receive. Strange but joyful.
“So, what do you think? Is this a good card?” She asks.
“I like it,” I say. “It’s weird for sure, but good-weird.”
She holds the card up to my mom. “You’re a mother. What do YOU think? Too weird?”
I don’t exactly reel from her segregation of the two of us into mother and non-mother camps. I steel myself as I have been doing all weekend. I wanted my mom’s visit to be all silly family stories and laughter and shopping for shoes and baby stuff for Lyla. Whenever miscarriage threatens to intrude on our weekend together I grit my teeth and mutter some seemingly emotionally present thing like, “There are ups and downs, but we’re good.”
At Lauro on Friday for Mom’s birthday dinner, I remained seated throughout the entire dinner although my bladder threatened to burst. The one server, our favorite server, who we told about the pregnancy—more accurately she dragged it out of me when she didn’t believe my blithe comment that I drank cranberry juice instead of a martini due to “doctor’s orders”--is working.
As she zips by our table, I conjure an awkward conversation about how she really should not have pressed me about the cranberry juice.
“Why couldn’t you have chalked it up to some sort of cleanse?” I want to ask.
I drink my martini in salty slurps. Does she see me? Has she put the pieces of the puzzle together? Whatever happens, I pray she doesn’t throw me a pitying looks. I’ve had my lifetime fill of pitying looks.
I don’t want to let my mother into this mine-laden wasteland of undeveloped fetuses and tears. The misery in her voice when I told her of the first miscarriage haunts me still. I can only imagine how hard it is to witness your children suffer. Maybe this is my rationalization for my temporary denial. Maybe I really am my mother’s child and am not as comfortable expressing my emotions as I’m always claiming. At least not with her.
My mom considers the card in Aging Hippie Woman’s hand, casting a sideways glance at her for her disregard of my childless opinion.
“It’s cute,” she says.
“Oh, but it’s so early. Maybe I shouldn’t.” The woman says. “You know—“
Her trailing off voice contains the sum of my pregnancy experience. I am a boogeywoman. All the “you know” happened to me.
“That’s always a danger,” I say, forcing my way back into the conversation.
My mom rubs my back quickly, a band-aid swipe for all the “you know.”
“Well, you could always get it now and then keep it for a few months,” Mom says.
“That’s what I’m going to do,” the woman smiles. “Sorry for bothering you. Thanks.”
She walks away with her card. I lead us out of the baby stuff aisle and pick up a box of cute dog stationary before Mom can say anything about the interaction. “Isn’t this adorable?”
Only cute can save us now.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Due
The due date for Primo was October 19, 2008. I remember finding it out via the Fertility Friend.com due date calculator. My first thought: that baby better not be born on my birthday! Then, oh sweet, our kiddo will be an October baby. One of a fine breed if you ask me. I wrote “Due Date!!!!” on my desk calendar and etched the number in my mind. October 19. Of course, after the first ultrasound of doom, the date took on a confused character. I scribbled out my exclamation points in my desk calendar, but wiping it from the brain proves more difficult. I had plans to do something special in honor of Primo on the 19th.
“Like go out for dinner?” Mr. Crud said, knowing that I am wont to mark any special date, positive or negative, with a dirty martini (so convenient how you can use drinking for celebrations or as an emotional crutch) and a plate of fried calamari and Piri Piri sauce at Lauro.
“Maybe. Or light a candle or something.” I said.
Mr. Crud and I intend to mark the loss of both our babies-to-be-that-never-were in some way, but haven’t stumbled on something that feels organic, that feels like us. Mr. Crud’s cousin remembered her first pregnancy loss by saying a prayer then releasing an apple into the river, waving good-bye as it floated away. I loved that image. We considered making a paper boat, the S.S. Primo, and sending it off into the Columbia during a visit to Astoria a month after MC #1, but it was too soon and we wanted a weekend away from thinking about the miscarriage after being immersed in it for so long.
On lazy Saturday mornings, the issue of how to remember Primo, and now Dewey, floats to the surface during our drowsy chats. We remain unable to commit. Probably on some level, reluctant to say good-bye, to invite that overwhelming sadness back in even as it runs strong through our veins.
Friday night I met up with my yoga buddy, Mirjana, to celebrate her upcoming trip to India to study yoga with the grandson of the guru of our style of yoga. Over glasses of rose, I lost track of Primo’s upcoming due date. My tongue loosened after a half of a bottle, I attempted to explain the difficulty of Miscarriage World, how—as an awesome reader and friend of crud pointed out—language is inadequate to talk about miscarriage. Is there a word for the shitty swamp that envelopes me whenever I read a Facebook status update about a friend’s excitement over her pregnancy? I love my friends. I am glad to the depths of my heart and soul that most have not been privy to the sadness of infertility or pregnancy loss. Still, I feel left out, wistful. When I found out about my second pregnancy I was so excited to be able to share my symptoms, joy, fear with my pregnant friends. Now I feel torn. Ripped, in fact, between wanting to be there with them and share in their experiences and wanting to pretend it isn’t happening, that I am not THAT friend, the unlucky one with the clingy uterus and failed eggs.
Of course I am far from alone. I list the names of the other women who have been through this, who are going through this in their own Miscarriage World sublets. I whisper their names when I see that another old friend is pregnant. A new form of affirmation to replace the twice failed “My baby is healthy and safe” that I once repeated daily after my yoga practice.
As we stumbled into the cool fall night, Mirjana told me that she was here for me, that she didn’t know what to say, but that she was here to listen and witness.
“That is totally enough,” I said.
On the up side, nobody has told me that this loss was “meant to be.” In part this is due to the fact that I haven’t shared the news with any of the past meant-to-be-ers. Meant-to-be speak is now an automatic disqualification. “It was G-d’s way” will also get you thrown out of the exclusive club of Crud pregnancy updates. Poor you.
All weekend I felt the loss bubbling beneath the surface. During my massage, tears sprung to my eyes. And then the dam broke.
Saturday night Mr. Crud and I went to a play courtesy of a coolio actor coworker who just happens to be part of the hot theatre company in town. Through a perfect storm of bad timing moments, I ended up in the bathroom when the doors closed and the performance began. Oblivious to this fact, I walked back to the door where I had entered the theatre, which also happened to be the door close to the stage. I pulled on the handle. A blonde woman flew from behind the folding table that served as the box office. She pushed the door shut, hissing, “What are you doing?”
I felt like I had been punched. “I thought the play started at 8:00,” I said.
“No! 7:30.”
“Oh my G-d, I’m so sorry,” I said and skulked away, tears of shame burning my eyeballs. Guess I’ll be spending my night sobbing in the bathroom, I thought. At least until intermission.
The coolio actor coworker came up behind you. “It’s okay. She thought you were sneaking in. It’s fine. I’ll just let you in here.” He marched me up to the back entrance, opened the door, and I slipped down the aisle, taking my seat a minute into the play (or so I was assured by Mr. Crud, “You didn’t miss anything.”).
Around me people laughed at the brilliant dark comedy happening two rows in front of my hunched form. Try as I might to dam the tide, the tears flowed freely. I did my best to keep my gusher to myself. I waited for the big laughs to sniffle. I licked the snot that got away off the top of my lip. I dabbed my tears with my shawl. All in all, Mr. Crud rated my performance at pretending not to be totally weeping during a play to be top shelf. “I barely noticed,” he said.
The more I thought about the fact that I was crying my eyes out during a comedy, that the actors on stage might be able to see my tear-stained face, or catch a snippet of my sniffles made the tears fall even harder. I am an inappropriate weeper. It’s a blessing and a curse depending on the moment. A blessing because in theory I am letting the emotional rivers flow, letting go in a physical way. After a jag, I feel tired but clean. A curse because it can be damn embarrassing. Crying in front of a class full of people has happened at pretty much every age in my educational career. Not to mention the inevitable moment when I get all bubbly-eyed in front of my boss, which has happened with every boss I’ve ever had. Some roll with it better than others. Most are willing to trade my competence for a few uncomfortable moments. It doesn’t happen every time something doesn’t go my way but when I’m experiencing undercurrents of emotional craziness the tears are close to the surface. Pinch me and I bleed.
