This is my truth.

Thursday 25 June 2009

When I first started this blog is was never supposed to be a journal,it was supposed to err on the side of being somewhat decidedly impersonal, more a mocking commentary on daily life so to speak.

However, I'm finding it difficult to detach and comment upon the now without indeed being very much personal.

I know it's impossibly awkward to read about difficult topics such as miscarriage but I would be doing myself and the death of a baby disservice through not writing about it. I make no apologies for frankness and debilitating honesty yet remember always dear readers, you have control and choice, you can choose to not read. It is neither pretty nor eloquent, I cannot wrap it up in witticisms or bows.

The Husband and I got married 5 years ago today, i was 32 weeks pregnant with The Child at the time. Five years later fast forwarding to today and The Husband is bone tired, I'm still in the process of miscarrying, The Child is off school ill and The Toddler has a squirty bum (probably not at all helped by her fruit fetish, yesterday alone she consumed a banana, a pear, a punnet (yes as in whole) of blueberrie's some more blueberries, some blackberries and two kiwi's, not bad going for a 2.5yr old) I've been bleeding too heavily to buy The Husband a card and we don't even have the pennies to have a takeaway tonight. Obviously this is not the Ideal anniversary, quite far from it.

My heart is broken and yet the pieces of it keep breaking too.

One minute i'm muted and rendered rigid by the grief and the next I find it hard to reach it, to touch it and I feel monstrous for feeling okay so soon, and then like a wave it crashes over again.

I feel emotionally raw and swollen swinging like some shivering pendulum between a grief so thick and so black that it crushes me in it's blackness and a numbness, so acute that I want to smash my bones into pieces.

It wasn't just losing my baby it's all the hope, dreams and potential that a pregnancy represented.....it was hope...hope that things can get better, hope for a new start, hope for fixing me, hope for completing our family...and hope that maybe, just maybe something could go right for us. I was happy for the first time in so long. I feel like a massive part of me has died. I can't stop crying. Is it possible to have loved someone *too* much?

I am well aware that in some sense I could indeed count my so called blessings so to speak. I have two beautiful children and yet how does it make it easier? to know how perfect it turns out when pregnancy goes right? Surely it serves only to increase the intensity of this because you are most aware of exactly what you've lost? I'm thankful that i've been saved some of the physical trauma through losing so early and yet it does little to minimise the tragedy of it. If an 8 year old child died, would it be any more tragic then a three year old? So in that vain of thought it should thusly follow that a 6 week fetus is just as meaningful and emblazoned the same raw potential and capacity for inspiring love as a ten or 12 week one.

Like most events in life this one too holds it's own soundtrack and that is 'Fix you' by Coldplay. I try so hard to appear okay for the sake of the children, so late at night is my turn, when I curl in bed and collapse into the grief, rendered paralysed and voiceless by it as the song plays on loop with the masochistic film playing behind my eyelids starting when I first saw them two precious lines on a test, I can tap into the excitement ,the happiness and it's in such vibrant technicolor and in sentimental flashes this short journey drops like treasured polaroids onto the floor of my mind....right up until the end, until now and every day just adds another scene. I still have the tests.

I can't believe this is happening to us and yet part of me knew, knew that this always would happen to us. I always knew this was lurking in the proverbial shadows of our discontent, to strike us down.

The Husband says we can try again. The Husband says he really wants to try again.

The epu said that we have to wait three months?! 'so that we don't see you back here with another miscarriage' Well that was thoughtful of them. Upon researching however, there is no solid actual evidence for waiting any allotted amount of time if you've had a complete miscarriage other then to make it easier for the medical profession to 'date' a future pregnancy.

This grief will always be here, it will never ever leave me. I don't want to replace this baby but whether i wait 1 month or 1 year i'd still hold grief for *this* baby but it doesn't mean I can't *love* another baby too. This grief will own a part of me forever. I'm scared of seeming callous for thinking about the future already when i feel so choked up in the now, i'm scared people will think i didn't love this baby..that i'm not broken in pieces because of this baby if I am thinking of having another so soon. I want that sense of completion, that hope and potential of a pregnancy again....you can have many kids and love them all, it's not like a husband dying and then remarrying the next month....it will be a whole new pregnancy and baby, and will never ever ever ever erase the one i've lost, but is that so wrong? to have both? To still grieve over what i've lost and yet to want something new? a future? Some positivity? is it wrong to even be thinking about this whilst i'm still in the process of mc'ing? I'm not for one instant implying i'm ready to start again, only that surely the only basis of readiness is ones own feelings after taking things one day at a time? I guess in my mind the baby i've lost and pregnancy are separate entities that can co-exist.

So I guess perhaps in all this for records sake I should include the bare bones of the facts, for posterity. You may want to stop reading, about now. This may get physically and emotionally graphic.


I have two fabulous kids The Child (4.5) and The Toddler (2.5) and i finally after a lot of arguments got The Husband to agree to have a third. I was breastfeeding The Toddler up until about ten days ago and as such didn't get a visit from old Aunt Flo from Nov 2005 (when I got pg with her) until about March this year and that was then a 56? 58? day cycle. So imagine my surprise when on day 39 of my next cycle i got a bfp on the 8th June! Over the moon doesn't even begin to describe it. It was a faint line on an cheap strip test. Took a FR and got definate line. In that week I took that one IC, 4 FR (each day they got darker) and 2 cbddigi's.

I got insomnia (first pregnancy symptom i get in pregnancies) , nausea, tender breasts, hormonal, forgetful, cravings for chicken, wee'ing loads ....classic pregnancy symptoms.

