Sometimes it's like I was never pregnant. My body has long since returned to its pre-pregnancy state and as shocking as this may sound there are even days when I forget I was an expectant mother. Then there are days when knowing I was and am no longer expecting are my only reality.
Yesterday was Mother's Day in the UK. Oh.
I didn't expect it to be a hard day to get through.
I didn't expect to want to go to bed on Saturday and get up again Monday.
I didn't expect my moods to be such a tumultuous affair.
I was only 9 weeks and 4 days pregnant when we learnt I'd lost it and it was only measuring 0.4m, what it should be around 5 weeks. Technically it was a cluster of cells, not yet a foetus and not a baby. I guess knowing this made me believe or convince myself that I hadn't had time to get excited, that not being able to wait until we could buy a few baby outfits wasn't a thing for me. It was.
I didn't tell L but I checked the baby app to see how it was developing and what stage it was at more or less every day, and I certainly didn't mention I waited eagerly for our 12 week scan to see it for the first time.
*sigh*
All I can do is, once again as I have before during difficult times, remind myself these feelings aren't going to last forever. This is a period of transition and I should think of it like turbulence on a plane: travelling through the collision of two air masses.
Monday, 27 March 2017
Thursday, 23 March 2017
The Road to Recovery: My Miscarriage and Me
Things seem to come in waves...the grief, the anger, the disappointment, the acceptance. Sometimes they dance with each other, spinning and twirling and taking it in turns to lead in a Tango across my psyche.
It's been nearly 2 weeks since I elected to have SMM (surgically managed miscarriage). Miscarriage: A taboo subject or a topic fraught with emotionally motivated silences?
I'm slowly recovering from my missed miscarriage. Physically I recovered very quickly but nothing prepared me for the emotional journey it was going to take me on. I've moved from not wanting to talk about it, not wanting to talk at all to anyone really, to being able to tell some but only those I choose and when I choose. From this I've learnt people judge you, 2 people have 'judged' me on electing to have SMM and all I ask is...please don't judge me. Please don't judge anyone when it comes to dealing with a miscarriage.
My sister, T, has experienced 2 miscarriages herself and she confessed to a desire to 'write a paper about miscarriages because it is such a taboo subject'. I'm not sure that it is a taboo subject, I think I lean more toward the notion knowing how to respond is difficult and that makes it a not talked about subject. Everyone's experience of a miscarriage is different, both physically and emotionally, for some there is immense pain and lots of bleeding, for others no pain and lots of bleeding, for some no pain and no bleeding... It therefore stands to reason how a person processes and chooses to deal with their miscarriage is unique, is their journey to recovery.
I chose to have SMM over 'allowing my body to do what it's done naturally for thousands of years' rather than subject myself 'to the risks of uterus scarring and puncturing' to quote my sister because, simply put, I didn't have the emotional strength to go through another 2-3 weeks like the last week I'd gone through. I just couldn't do it.
So again I ask you, please don't judge me, please don't judge anyone, on how they choose to cope with their miscarriage because in doing so what you're actually doing is judging their emotional state, something you do not have the right nor insight into their psyche to do. It is a painful enough experience without someone weighing and measuring your response and somehow deciding it is wrong.
It's been nearly 2 weeks since I elected to have SMM (surgically managed miscarriage). Miscarriage: A taboo subject or a topic fraught with emotionally motivated silences?
I'm slowly recovering from my missed miscarriage. Physically I recovered very quickly but nothing prepared me for the emotional journey it was going to take me on. I've moved from not wanting to talk about it, not wanting to talk at all to anyone really, to being able to tell some but only those I choose and when I choose. From this I've learnt people judge you, 2 people have 'judged' me on electing to have SMM and all I ask is...please don't judge me. Please don't judge anyone when it comes to dealing with a miscarriage.