After intermission I stemmed the teary tide. Then came the late thirties female lead yelled, “I want a baby!” and a few more dribbled out.
Mr. Crud and I blasted out of the theater as soon as the play ended. Had I seen the hisser or my coolio coworker, I would have burst into tears afresh. We escaped without any further damage to my makeup job.
“The way I see it, you weren’t going to get out of there without crying,” Mr. Crud said.
“Good point.”
“I don’t think you were crying because that lady yelled at you,” he said.
We shared a laugh over the play, which though advertised as a comedy was most definitely not a comedy. More accurately it was a relationship drama about people who used comedy to keep from being sucked under by the tragedy.
“I felt very meta. I tried laughing to cover my crying while the characters were masking their own misery by laughing but then everyone ended up miserable.”
Sunday brought more reasons to be sad. A couple of weeks ago one of Mr. Crud’s colleagues committed suicide. She was a beautiful, smart, neato woman of our age. A wife, a mother to a five-year-old and someone I’d casually met at his office functions and the grocery store where we shared a laugh about how she, a feminist academic, was buying her daughter doll toys. Mr. Crud had interviewed her and her husband as part of his thesis research. It seemed totally inconceivable that she was dead and that she had made the decision to die.
Mr. Crud and I attended the memorial service at a retreat center in the Gorge. I was sniffing back tears as soon as I took a seat. Who am I crying for, I wondered. Is this for the tragedy that I saw in all the faces around me or for my own sadness? For Primo who was supposed to be born today? Am I piggybacking on someone else’s funeral? Several times during the shared remembrances, the reading of poems and music I had to restrain myself from breaking into hysterical sobs. Too much, too much, I kept thinking.
After the remembrances we moved outside. The air had turned chilly with a layer of fog resting on the evergreens across the gorge. The husband read a poem and then took a photo of Mr. Crud’s colleague and burned it over a bowl. He looked into her paper eyes and wept. I could only watch him for a second before turning away. Too much, too much. Was the burning cathartic? I had already thrown away the pee stick from Primo but still had an ultrasound photo and pee stick leftover from Dewey. Maybe burning is the way to go. A release.
I can imagine myself years from now pulling open a box filled with the paperwork from my D and C, the ultrasound photo, and other random effluvia of these two doomed pregnancies and crying more tears for my babies-to-be-that-never-were. My ghost children. Every morning I say a prayer for them, I wish them peace and imagine that my father and grandmother are watching over them. I think of the pregnancy loss counselor’s image of the babies-to-be-that-never-were being absorbed into the ocean of the universal consciousness. Maybe it is better to burn and let go than to keep objects to fondle in moments of future sadness.
I’m still figuring it out. And glad that due date #1 has come and gone. I have until April 17 to come up with my miscarried baby mourning system.
“Like go out for dinner?” Mr. Crud said, knowing that I am wont to mark any special date, positive or negative, with a dirty martini (so convenient how you can use drinking for celebrations or as an emotional crutch) and a plate of fried calamari and Piri Piri sauce at Lauro.
“Maybe. Or light a candle or something.” I said.
Mr. Crud and I intend to mark the loss of both our babies-to-be-that-never-were in some way, but haven’t stumbled on something that feels organic, that feels like us. Mr. Crud’s cousin remembered her first pregnancy loss by saying a prayer then releasing an apple into the river, waving good-bye as it floated away. I loved that image. We considered making a paper boat, the S.S. Primo, and sending it off into the Columbia during a visit to Astoria a month after MC #1, but it was too soon and we wanted a weekend away from thinking about the miscarriage after being immersed in it for so long.
On lazy Saturday mornings, the issue of how to remember Primo, and now Dewey, floats to the surface during our drowsy chats. We remain unable to commit. Probably on some level, reluctant to say good-bye, to invite that overwhelming sadness back in even as it runs strong through our veins.
Friday night I met up with my yoga buddy, Mirjana, to celebrate her upcoming trip to India to study yoga with the grandson of the guru of our style of yoga. Over glasses of rose, I lost track of Primo’s upcoming due date. My tongue loosened after a half of a bottle, I attempted to explain the difficulty of Miscarriage World, how—as an awesome reader and friend of crud pointed out—language is inadequate to talk about miscarriage. Is there a word for the shitty swamp that envelopes me whenever I read a Facebook status update about a friend’s excitement over her pregnancy? I love my friends. I am glad to the depths of my heart and soul that most have not been privy to the sadness of infertility or pregnancy loss. Still, I feel left out, wistful. When I found out about my second pregnancy I was so excited to be able to share my symptoms, joy, fear with my pregnant friends. Now I feel torn. Ripped, in fact, between wanting to be there with them and share in their experiences and wanting to pretend it isn’t happening, that I am not THAT friend, the unlucky one with the clingy uterus and failed eggs.
Of course I am far from alone. I list the names of the other women who have been through this, who are going through this in their own Miscarriage World sublets. I whisper their names when I see that another old friend is pregnant. A new form of affirmation to replace the twice failed “My baby is healthy and safe” that I once repeated daily after my yoga practice.
As we stumbled into the cool fall night, Mirjana told me that she was here for me, that she didn’t know what to say, but that she was here to listen and witness.
“That is totally enough,” I said.
On the up side, nobody has told me that this loss was “meant to be.” In part this is due to the fact that I haven’t shared the news with any of the past meant-to-be-ers. Meant-to-be speak is now an automatic disqualification. “It was G-d’s way” will also get you thrown out of the exclusive club of Crud pregnancy updates. Poor you.
All weekend I felt the loss bubbling beneath the surface. During my massage, tears sprung to my eyes. And then the dam broke.
Saturday night Mr. Crud and I went to a play courtesy of a coolio actor coworker who just happens to be part of the hot theatre company in town. Through a perfect storm of bad timing moments, I ended up in the bathroom when the doors closed and the performance began. Oblivious to this fact, I walked back to the door where I had entered the theatre, which also happened to be the door close to the stage. I pulled on the handle. A blonde woman flew from behind the folding table that served as the box office. She pushed the door shut, hissing, “What are you doing?”
I felt like I had been punched. “I thought the play started at 8:00,” I said.
“No! 7:30.”
“Oh my G-d, I’m so sorry,” I said and skulked away, tears of shame burning my eyeballs. Guess I’ll be spending my night sobbing in the bathroom, I thought. At least until intermission.
The coolio actor coworker came up behind you. “It’s okay. She thought you were sneaking in. It’s fine. I’ll just let you in here.” He marched me up to the back entrance, opened the door, and I slipped down the aisle, taking my seat a minute into the play (or so I was assured by Mr. Crud, “You didn’t miss anything.”).
Around me people laughed at the brilliant dark comedy happening two rows in front of my hunched form. Try as I might to dam the tide, the tears flowed freely. I did my best to keep my gusher to myself. I waited for the big laughs to sniffle. I licked the snot that got away off the top of my lip. I dabbed my tears with my shawl. All in all, Mr. Crud rated my performance at pretending not to be totally weeping during a play to be top shelf. “I barely noticed,” he said.
The more I thought about the fact that I was crying my eyes out during a comedy, that the actors on stage might be able to see my tear-stained face, or catch a snippet of my sniffles made the tears fall even harder. I am an inappropriate weeper. It’s a blessing and a curse depending on the moment. A blessing because in theory I am letting the emotional rivers flow, letting go in a physical way. After a jag, I feel tired but clean. A curse because it can be damn embarrassing. Crying in front of a class full of people has happened at pretty much every age in my educational career. Not to mention the inevitable moment when I get all bubbly-eyed in front of my boss, which has happened with every boss I’ve ever had. Some roll with it better than others. Most are willing to trade my competence for a few uncomfortable moments. It doesn’t happen every time something doesn’t go my way but when I’m experiencing undercurrents of emotional craziness the tears are close to the surface. Pinch me and I bleed.
After intermission I stemmed the teary tide. Then came the late thirties female lead yelled, “I want a baby!” and a few more dribbled out.
Mr. Crud and I blasted out of the theater as soon as the play ended. Had I seen the hisser or my coolio coworker, I would have burst into tears afresh. We escaped without any further damage to my makeup job.