On Sunday (22nd) I got blood streaked CM when i wiped. Great thing to happen on fathers day. Obviously I panicked but I had pink spotting and spotting like this with The Toddler and scans at 8w and 11w showed she was fine and I still had pg'cy symptoms. The next morning I had it again so I went to the doctors who then got me a scan for 2pm that day (Monday). On the way to the hospital (two buses) i didn't feel nauseous for the first time in over a week (i'd been getting awful nausea when traveling) and the symptoms just didn't seem there but i wondered if it was because I was so scared.

At the EPU they scanned me. By my dates I was 5+6 (adjusted date as i knew roughly when I ovulated and it was long cycle) but off that wheel of doom they use they said i was 7+3. They tried an abdominal scan (which i knew would show nothing) and she said i had a retroverted uterus (my uterus is retro, how positively funky). She did an internal scan and couldn't find anything, not even a sack. Nothing. She tried to check my ovaries to rule out ectopic but could only find one of my ovaries so thus couldn't rule out ectopic. I remember joking 'Anything else missing in there? the count is so far at one baby and one ovary missing' They took my blood. They called later that night and said my hcg level was 116 and I had to go back in on Wednesday, 48 hours later, to repeat and see if they raised or lowered.

When I got home i had a lot more bloody cm and wondered if this was from the internal scan poking round in there.

I laid in bed last night crying, crying so hard...I knew it wouldn't stay, i knew it was leaving me and yet i was begging out loud...begging for it to stay, to not leave me.....because I love it...because i love it so so much...i had my hand on my empty womb trying to hold in what wasn't there anymore. & when i woke up, i was bleeding. I wanted to catch the blood, i wanted to hold it in....to try and physically keep my baby....and crying only made me cough and coughing only made me bleed more

Since then it's just got heavier. I remember sitting on the toilet and just howling, these primal sobs that picked me up under the skin by my bones and dropped me again and again until I broke against the floor of grief. I'm thankful i'm not in too much physical pain but it is like a very heavy period messy period that just keeps getting worse and worse and worse . It is getting heavier, I'm too scared to leave the house in case it soaks through my clothes....everytime i stand up or cough i feel a small gush.

& i'm seeing babies everywhere, especially on tv. You think it's bad when you want to ttc and everyone seems pregnant or has a baby but can't...and it seems bad when you are ttc and everyone has a baby or a bump....but that's nothing compared to having it in your grasp and then having it taken away. To love someone so much, too much....and never meet them. To have hopes and dreams and aspirations for them.....and then they die. I hate the word miscarriage ...my baby DIED. F*cking died before it even had a chance to live.

It's not fair.

There, I've said it. it's not fucking fair.

If dreams fix your heart, what fixes you when it's your dreams and your heart that are broken?



"When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down on your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go

If you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth


Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you


Tears stream down on your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down on your face
And I...

Tears stream down on your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I...

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"


-Coldplay

4 comments:

  1. Huge hugs again honey!
    On the trying again front, of course it's not wrong to be thinking of the future through a tragedy, it's what we have to do to have something to hope for. Don't make any firm decisions yet though. It may be that because of the delay in your periods returning, your hormone levels aren't yet at a point where they can sustain a pregnancy. That may be what the doctor meant. Give yourself some time to fully grieve then take stock.
    Thinking of you xxxxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. My deepest condolences.
    Grief is like that, soul crushing sadness inter cut with moments of normality.
    Still wanting a baby does not in anyway reduce or diminish the love for the baby you lost.
    I wish I had words that could help you through this.
    I'll be keeping you and your family my thoughts and prayers.
    Take care,
    Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not fair, it really isn't hun. It sucks and there's no two ways about it.

    And yes, you see pregnant women and newborns everywhere like they are doing it on purpose just to rub your nose in it, and women screaming at children that you would love and cherish. You see them when you are overcome with grief and then, when you are having an okay moment and beginning to think that you might be able to get through a ten minute block without tears, they pop up again in all their fluffy newborn glory... and you try to be happy for them, you really do, but your heart just shatters some more and your soul aches and you want to run and cry and smash things and yell at your partner who just doesn't even seem to see them!

    It sucks.

    And I am so sorry you are going through this. I wish I could make it all okay.

    There is nothing wrong with looking to the future and hoping for happiness, whatever form that takes for you. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your baby to live life and enjoy rather than just exsist and endure.

    I'm sorry the staff were harsh. They are like that for some reason. There's no need but it is how they react. Ignore them. To you it was a baby, a hope, a life. To them it was an appointment they squeezed into an already busy day. Forgive them and forget them, they do not matter.

    What matters is you and your family and your need to go through this process in the kindest and easiest way for you all. What really helped me was marking the loss. I went to the beach and I planted a rose. I put a poem in a bottle and threw it out to sea. Then I sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed. And as I sobbed, from nowhere, a storm appeared over the sea. It came thick and fast and drenched me as I cried. To this day I think the earth felt my pain and was crying with me. It was the physical and emotional release I needed to move on as I was storing too much. I came on the next day and that cycle I became pg with my daughter.

    You will never forget hun, never, and nor should you. It becomes easier to live with though and they are always by your side.

    Huge hugs sweetheart. Strength and white light to you. xxx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you everyone for your compassion and your insight. I'm actually rather disastrous as blogger having been used to the cosy world of livejournal for my day to day whinges. I hate the inability to reply directly to each comment here and the fact that i never get e-mailed when someone comments here. I also hate the fact that I can't just click one button and see everybody's latest blog posts.

    So i apologies if it seems I never read these comments, i do and they are very muchly appreciated, always.

    ReplyDelete

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