My sister, T, has experienced 2 miscarriages herself and she confessed to a desire to 'write a paper about miscarriages because it is such a taboo subject'. I'm not sure that it is a taboo subject, I think I lean more toward the notion knowing how to respond is difficult and that makes it a not talked about subject. Everyone's experience of a miscarriage is different, both physically and emotionally, for some there is immense pain and lots of bleeding, for others no pain and lots of bleeding, for some no pain and no bleeding... It therefore stands to reason how a person processes and chooses to deal with their miscarriage is unique, is their journey to recovery.
I chose to have SMM over 'allowing my body to do what it's done naturally for thousands of years' rather than subject myself 'to the risks of uterus scarring and puncturing' to quote my sister because, simply put, I didn't have the emotional strength to go through another 2-3 weeks like the last week I'd gone through. I just couldn't do it.
So again I ask you, please don't judge me, please don't judge anyone, on how they choose to cope with their miscarriage because in doing so what you're actually doing is judging their emotional state, something you do not have the right nor insight into their psyche to do. It is a painful enough experience without someone weighing and measuring your response and somehow deciding it is wrong.
Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Anger
Everything makes me angry at the moment, literally everything.
I've screamed at an old woman driving because she lacked the awareness to see I was waiting on a pedestrian crossing to cross the road. She didn't hear me so apparently she's deaf as well as blind.
I honked my car horn at a couple driving - first they pulled out on me causing me to have to break sharply, then later on down the road they indicated and pulled in last minute but didn't pull in properly so caused me to have to swerve round them. Apparently Kellogs are giving out licences in their boxes of bran flakes.
Unhelpful and insensitive words of wisdom. 3 separate people have said, "You'll just have to keep trying" like we're talking about reaching the next level on a game or solving a mathematical sum. Not to sit on the fence here but that advice is about as comforting and useful as titts on a fish.
People telling me what it's okay to feel - EVERYTHING I feel is OKAY to feel but thanks for the validation.
People judging me on how I am or am not dealing with this, everyone is entitled to their opinion just as I'm entitled to say you can stick your judgement where the sun don't shine.
The new series of Girls...utter vomit inducing drivel. The characters' incessant narcissistic whining is, I hope, complete fiction, surely no one in reality can be that egotistical.
Fighting the company the military have outsourced housing to over getting our pet dander infested and piss stained carpets changed. It seems we have very different understanding of what an "acceptable standard" is, theirs is scraping the bottom of the hygiene barrel and mine is not having to take two antihistamines a day in addition to apologising to every guest we have.
Not being a able to move on and have closure. I'm still bleeding and no one can tell me how long this is going to last, psychologically this is a torturous reminder of the fact I carried my baby for four weeks while it had already died. My womb was a birth grave.
I've screamed at an old woman driving because she lacked the awareness to see I was waiting on a pedestrian crossing to cross the road. She didn't hear me so apparently she's deaf as well as blind.
I honked my car horn at a couple driving - first they pulled out on me causing me to have to break sharply, then later on down the road they indicated and pulled in last minute but didn't pull in properly so caused me to have to swerve round them. Apparently Kellogs are giving out licences in their boxes of bran flakes.
Unhelpful and insensitive words of wisdom. 3 separate people have said, "You'll just have to keep trying" like we're talking about reaching the next level on a game or solving a mathematical sum. Not to sit on the fence here but that advice is about as comforting and useful as titts on a fish.
People telling me what it's okay to feel - EVERYTHING I feel is OKAY to feel but thanks for the validation.
People judging me on how I am or am not dealing with this, everyone is entitled to their opinion just as I'm entitled to say you can stick your judgement where the sun don't shine.
The new series of Girls...utter vomit inducing drivel. The characters' incessant narcissistic whining is, I hope, complete fiction, surely no one in reality can be that egotistical.
Fighting the company the military have outsourced housing to over getting our pet dander infested and piss stained carpets changed. It seems we have very different understanding of what an "acceptable standard" is, theirs is scraping the bottom of the hygiene barrel and mine is not having to take two antihistamines a day in addition to apologising to every guest we have.