“The way I see it, you weren’t going to get out of there without crying,” Mr. Crud said.
“Good point.”
“I don’t think you were crying because that lady yelled at you,” he said.
We shared a laugh over the play, which though advertised as a comedy was most definitely not a comedy. More accurately it was a relationship drama about people who used comedy to keep from being sucked under by the tragedy.
“I felt very meta. I tried laughing to cover my crying while the characters were masking their own misery by laughing but then everyone ended up miserable.”
Sunday brought more reasons to be sad. A couple of weeks ago one of Mr. Crud’s colleagues committed suicide. She was a beautiful, smart, neato woman of our age. A wife, a mother to a five-year-old and someone I’d casually met at his office functions and the grocery store where we shared a laugh about how she, a feminist academic, was buying her daughter doll toys. Mr. Crud had interviewed her and her husband as part of his thesis research. It seemed totally inconceivable that she was dead and that she had made the decision to die.
Mr. Crud and I attended the memorial service at a retreat center in the Gorge. I was sniffing back tears as soon as I took a seat. Who am I crying for, I wondered. Is this for the tragedy that I saw in all the faces around me or for my own sadness? For Primo who was supposed to be born today? Am I piggybacking on someone else’s funeral? Several times during the shared remembrances, the reading of poems and music I had to restrain myself from breaking into hysterical sobs. Too much, too much, I kept thinking.
After the remembrances we moved outside. The air had turned chilly with a layer of fog resting on the evergreens across the gorge. The husband read a poem and then took a photo of Mr. Crud’s colleague and burned it over a bowl. He looked into her paper eyes and wept. I could only watch him for a second before turning away. Too much, too much. Was the burning cathartic? I had already thrown away the pee stick from Primo but still had an ultrasound photo and pee stick leftover from Dewey. Maybe burning is the way to go. A release.
I can imagine myself years from now pulling open a box filled with the paperwork from my D and C, the ultrasound photo, and other random effluvia of these two doomed pregnancies and crying more tears for my babies-to-be-that-never-were. My ghost children. Every morning I say a prayer for them, I wish them peace and imagine that my father and grandmother are watching over them. I think of the pregnancy loss counselor’s image of the babies-to-be-that-never-were being absorbed into the ocean of the universal consciousness. Maybe it is better to burn and let go than to keep objects to fondle in moments of future sadness.
I’m still figuring it out. And glad that due date #1 has come and gone. I have until April 17 to come up with my miscarried baby mourning system.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Mystery Solved
I pick up the messages on my work voicemail. Message #1 is from Sara, genetic counselor. We have been playing phone tag despite my initial plan to not call her back right away.
“What? What does ‘you’ll call her back next week’ mean?” Mr. Crud asked me as we lay in bed last night.
“Next week is what it means.” I pulled the covers tighter around my chin.
“Not Monday?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right before bed,” I said.
The truth was that I had grown comfortable in the post-D and C world of not knowing. What if there was an answer? What if was my fault?
I called her back. She called me back on two different lines. Then she called Mr. Crud at home. The second voicemail message was from him.
“Good news, uh, sorta. The tests found a chromosomal abnormality so this miscarriage is unrelated to the first one.”
Yay? Chromosome 23 is the culprit. The miscarriage was destined to happen from the moment of conception. Embryos with this abnormality don’t make it past 11 weeks so there wasn’t any risk of Down’s Syndrome or the other feared conditions listed in Sara’s notebook. The chance of this happening was 1 in 149. Should we play the lottery?
Mr. Crud’s message continues. “Oh, they also found out that you aren’t a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.”
Good news, of course, but I know Mr. Crud is a little bit disappointed. If I had been a carrier then they would have tested him too and all through both pregnancies, Mr. Crud has hungered to be tested for something. When the doctors tell us that only I need a blood draw, Mr. Crud face takes on a momentary “what-about-me” sadness.
His time has come! For the tests that they would like to run on us, to rule out more systematic chromosomal problems, both Mr. Crud and I will have blood drawn. Sara tells us that there is no rush. And I feel no rush to get back on the pregnancy train. I have been thoroughly enjoying dirty martinis, sushi, bean sprout-laden spring rolls, stinky, unpasteurized cheeses of all kinds, and a few cigarettes here and there. The cigarettes bother me the most. During the pregnant days, I liked the feeling that I had stepped off the cancer train. Self-righteousness is among my favorite natural highs and now when I partake of a smoke, I also trade in my well-worn high horse. Alas.
The only times I feel the pregnancy urgency return is when I hear about my friends getting pregnant, mostly through Facebook status updates. When I read that Old High School Friend is hunting for daycare for the twins she’s expecting, the tears well. Or New Adult Friend has learned the sex of her baby, I sigh. I get an email from Old College Friend who says all the right consolations about my miscarriage until I get to the next paragraph…she’s pregnant too. I feel genuinely happy for her.
And sad for me.
Our kids would have been born close together. We could have gone through their stages together, comparing notes on who is smiling, walking, babbling sounds that we swear sound like “Mom.” I mourn the experience of being pregnant with my friends. I mourn unmitigated joy when I read their preg-related status updates and emails. I am happy for them and glad that they have been spared this claustrophobic world of miscarriages. I am also sad for me, for Mr. Crud, for my yoga friend and her 2 miscarriages, for the band friends of Mr. Crud, Liz and Mark and their recent loss, for the woman who used to be my manager at my record store job years ago who found me on Facebook and shared her story of 2 miscarriages in a row. The loss of pregnancy innocence is another death that I revisit even as I had hoped to leave it behind after miscarriage #1.
In a conversation with my brother, he reminds me that fear during pregnancy is just the beginning. The other night my sister-in-law awoke to their child making weird snurfling noises and unable to make eye contact with either parent. They flew into a terrified frenzy that something was WRONG with their daughter. The doctor talked them down and advised them to feed their daughter, which was the trick that brought her back from whatever haze she had fallen into.
“I mean it’s easier because you can see them breathing and know what’s going on with them,” my brother says. “But birth is just the beginning of a-whole-nother world of worry.”
That’s what we have to look forward to?
“What? What does ‘you’ll call her back next week’ mean?” Mr. Crud asked me as we lay in bed last night.
“Next week is what it means.” I pulled the covers tighter around my chin.
“Not Monday?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right before bed,” I said.
The truth was that I had grown comfortable in the post-D and C world of not knowing. What if there was an answer? What if was my fault?
I called her back. She called me back on two different lines. Then she called Mr. Crud at home. The second voicemail message was from him.
“Good news, uh, sorta. The tests found a chromosomal abnormality so this miscarriage is unrelated to the first one.”
Yay? Chromosome 23 is the culprit. The miscarriage was destined to happen from the moment of conception. Embryos with this abnormality don’t make it past 11 weeks so there wasn’t any risk of Down’s Syndrome or the other feared conditions listed in Sara’s notebook. The chance of this happening was 1 in 149. Should we play the lottery?
Mr. Crud’s message continues. “Oh, they also found out that you aren’t a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.”
Good news, of course, but I know Mr. Crud is a little bit disappointed. If I had been a carrier then they would have tested him too and all through both pregnancies, Mr. Crud has hungered to be tested for something. When the doctors tell us that only I need a blood draw, Mr. Crud face takes on a momentary “what-about-me” sadness.
His time has come! For the tests that they would like to run on us, to rule out more systematic chromosomal problems, both Mr. Crud and I will have blood drawn. Sara tells us that there is no rush. And I feel no rush to get back on the pregnancy train. I have been thoroughly enjoying dirty martinis, sushi, bean sprout-laden spring rolls, stinky, unpasteurized cheeses of all kinds, and a few cigarettes here and there. The cigarettes bother me the most. During the pregnant days, I liked the feeling that I had stepped off the cancer train. Self-righteousness is among my favorite natural highs and now when I partake of a smoke, I also trade in my well-worn high horse. Alas.
The only times I feel the pregnancy urgency return is when I hear about my friends getting pregnant, mostly through Facebook status updates. When I read that Old High School Friend is hunting for daycare for the twins she’s expecting, the tears well. Or New Adult Friend has learned the sex of her baby, I sigh. I get an email from Old College Friend who says all the right consolations about my miscarriage until I get to the next paragraph…she’s pregnant too. I feel genuinely happy for her.
And sad for me.
Our kids would have been born close together. We could have gone through their stages together, comparing notes on who is smiling, walking, babbling sounds that we swear sound like “Mom.” I mourn the experience of being pregnant with my friends. I mourn unmitigated joy when I read their preg-related status updates and emails. I am happy for them and glad that they have been spared this claustrophobic world of miscarriages. I am also sad for me, for Mr. Crud, for my yoga friend and her 2 miscarriages, for the band friends of Mr. Crud, Liz and Mark and their recent loss, for the woman who used to be my manager at my record store job years ago who found me on Facebook and shared her story of 2 miscarriages in a row. The loss of pregnancy innocence is another death that I revisit even as I had hoped to leave it behind after miscarriage #1.
In a conversation with my brother, he reminds me that fear during pregnancy is just the beginning. The other night my sister-in-law awoke to their child making weird snurfling noises and unable to make eye contact with either parent. They flew into a terrified frenzy that something was WRONG with their daughter. The doctor talked them down and advised them to feed their daughter, which was the trick that brought her back from whatever haze she had fallen into.
“I mean it’s easier because you can see them breathing and know what’s going on with them,” my brother says. “But birth is just the beginning of a-whole-nother world of worry.”
That’s what we have to look forward to?
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
This About Sums Things Up
Thanks to Julie for directing me to this great article about Miscarriage World in the NY Times.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
There Will Be Blood Clots
Remind me not to schedule my next genetic counseling and ultrasound appointment on any sort of major or minor holiday. The first ultrasound of doom came April Fool’s Day. The second came last Tuesday on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. L’shana tova my ass.
Our second trip to the OHSU Center for Health and Healing or as we are now calling it the Center for Disappointment and Sadness begins with enough promise. The sun bounces off the windows of the Streetcar that take us to our appointment. Sara, our genetic counselor, greets us with smiles and congratulations, also a cute new blonde hair color. I say a silent vow to get my highlights re-highlighted as soon as possible. The trimester of safety and sickness concludes in one week. I can’t wait to check out the dimensions of the 2nd trimester, the best trimester. Pregnancy only means nausea, exhaustion, and sore boobs to me at this point.
“It must be strange coming back here,” Sara says, gesturing for us to sit down in the chairs where 6 months ago we had cried and learned what the terms “molar pregnancy” and “missed abortion” meant. Sara gave us tissues and cups of water to take on our return trip to work that day. I remember the details of the room as if I had been here yesterday—the brushed metal mini-refrigerator, the stacks of tissue boxes on metal shelves, the notebook with graphic representations of genes and lists of occurrences of Down Syndrome by maternal age sprawled on the table.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s kind of traumatic.” I laugh nervously and sniff away tears.
She takes a seat across from us. “We have no reason to believe that what happened before will happen again.” We nod solemnly.
Briefly we review the tutorial of sequential screening that she had given us 6 months ago. We have no questions. She sends us off to kill time before the ultrasound as the technician is running almost an hour behind schedule.
“You’d think after the last time they wouldn’t make us wait,” I say as we step into the elevator.
“At least we can leave.”
Mr. Crud and I step into the cool fall afternoon. “Those 15 minutes cost us $204,” I say.
“Really?”
“Genetic counseling isn’t covered for some reason even though it seems like it would cost the insurance company less to do non-invasive testing first.”
“Fucked up,” Mr. Crud says.
We walk to a private beach on the South Waterfront. Signs warning us of private property abound but residents are scarce. The slowdown in condo sales has been especially cruel to this burgeoning area. We spy a group of yarmulke-topped heads around a table in one of the glass window condo boxes.
“L’shana tova?” I say and look to Mr. Crud for affirmation.
“That’s right.”
Slowly but surely I am learning my Jewish holiday greetings. I am all over Hanukkah and working on my Rosh Hashanah and Passover. Haven’t quite made it to Yom Kippur but I know that I’m supposed to be somber and wish folks an easy fast.
We find a bench and share a blueberry muffin lest the ever-lurking nausea get me in its grips during a key moment of our appointment. This could me my last hour as a pregnant woman, I think. Despite my uneasy détente with the worried voices in my head that this pregnancy isn’t going as well as everyone believes, I still can’t help planning for a bad outcome. I did the same before our first ultrasound at 8 weeks, writing out the speech I’d tell my boss in my head as the doctor smiled and directed our eyes to the fluttering heartbeat on the screen.
Some of the internet boards and well-meaning friends suggest that even allowing such negative thoughts to exist creates a danger to my pregnancy. With all due respect, I think not. My friend Angela had 2 miscarriages between the births of her 2 daughters and she didn’t stop worrying the entire time she was pregnant with her second daughter…which didn’t make her youngest daughter any less real or healthy.
“I barely believed she was real after she had been born,” my friend said, assuring me that my worry was nothing to worry about.
Please people, stop telling pregnant women not to worry, to focus on the positive and implying that worrying is the reason for their miscarriages or infertility. If negative thoughts could end pregnancies, there would be no need for abortion or for women with unwanted pregnancies to worry about ending their pregnancies: “Yeah, I’m knocked up again but I’ll just tell the little fucker to scram and that ought to do the trick.” I can see this opening up a whole new unsavory can of women’s rights worms.
Sometimes I feel like I have to defend my right to feel a little anxious about being pregnant after a miscarriage. For the most part I’ve remained calm and positive although I’ve had moments of fear and worry. I think that being honest about my fears, experiencing them and letting them go is healthier than denying them. Denial leads to a heap of shrill voices that come screaming at me at 3 in the morning, commanding to be heard.
A few minutes before our rescheduled appointment time we head back to the ultrasound office. Here we wait for another 45 minutes as the doctor apologetically explains that the person before us is pregnant with triplets.
“I hope everything is okay,” I said.
Mr. Crud nods.
Finally the doctor ushers us into the room of my nightmares. The framed pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Meryl Streep gaze upon me as I hike down my pants and underwear in preparation for the squirt of jelly on my belly.
Mr. Crud has requested that a doctor sit in on the ultrasound so that if anything is wrong we won’t have the agonizing wait, so that we won’t have to hear the words “I’m not seeing what I’m expecting here. Let me get the doctor” again.
Dr. Toloso is the doctor of the day and he willingly agrees to come along on our second ultrasound voyage. He explains what will be happening, the possible meanings of what they might see, and also reassures us that even if they cannot see well with the stomach cam that the vaginal cam does not automatically mean that we are doomed.
“I know you are very nervous, Katherine. We’ll do this as quickly as possible,” he says with a charming accent.
The technician, Chrissy who is different than the Chris of last time’s ultrasound, pushes the wand around my belly, and presses buttons that emit a beeping sound from the machine. I stare at the ceiling as tears stream down my face. After a few seconds I know. It’s happening again. This is how it happens.
Dr. Toloso tells me that a vaginal ultrasound is necessary. He instructs me to empty my bladder. Numb, I walk across the hall and pee. So distracted am I that I leave the bathroom door wide open and don’t give even the tiniest of shits.
Mr. Crud and I hug before I undress. “He said this doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad,” Mr. Crud says.
The tears keep coming. I take off my pants and stick my feet in the stirrups. Dr. Toloso and Chrissy return. The probe goes in and the wand wiggling and beeping recommence. Dr. Toloso asks questions as he watches the screen:
Are you still experiencing symptoms?
When was your last ultrasound?
Have you experienced any cramping?
The charade is up shortly thereafter. “Katherine, I’m sorry to tell you that things are not going well.”
It appears the newest Peabody incarnation, who I have named Dewey (close to the Italian word for Due, meaning 2), died shortly after the first ultrasound which revealed the heartbeat, around 8 weeks. My clingy uterus is at it again.
“But why didn’t I just have a miscarriage?” I ask Dr. Toloso. “Why didn’t my body get rid of it?”
Next to the whole having a miscarriage thing, this bothers me the most. Why in the fuck does my body not know when the thing it is carrying around inside of it dies? Why must I become a walking casket?