Not being a able to move on and have closure. I'm still bleeding and no one can tell me how long this is going to last, psychologically this is a torturous reminder of the fact I carried my baby for four weeks while it had already died. My womb was a birth grave.
Thursday, 2 March 2017
Raw
I've rolled the idea of posting about this in my head for a while now, the long and short of it was that while I was thinking about it all I was actually talking to myself and drafting a post...
I'm going through a missed miscarriage.
The bleeding started Thursday, nothing much, just spotting. This continued for a few days, in fact right up until my first mid wife's appointment on Tuesday. The cramping was worse than my cycle, not excruciating but definitely enough to make me feel sick. I mentioned it but obviously prior to that I had googled the shit out of it. You do. Every body does. I was told 'implantation bleeding' and nothing to worry about, was I worried??? I don't think that I was, I mean I must have been because I mentioned it and had googled the shit out of it but stressing?... No, not particularly.
Then Tuesday night the bleeding started just as we were going to bed. I sobbed, loudly and inconsolably while L stared at me with that hopeless expression of a man who is watching his wife, his soul mate, the love of his life, grieve. We both knew.
That night I lay in bed next to him, listening to him snore and smiled through my tears, oddly amused and glad that one of us was... was what? Sleeping, that there was some kind of normalcy to the situation. I don't know. I just know my heart swelled.
Tired I phoned my GP's surgery and incoherently talked them through what was happening and had happened. They were all very nice and tried to comfort me but to be honest I was too far gone at that point for anything anyone said or could have said to be heard. I was given an appointment for the following day. I remember being so angry that I had to wait, in the state that I was in, for another 24 hours before I could have a scan. It felt like torture, the mental and emotional torment was hideous but I wanted, no needed, to be alone so I sent L into work.
All day the grief and guilt came in Tsunami-esq waves that battered me to the point of being doubled up over the sink as I cried and drowned in my emotions. I knew, in my heart that Peanut was gone, I was never going to see them on a scan, I was never going to hold them in my arms, I was never going to hear the rustle of their nappy as they padded into our room from theirs, and I was never going to watch them sleeping on daddy. While I mourned the loss of Peanut, I tried not to remember the private scan we had booked, or the sleeping cot donated by the friends who were sleuth like in their working out I was pregnant, or the ticket we had booked to the US for Christmas, or even the names we'd picked: Scarlet Elizabeth or Maximilian Christopher.
Underneath the mourning was the guilt, L and I had been rather subdued when we discovered I was pregnant. It had taken me a good couple of weeks to process being it and all that it meant. For me that means fighting the urge to be overwhelmed and terrified of the unknown. It had taken that long for me to get over the thought 'but timing is shit'. We had so much going on, L's Gramps had had a heart attack over Christmas, his parents now US citizens still hadn't sorted out their passports so we'd spent a good few days helping out with that. We both worked full time up until we moved house, L went straight into work because he had to leaving me to deal with the physical move out and move in, plus all the Kafka-esq bureaucracy that comes along with dealing with the Military and housing standards. I didn't have a job but was registering with agencies, applying for them, attending interviews....Sheesh I could go on... but why? So when I knew Peanut was gone I felt such guilt, had they known? Had they felt like they wouldn't be loved or weren't wanted? I can't bare that thought, it rips me apart.
At the hospital today I had my blood pressure taken and peed in a cup, I was still giving a positive on the test. The scan image wasn't great so the nurse used an internal camera, I'm sure she told me the name but... the details are lost on me. She asked me to wait and see the doctor because there was a small sac but nothing definitive.
The doctor was calm and kind as he told me I'd lost Peanut, Peanut measured 0.4 and was showing as 5 weeks with no heartbeat. I was meant to be 9 or 10. I had a missed miscarriage which was why my body was still displaying pregnancy symptoms and I'd need to come back a week later for a scan but he really was very sorry.
Some how I've come back from the hospital phoned to cancel the private scan, left a voicemail for the mid wife cancelling my 16 week appointment and letting her know what's happened, filled out questionnaires for my new job, sorted car insurance and done chores.