“You would have eventually had a miscarriage,” Dr. Toloso says.
The pregnancy loss counselor who we saw after MC#1 said the same thing. I don’t find it comforting. My uterus does not know when to let go, when to say good-bye to the squatter. My 13-year-old-girl hopeful uterus: If I just keep pretending, maybe it will be true. Sorry, kid. Carl Perry wasn’t secretly falling in love with you during 8th grade gym class and this pregnancy ain’t happening.
Dr. Toloso tells me to get dressed and that he will be back and we can discuss my options. I need no discussion. “I want a D and C with Dr. Bednarek tomorrow morning or as soon as possible.” I know my way around the missed abortion block and the one thing I know for sure is I don’t want this dead embryo floating around inside of my uterus and making me feel tired and nauseous another moment more. Strangely enough, my pregnancy symptoms disappear after I get the news. Suddenly I am wide awake and the nausea vanishes. Great, now my brain is in on it too, tricking me into thinking I’m pregnant with well-placed dry heaves and cravings for cheese.
Dr. Toloso leaves to make the arrangements for abortion #2 as I get dressed. Mr. Crud and I hug and cry. “Why is this happening?” Mr. Crud asks.
“This happens to a lot of people,” I say. This comforts me for about 2 seconds.
Nobody knows why it’s happening. Not Dr. Toloso nor Dr. Bednarek or Dr. Risser. Dr. Toloso offers us tests after we have recovered from this latest chapter of doomed pregnancy. Dr. Bednarek assures us—although I don’t remember as I got so high on Ativan that I saw double—that we will have a child. Dr. Bednarek’s resident reminds me that medically recurrent miscarriages aren’t considered a problem until a woman has three in a row. We may want to reconsider doing the tests at this point, she says. Mr. Crud wants to do the tests. He worries that the miscarriages are somehow his fault. Even though we are assured and reassured that the miscarriages are nobody’s fault, the both of us take the blame. I murmur angry curses at my uterus, my vagina, my still overgrown pregnant boobs. I know that this isn’t helpful but the words slip out. “Go the fuck away,” I say to my boobs as I wrestle them into my too-small bra. “Nobody needs you anymore.”
The D and C goes about the same as the last time although we have traded the large operating-type room for a cramped examination room (for a savings of $1200!). The tall awesome nurse, Lisa, from the last time brings me my drugs and checks on us after the procedure is done. We talk books and again I am frustrated at how I trip over my words under the influence of anti-anxiety meds. She tells me that I am known as the “Cool Boot Woman” around the OHSU Women’s Health Center. Dr. Bednarek rushed out to buy the same pair of turquoise cowboy boots that I wore to my first D and C. Another resident picked up a pair in lime green. Consumer desire grips me. I want lime green! I vow to myself to go on a mission during my days off of work. Glimmering green boots pull me out of the gathering funk…for about 3 seconds.
All maxi-padded up, Mr. Crud and I head home where I wolf down a smoke salmon bagel and spend the rest of the day snoozing on the couch.
I decide to stay home from work the rest of the week. My days are spent checking the maxi pads for overly large blood clots and crying. My boss is awesome, telling me that they’ll survive without me at work even though it is the first week of fall term, arguably the busiest days of the year. Mr. Crud stays home when he can and we fall into each other’s arms at double the rate of our normal hugging schedule.
I bleed.
I bleed some more.
I contemplate my membership in a new sisterhood: the recurrent miscarriage club. After the first miscarriage, I hoped that I would never see the dimensions of this new clubhouse: the “Why me?” wallpaper and red hot anger blasting from the furnace. “Most women only have one miscarriage,” the websites, doctors, and books assured. Most then added a statement about how most women who have more than one miscarriage eventually go on to have a successful pregnancy. How big is eventually? 2 miscarriages? 7? My friend Angela decided that she could have 7 miscarriages before throwing in the childbearing towel. “I saw some statistic that 80% if women who have miscarriages have a successful pregnancy.” I no longer find comfort in statistics. My latest pregnancy had a less than 13% chance of miscarriage. I’m beating the odds. Hooray for special me.
Sunday morning I am awoken by killer cramps that only 2 Vicodin chase away. Do these count as severe cramps? Should I call the doctor? That afternoon I stand up from my fetal position to use the bathroom and a huge clump—though not larger than the egg the pamphlet warns me to look for—passes through me onto the pad. I sit on the toilet and hyperventilate. This is so fucking gross. I want to call Mr. Crud in to share in the gore. It’s almost fascinating. The miracle of death and all that, but I spare him and wrap it up in a plastic grocery bag. I jam it deep into the trashcan. I curse maxi-pad world.
The rest of the day is a blur of bloody pads, cramps, and Mr. Crud bearing mugs of Peppermint tea. I dread returning to work the next day although I don’t feel as tortured by the question of to tell the coworkers or not to tell. I decide against making the grand email announcement that I did last time. One miscarriage is sad; the second one seems careless. My coworkers are great, but I loathe the looks of pity that I received. Most people don’t know dick about miscarriage and my attempts at education must come through sniffles and tears that I don’t have the time or energy to shed this time around.
I email the friends who I had let into the pregnancy world. The sorry-s and why-s come fast and furious. Each kind word brings fresh tears. Even though this sucks harder than almost anything I’ve been through, I am overcome with gratitude for my friends and family and their expressions of kindness: a quiche dinner with Tracy and Ezra while their 8-month-old paddles around the floor; a care package from Dan and Anna with a note that makes me ache to hug them; Dawn and Eric bringing us out of our mourning bubble with a dinner at the Savoy, phone calls and emails and enough love to make me feel lucky instead of unlucky. I play my usual misery game and think of those who are alone, who can’t find comfort with loved ones. So many more suffer more than this on a daily basis.
I get an email from a yoga pal who asks why I’ve been away for a week. I share the news even though I hadn’t told her of my pregnancy. She tells me that she experienced her second miscarriage during the summer. She and her husband found answers at a local fertility clinic. I google immediately.
I feel weird doing all the tests like we are trying too hard for a biological baby. I didn’t think I would be one of those women who would do anything for a baby born of her materials. Mr. Crud and I have already discussed adoption. At first I didn’t think I’d ever want this, but I’m warming to the idea. I think adoption is awesome in theory and I love to see multi-ethnic families roaming the neighborhood. However I never fail to think about the couple’s struggles with infertility or miscarriages. Now I puzzle over their back story. I cringe to think that somebody would do the same to us. (Insert speech to self about how I need to stop caring so much about what other people think.)
For the time being I have no answers. Just an ever-multiplying stable of questions. One thing I know for sure: I really REALLY want a dog now.
Our second trip to the OHSU Center for Health and Healing or as we are now calling it the Center for Disappointment and Sadness begins with enough promise. The sun bounces off the windows of the Streetcar that take us to our appointment. Sara, our genetic counselor, greets us with smiles and congratulations, also a cute new blonde hair color. I say a silent vow to get my highlights re-highlighted as soon as possible. The trimester of safety and sickness concludes in one week. I can’t wait to check out the dimensions of the 2nd trimester, the best trimester. Pregnancy only means nausea, exhaustion, and sore boobs to me at this point.
“It must be strange coming back here,” Sara says, gesturing for us to sit down in the chairs where 6 months ago we had cried and learned what the terms “molar pregnancy” and “missed abortion” meant. Sara gave us tissues and cups of water to take on our return trip to work that day. I remember the details of the room as if I had been here yesterday—the brushed metal mini-refrigerator, the stacks of tissue boxes on metal shelves, the notebook with graphic representations of genes and lists of occurrences of Down Syndrome by maternal age sprawled on the table.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s kind of traumatic.” I laugh nervously and sniff away tears.
She takes a seat across from us. “We have no reason to believe that what happened before will happen again.” We nod solemnly.
Briefly we review the tutorial of sequential screening that she had given us 6 months ago. We have no questions. She sends us off to kill time before the ultrasound as the technician is running almost an hour behind schedule.
“You’d think after the last time they wouldn’t make us wait,” I say as we step into the elevator.
“At least we can leave.”
Mr. Crud and I step into the cool fall afternoon. “Those 15 minutes cost us $204,” I say.
“Really?”
“Genetic counseling isn’t covered for some reason even though it seems like it would cost the insurance company less to do non-invasive testing first.”
“Fucked up,” Mr. Crud says.
We walk to a private beach on the South Waterfront. Signs warning us of private property abound but residents are scarce. The slowdown in condo sales has been especially cruel to this burgeoning area. We spy a group of yarmulke-topped heads around a table in one of the glass window condo boxes.
“L’shana tova?” I say and look to Mr. Crud for affirmation.
“That’s right.”
Slowly but surely I am learning my Jewish holiday greetings. I am all over Hanukkah and working on my Rosh Hashanah and Passover. Haven’t quite made it to Yom Kippur but I know that I’m supposed to be somber and wish folks an easy fast.
We find a bench and share a blueberry muffin lest the ever-lurking nausea get me in its grips during a key moment of our appointment. This could me my last hour as a pregnant woman, I think. Despite my uneasy détente with the worried voices in my head that this pregnancy isn’t going as well as everyone believes, I still can’t help planning for a bad outcome. I did the same before our first ultrasound at 8 weeks, writing out the speech I’d tell my boss in my head as the doctor smiled and directed our eyes to the fluttering heartbeat on the screen.
Some of the internet boards and well-meaning friends suggest that even allowing such negative thoughts to exist creates a danger to my pregnancy. With all due respect, I think not. My friend Angela had 2 miscarriages between the births of her 2 daughters and she didn’t stop worrying the entire time she was pregnant with her second daughter…which didn’t make her youngest daughter any less real or healthy.
“I barely believed she was real after she had been born,” my friend said, assuring me that my worry was nothing to worry about.
Please people, stop telling pregnant women not to worry, to focus on the positive and implying that worrying is the reason for their miscarriages or infertility. If negative thoughts could end pregnancies, there would be no need for abortion or for women with unwanted pregnancies to worry about ending their pregnancies: “Yeah, I’m knocked up again but I’ll just tell the little fucker to scram and that ought to do the trick.” I can see this opening up a whole new unsavory can of women’s rights worms.
Sometimes I feel like I have to defend my right to feel a little anxious about being pregnant after a miscarriage. For the most part I’ve remained calm and positive although I’ve had moments of fear and worry. I think that being honest about my fears, experiencing them and letting them go is healthier than denying them. Denial leads to a heap of shrill voices that come screaming at me at 3 in the morning, commanding to be heard.
A few minutes before our rescheduled appointment time we head back to the ultrasound office. Here we wait for another 45 minutes as the doctor apologetically explains that the person before us is pregnant with triplets.
“I hope everything is okay,” I said.
Mr. Crud nods.
Finally the doctor ushers us into the room of my nightmares. The framed pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Meryl Streep gaze upon me as I hike down my pants and underwear in preparation for the squirt of jelly on my belly.
Mr. Crud has requested that a doctor sit in on the ultrasound so that if anything is wrong we won’t have the agonizing wait, so that we won’t have to hear the words “I’m not seeing what I’m expecting here. Let me get the doctor” again.
Dr. Toloso is the doctor of the day and he willingly agrees to come along on our second ultrasound voyage. He explains what will be happening, the possible meanings of what they might see, and also reassures us that even if they cannot see well with the stomach cam that the vaginal cam does not automatically mean that we are doomed.
“I know you are very nervous, Katherine. We’ll do this as quickly as possible,” he says with a charming accent.
The technician, Chrissy who is different than the Chris of last time’s ultrasound, pushes the wand around my belly, and presses buttons that emit a beeping sound from the machine. I stare at the ceiling as tears stream down my face. After a few seconds I know. It’s happening again. This is how it happens.
Dr. Toloso tells me that a vaginal ultrasound is necessary. He instructs me to empty my bladder. Numb, I walk across the hall and pee. So distracted am I that I leave the bathroom door wide open and don’t give even the tiniest of shits.
Mr. Crud and I hug before I undress. “He said this doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad,” Mr. Crud says.
The tears keep coming. I take off my pants and stick my feet in the stirrups. Dr. Toloso and Chrissy return. The probe goes in and the wand wiggling and beeping recommence. Dr. Toloso asks questions as he watches the screen:
Are you still experiencing symptoms?
When was your last ultrasound?
Have you experienced any cramping?
The charade is up shortly thereafter. “Katherine, I’m sorry to tell you that things are not going well.”
It appears the newest Peabody incarnation, who I have named Dewey (close to the Italian word for Due, meaning 2), died shortly after the first ultrasound which revealed the heartbeat, around 8 weeks. My clingy uterus is at it again.
“But why didn’t I just have a miscarriage?” I ask Dr. Toloso. “Why didn’t my body get rid of it?”
Next to the whole having a miscarriage thing, this bothers me the most. Why in the fuck does my body not know when the thing it is carrying around inside of it dies? Why must I become a walking casket?
“You would have eventually had a miscarriage,” Dr. Toloso says.
The pregnancy loss counselor who we saw after MC#1 said the same thing. I don’t find it comforting. My uterus does not know when to let go, when to say good-bye to the squatter. My 13-year-old-girl hopeful uterus: If I just keep pretending, maybe it will be true. Sorry, kid. Carl Perry wasn’t secretly falling in love with you during 8th grade gym class and this pregnancy ain’t happening.
Dr. Toloso tells me to get dressed and that he will be back and we can discuss my options. I need no discussion. “I want a D and C with Dr. Bednarek tomorrow morning or as soon as possible.” I know my way around the missed abortion block and the one thing I know for sure is I don’t want this dead embryo floating around inside of my uterus and making me feel tired and nauseous another moment more. Strangely enough, my pregnancy symptoms disappear after I get the news. Suddenly I am wide awake and the nausea vanishes. Great, now my brain is in on it too, tricking me into thinking I’m pregnant with well-placed dry heaves and cravings for cheese.
Dr. Toloso leaves to make the arrangements for abortion #2 as I get dressed. Mr. Crud and I hug and cry. “Why is this happening?” Mr. Crud asks.
“This happens to a lot of people,” I say. This comforts me for about 2 seconds.
Nobody knows why it’s happening. Not Dr. Toloso nor Dr. Bednarek or Dr. Risser. Dr. Toloso offers us tests after we have recovered from this latest chapter of doomed pregnancy. Dr. Bednarek assures us—although I don’t remember as I got so high on Ativan that I saw double—that we will have a child. Dr. Bednarek’s resident reminds me that medically recurrent miscarriages aren’t considered a problem until a woman has three in a row. We may want to reconsider doing the tests at this point, she says. Mr. Crud wants to do the tests. He worries that the miscarriages are somehow his fault. Even though we are assured and reassured that the miscarriages are nobody’s fault, the both of us take the blame. I murmur angry curses at my uterus, my vagina, my still overgrown pregnant boobs. I know that this isn’t helpful but the words slip out. “Go the fuck away,” I say to my boobs as I wrestle them into my too-small bra. “Nobody needs you anymore.”
The D and C goes about the same as the last time although we have traded the large operating-type room for a cramped examination room (for a savings of $1200!). The tall awesome nurse, Lisa, from the last time brings me my drugs and checks on us after the procedure is done. We talk books and again I am frustrated at how I trip over my words under the influence of anti-anxiety meds. She tells me that I am known as the “Cool Boot Woman” around the OHSU Women’s Health Center. Dr. Bednarek rushed out to buy the same pair of turquoise cowboy boots that I wore to my first D and C. Another resident picked up a pair in lime green. Consumer desire grips me. I want lime green! I vow to myself to go on a mission during my days off of work. Glimmering green boots pull me out of the gathering funk…for about 3 seconds.
All maxi-padded up, Mr. Crud and I head home where I wolf down a smoke salmon bagel and spend the rest of the day snoozing on the couch.
I decide to stay home from work the rest of the week. My days are spent checking the maxi pads for overly large blood clots and crying. My boss is awesome, telling me that they’ll survive without me at work even though it is the first week of fall term, arguably the busiest days of the year. Mr. Crud stays home when he can and we fall into each other’s arms at double the rate of our normal hugging schedule.