I can't bare the thought that Peanut may have felt unloved or unwanted, nor that I may potentially have to carry them inside for another week before getting medical help.
My heart is truly breaking.
I'm going through a missed miscarriage.
The bleeding started Thursday, nothing much, just spotting. This continued for a few days, in fact right up until my first mid wife's appointment on Tuesday. The cramping was worse than my cycle, not excruciating but definitely enough to make me feel sick. I mentioned it but obviously prior to that I had googled the shit out of it. You do. Every body does. I was told 'implantation bleeding' and nothing to worry about, was I worried??? I don't think that I was, I mean I must have been because I mentioned it and had googled the shit out of it but stressing?... No, not particularly.
Then Tuesday night the bleeding started just as we were going to bed. I sobbed, loudly and inconsolably while L stared at me with that hopeless expression of a man who is watching his wife, his soul mate, the love of his life, grieve. We both knew.
That night I lay in bed next to him, listening to him snore and smiled through my tears, oddly amused and glad that one of us was... was what? Sleeping, that there was some kind of normalcy to the situation. I don't know. I just know my heart swelled.
Tired I phoned my GP's surgery and incoherently talked them through what was happening and had happened. They were all very nice and tried to comfort me but to be honest I was too far gone at that point for anything anyone said or could have said to be heard. I was given an appointment for the following day. I remember being so angry that I had to wait, in the state that I was in, for another 24 hours before I could have a scan. It felt like torture, the mental and emotional torment was hideous but I wanted, no needed, to be alone so I sent L into work.
All day the grief and guilt came in Tsunami-esq waves that battered me to the point of being doubled up over the sink as I cried and drowned in my emotions. I knew, in my heart that Peanut was gone, I was never going to see them on a scan, I was never going to hold them in my arms, I was never going to hear the rustle of their nappy as they padded into our room from theirs, and I was never going to watch them sleeping on daddy. While I mourned the loss of Peanut, I tried not to remember the private scan we had booked, or the sleeping cot donated by the friends who were sleuth like in their working out I was pregnant, or the ticket we had booked to the US for Christmas, or even the names we'd picked: Scarlet Elizabeth or Maximilian Christopher.
Underneath the mourning was the guilt, L and I had been rather subdued when we discovered I was pregnant. It had taken me a good couple of weeks to process being it and all that it meant. For me that means fighting the urge to be overwhelmed and terrified of the unknown. It had taken that long for me to get over the thought 'but timing is shit'. We had so much going on, L's Gramps had had a heart attack over Christmas, his parents now US citizens still hadn't sorted out their passports so we'd spent a good few days helping out with that. We both worked full time up until we moved house, L went straight into work because he had to leaving me to deal with the physical move out and move in, plus all the Kafka-esq bureaucracy that comes along with dealing with the Military and housing standards. I didn't have a job but was registering with agencies, applying for them, attending interviews....Sheesh I could go on... but why? So when I knew Peanut was gone I felt such guilt, had they known? Had they felt like they wouldn't be loved or weren't wanted? I can't bare that thought, it rips me apart.
At the hospital today I had my blood pressure taken and peed in a cup, I was still giving a positive on the test. The scan image wasn't great so the nurse used an internal camera, I'm sure she told me the name but... the details are lost on me. She asked me to wait and see the doctor because there was a small sac but nothing definitive.
The doctor was calm and kind as he told me I'd lost Peanut, Peanut measured 0.4 and was showing as 5 weeks with no heartbeat. I was meant to be 9 or 10. I had a missed miscarriage which was why my body was still displaying pregnancy symptoms and I'd need to come back a week later for a scan but he really was very sorry.
Some how I've come back from the hospital phoned to cancel the private scan, left a voicemail for the mid wife cancelling my 16 week appointment and letting her know what's happened, filled out questionnaires for my new job, sorted car insurance and done chores.
I can't bare the thought that Peanut may have felt unloved or unwanted, nor that I may potentially have to carry them inside for another week before getting medical help.
My heart is truly breaking.
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