I bleed.
I bleed some more.
I contemplate my membership in a new sisterhood: the recurrent miscarriage club. After the first miscarriage, I hoped that I would never see the dimensions of this new clubhouse: the “Why me?” wallpaper and red hot anger blasting from the furnace. “Most women only have one miscarriage,” the websites, doctors, and books assured. Most then added a statement about how most women who have more than one miscarriage eventually go on to have a successful pregnancy. How big is eventually? 2 miscarriages? 7? My friend Angela decided that she could have 7 miscarriages before throwing in the childbearing towel. “I saw some statistic that 80% if women who have miscarriages have a successful pregnancy.” I no longer find comfort in statistics. My latest pregnancy had a less than 13% chance of miscarriage. I’m beating the odds. Hooray for special me.
Sunday morning I am awoken by killer cramps that only 2 Vicodin chase away. Do these count as severe cramps? Should I call the doctor? That afternoon I stand up from my fetal position to use the bathroom and a huge clump—though not larger than the egg the pamphlet warns me to look for—passes through me onto the pad. I sit on the toilet and hyperventilate. This is so fucking gross. I want to call Mr. Crud in to share in the gore. It’s almost fascinating. The miracle of death and all that, but I spare him and wrap it up in a plastic grocery bag. I jam it deep into the trashcan. I curse maxi-pad world.
The rest of the day is a blur of bloody pads, cramps, and Mr. Crud bearing mugs of Peppermint tea. I dread returning to work the next day although I don’t feel as tortured by the question of to tell the coworkers or not to tell. I decide against making the grand email announcement that I did last time. One miscarriage is sad; the second one seems careless. My coworkers are great, but I loathe the looks of pity that I received. Most people don’t know dick about miscarriage and my attempts at education must come through sniffles and tears that I don’t have the time or energy to shed this time around.
I email the friends who I had let into the pregnancy world. The sorry-s and why-s come fast and furious. Each kind word brings fresh tears. Even though this sucks harder than almost anything I’ve been through, I am overcome with gratitude for my friends and family and their expressions of kindness: a quiche dinner with Tracy and Ezra while their 8-month-old paddles around the floor; a care package from Dan and Anna with a note that makes me ache to hug them; Dawn and Eric bringing us out of our mourning bubble with a dinner at the Savoy, phone calls and emails and enough love to make me feel lucky instead of unlucky. I play my usual misery game and think of those who are alone, who can’t find comfort with loved ones. So many more suffer more than this on a daily basis.
I get an email from a yoga pal who asks why I’ve been away for a week. I share the news even though I hadn’t told her of my pregnancy. She tells me that she experienced her second miscarriage during the summer. She and her husband found answers at a local fertility clinic. I google immediately.
I feel weird doing all the tests like we are trying too hard for a biological baby. I didn’t think I would be one of those women who would do anything for a baby born of her materials. Mr. Crud and I have already discussed adoption. At first I didn’t think I’d ever want this, but I’m warming to the idea. I think adoption is awesome in theory and I love to see multi-ethnic families roaming the neighborhood. However I never fail to think about the couple’s struggles with infertility or miscarriages. Now I puzzle over their back story. I cringe to think that somebody would do the same to us. (Insert speech to self about how I need to stop caring so much about what other people think.)
For the time being I have no answers. Just an ever-multiplying stable of questions. One thing I know for sure: I really REALLY want a dog now.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Take 2?
July 2008
This month Mr. Crud and I officially revved our engines and returned to the TTC* path. Last month was more of a dare: let’s see if we can knock me up without trying or me acting like a pregnant woman should. This month, we got serious even though we are both terrified. It was easy enough. I input my menstrual period date into a couple of websites, came up with conflicting answers as to when I’d be ovulating so I decided to cast a wide net. Neither Mr. Crud nor I minded. Sex is pretty darn fun if you can keep yourself from getting too tired to do it.
So we did it. I returned to my cervical fluid scrutinizing ways and we did it. That was 2 weeks ago.
I quit smoking during the doing-it phase. Might as well do it right this time, I reasoned. I finished my (supposed) last glass of wine and puffed my last puff and was a good girl for a whole week. Then the mental gymnastics set in. This might be your very last chance to be able to smoke and drink for over a year! Get going, lady. The timing was too perfect. Last Wednesday Mr. Crud had an early drum practice. We dined a half hour early and he set off for a night’s worth of drumming. Minutes after he slammed the door closed, I was out the door and marching to the Plaid Pantry three blocks away. Cigarettes: check! I was relieved to find that they also had wine and not the terrible Boones Farm-Thunderbird selection that I feared. My quitting quitting would not force me to walk 5 more blocks to the grocery store. It almost seemed meant to be (a phrase that I am especially hostile to at the moment): I am meant to smoke a cigarette and drink wine!
At home I thoroughly enjoyed my vices. I told myself that I probably wasn’t pregnant because I hadn’t been feeling odd like I had the first time around. No sudden moments of weird smells, no cramping, no queasy waves.
I spent my free time at work scouring the internet for early pregnancy symptoms. I know them by heart: tender breasts, mild cramping (which are both also premenstrual symptoms as well—way to go Intelligent Design), fatigue, nausea. I don’t exactly know what I was looking for aside from some super secret way to find out if you’re pregnant a week after having sex.
Let the body scrutiny begin! Were those mild cramps due to a fertilized embryo implanting in my uterus or just an extension of my recent bout of digestive distress.
“Well, I’ve had diarrhea the past few days,” I said to Mr. Crud, “so I’m probably not pregnant.”
“Uh. I don’t think those have anything to do with each other.”
Are my boobs tender because of pregnancy or because I’m poking them all the time?
“Do my boobs look bigger to you?” I asked Mr. Crud after cupping them, staring at them, taking a profile view in the bathroom mirror.
“I don’t know.”
Is my hair falling out less? I watch the comb in the shower and remind myself that the previous month I had also believed my normal hair loss to have halted.
(Aside: Because I have a weird feeling that I am destined for 2 miscarriages, I have decided that I was indeed pregnant last month but that all my drinking, smoking, sauna-ing caused me to miscarry. I really did think I was pregnant last month. I felt a tingling in my lady regions, which ended with the big tingle in the form of cramps and heavy flow. Sound reasonable to you?)
Am I tired because work is tiring or is this a return to the exhaustion level of tired from the pg times?
Last night I awoke three times to pee in the middle of the night. I have not had such heavy midnight bathroom activity since I was pregnant. Or maybe I was just anxious and getting up to pee was a way to release the tension (in the form of urine? Uh maybe.).
Each mention of potential symptoms turns Mr. Crud edgy. During the first go-round my mention of symptoms made us both shriek “Eeeeee!” but this time we hug each other and reassure each other that no matter what happens, we’ll be okay. After learning about the first pregnancy, we grappled with issues of are we ready to be parents? Do we really want to be parents? Now, we know that we want to be parents. We know that we switched into the roles of future parents with relative ease. Now we also know how much there is to lose, which is the root of our anxiety. I try to imagine how it will feel if the pregnancy test that I take in three days—assuming I haven’t gotten my period by that time—is positive. The fear and joy are intertwined. As much as I tell myself that the odds are with me to have a normal, healthy pregnancy and a normal, healthy baby, I can’t shake the memory of the ultrasound room or imagine a new venue for bad news. “I’m not expecting what I’m seeing here. I should get the doctor.” The fear and joy are the creepy twin girls from The Shining. They hold hands and stare at me, mute and impassive, as blood rushes around us.
“I’m sorry I keep putting you on a rollercoaster,” I tell Mr. Crud after he gives me a frightened look at the mention of a brief moment of nausea.
“It’s okay. You should be able to share this with me. I’m just scared,” he says.
We hug. We hold each other and wonder if we are still alone in this thing or if some combination of us bumps around inside my uterus, a mess of dividing cells, which G-d willing, will keep on dividing.
* TTC means "Trying to Conceive" to those of you not schooled in the online pregnancy lingo.
This month Mr. Crud and I officially revved our engines and returned to the TTC* path. Last month was more of a dare: let’s see if we can knock me up without trying or me acting like a pregnant woman should. This month, we got serious even though we are both terrified. It was easy enough. I input my menstrual period date into a couple of websites, came up with conflicting answers as to when I’d be ovulating so I decided to cast a wide net. Neither Mr. Crud nor I minded. Sex is pretty darn fun if you can keep yourself from getting too tired to do it.
So we did it. I returned to my cervical fluid scrutinizing ways and we did it. That was 2 weeks ago.
I quit smoking during the doing-it phase. Might as well do it right this time, I reasoned. I finished my (supposed) last glass of wine and puffed my last puff and was a good girl for a whole week. Then the mental gymnastics set in. This might be your very last chance to be able to smoke and drink for over a year! Get going, lady. The timing was too perfect. Last Wednesday Mr. Crud had an early drum practice. We dined a half hour early and he set off for a night’s worth of drumming. Minutes after he slammed the door closed, I was out the door and marching to the Plaid Pantry three blocks away. Cigarettes: check! I was relieved to find that they also had wine and not the terrible Boones Farm-Thunderbird selection that I feared. My quitting quitting would not force me to walk 5 more blocks to the grocery store. It almost seemed meant to be (a phrase that I am especially hostile to at the moment): I am meant to smoke a cigarette and drink wine!
At home I thoroughly enjoyed my vices. I told myself that I probably wasn’t pregnant because I hadn’t been feeling odd like I had the first time around. No sudden moments of weird smells, no cramping, no queasy waves.
I spent my free time at work scouring the internet for early pregnancy symptoms. I know them by heart: tender breasts, mild cramping (which are both also premenstrual symptoms as well—way to go Intelligent Design), fatigue, nausea. I don’t exactly know what I was looking for aside from some super secret way to find out if you’re pregnant a week after having sex.
Let the body scrutiny begin! Were those mild cramps due to a fertilized embryo implanting in my uterus or just an extension of my recent bout of digestive distress.
“Well, I’ve had diarrhea the past few days,” I said to Mr. Crud, “so I’m probably not pregnant.”
“Uh. I don’t think those have anything to do with each other.”
Are my boobs tender because of pregnancy or because I’m poking them all the time?
“Do my boobs look bigger to you?” I asked Mr. Crud after cupping them, staring at them, taking a profile view in the bathroom mirror.
“I don’t know.”
Is my hair falling out less? I watch the comb in the shower and remind myself that the previous month I had also believed my normal hair loss to have halted.
(Aside: Because I have a weird feeling that I am destined for 2 miscarriages, I have decided that I was indeed pregnant last month but that all my drinking, smoking, sauna-ing caused me to miscarry. I really did think I was pregnant last month. I felt a tingling in my lady regions, which ended with the big tingle in the form of cramps and heavy flow. Sound reasonable to you?)
Am I tired because work is tiring or is this a return to the exhaustion level of tired from the pg times?
Last night I awoke three times to pee in the middle of the night. I have not had such heavy midnight bathroom activity since I was pregnant. Or maybe I was just anxious and getting up to pee was a way to release the tension (in the form of urine? Uh maybe.).
Each mention of potential symptoms turns Mr. Crud edgy. During the first go-round my mention of symptoms made us both shriek “Eeeeee!” but this time we hug each other and reassure each other that no matter what happens, we’ll be okay. After learning about the first pregnancy, we grappled with issues of are we ready to be parents? Do we really want to be parents? Now, we know that we want to be parents. We know that we switched into the roles of future parents with relative ease. Now we also know how much there is to lose, which is the root of our anxiety. I try to imagine how it will feel if the pregnancy test that I take in three days—assuming I haven’t gotten my period by that time—is positive. The fear and joy are intertwined. As much as I tell myself that the odds are with me to have a normal, healthy pregnancy and a normal, healthy baby, I can’t shake the memory of the ultrasound room or imagine a new venue for bad news. “I’m not expecting what I’m seeing here. I should get the doctor.” The fear and joy are the creepy twin girls from The Shining. They hold hands and stare at me, mute and impassive, as blood rushes around us.
“I’m sorry I keep putting you on a rollercoaster,” I tell Mr. Crud after he gives me a frightened look at the mention of a brief moment of nausea.
“It’s okay. You should be able to share this with me. I’m just scared,” he says.
We hug. We hold each other and wonder if we are still alone in this thing or if some combination of us bumps around inside my uterus, a mess of dividing cells, which G-d willing, will keep on dividing.
* TTC means "Trying to Conceive" to those of you not schooled in the online pregnancy lingo.
Introducing Peabody 2
The Peabody Project Chronicles was my blog-to-be about my first pregnancy. Sadly this pregnancy ended in miscarriage—technically a “missed abortion—on that most foolish of days, April 1, and I never published a word of the 60 pages I’d written. Losing the pregnancy was devastating, an experience that changed me, and the way I view my body and the world profoundly. Mr. Crud, my husband’s nom de blog, and I knew that we would try again, that the odds were in our favor for a successful pregnancy, and so after waiting the suggested three months, we did.
When I received a positive pregnancy test August 9, 2008, 8 months after the first positive pregnancy test, I was not overcome with joy or relief, but fear. Shit. What if it happens all over again? What have we gotten ourselves into this time? Shit fuck shit. The easy optimism of my first pregnancy vanished with the miscarriage. As much as I assured myself with statistics and the fact that I had no control over whether this pregnancy would end in miscarriage, my fingers went cold with terror.
During the early days of the miscarriage I found solace in hearing the voices of other women who had been through a similar experience. I emailed family members and friends who shared their experiences. I read books. I spent a lot of time googling “miscarriage” and “missed abortion” and “pregnancy after miscarriage.” I still google.
Now I feel like it is time to add my voice to the chorus by sharing my experiences with pregnancy after miscarriage. Unlike the first time, I have not waited the recommended 3 months to tell people about my pregnancy. I ended up telling everyone about my miscarriage anyway, so why hold back? Please don’t feel like you should hold back either. Comments are welcome and encouraged. The blog is about 2 months behind where I am now—about 9 weeks pregnant—as I started writing immediately upon learning I was pregnant but have been too busy to get the blog off the ground until now.
Peabody was the joke name that Mr. Crud and I gave the child we hoped to have. After the miscarriage, we soul searched to a seemingly ridiculous degree about whether the name Peabody died with the first embryo. We never really decided one way or another, but soon started using Peabody again. The name embodies the child we hoped to have and because that hope did not die, the name didn't either. I have named the miscarried soul, Primo, the Italian word for first.
Thanks to all the friends, old and new, who have shared their experiences with me.
When I received a positive pregnancy test August 9, 2008, 8 months after the first positive pregnancy test, I was not overcome with joy or relief, but fear. Shit. What if it happens all over again? What have we gotten ourselves into this time? Shit fuck shit. The easy optimism of my first pregnancy vanished with the miscarriage. As much as I assured myself with statistics and the fact that I had no control over whether this pregnancy would end in miscarriage, my fingers went cold with terror.
During the early days of the miscarriage I found solace in hearing the voices of other women who had been through a similar experience. I emailed family members and friends who shared their experiences. I read books. I spent a lot of time googling “miscarriage” and “missed abortion” and “pregnancy after miscarriage.” I still google.
Now I feel like it is time to add my voice to the chorus by sharing my experiences with pregnancy after miscarriage. Unlike the first time, I have not waited the recommended 3 months to tell people about my pregnancy. I ended up telling everyone about my miscarriage anyway, so why hold back? Please don’t feel like you should hold back either. Comments are welcome and encouraged. The blog is about 2 months behind where I am now—about 9 weeks pregnant—as I started writing immediately upon learning I was pregnant but have been too busy to get the blog off the ground until now.
Peabody was the joke name that Mr. Crud and I gave the child we hoped to have. After the miscarriage, we soul searched to a seemingly ridiculous degree about whether the name Peabody died with the first embryo. We never really decided one way or another, but soon started using Peabody again. The name embodies the child we hoped to have and because that hope did not die, the name didn't either. I have named the miscarried soul, Primo, the Italian word for first.
Thanks to all the friends, old and new, who have shared their experiences with me.
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