Meet my little... ~ "Baby May" ~ Miscarriage Journals ~ November ~

Journal entry #6 ~ November 3rd, 2002

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse... On Friday, I went to see a counsellor at my university. It was somewhat helpful, but really no more helpful than talking to a friend would be... I still felt stuck, I still felt like I had no *place* for my grief to go, like I didn't know what to do next, how to react. I was getting really angry at one point though, and just letting myself get all upset made me realize just how angry I was about the unfairness of it all. I'd already had one miscarriage, and even though the rate is high (1 in 4, 1 in 3...), I'd now had two miscarriages, which felt like more than a "fair" (statistically speaking) share of pain and grief. And I couldn't understand how we could lose this baby because we did everything "right" - I took prenatal vitamins before I was even pregnant! I don't smoke, I've never done drugs, I didn't have any alcohol after the estimated ovulation date, I didn't take any health risks, nothing!!! I took good care of my baby! That night, Paul asked me about how my session went and I was reliving a lot of what I'd said about being a good mother to my little fetus and being really angry that even that was no guarentee that she would be healthy and would be born full term... I was getting really angry about everything, started to have a tantrum. Well, I paid for it... I got so stiff and tense that I felt something twist up in my neck. I went to sleep in pain, and woke up in even more pain. I couldn't move my neck to the right at all, and I was extremely sore and stiff. When I went to the Dr.s, he said I had a spinal block on the right side, and prescribed anti-inflamatory and pain killer medications. Those medications are the only reason I'm able to sit here and write this, but yesterday while they were still taking effect, I could barely move. If I held my head perfectly still, I was only in mild pain, but if I dared to move an inch I would be in extreme discomfort. I was having muscular spasms in my neck whenever I moved too much or tried to sit up the wrong way or tried to lift anything, so I was basically couch bound for the day. Thank God for Paul, he looked after Harmony the whole day and drove me to and from the doctors and everything. I hate to think of how painful it would all have been without his help.

With all the physical problems being piled on top of me, and on top of all the previous physical problems I'm still recovering from (I'm still bleeding from the miscarriage after 8 days...), and on top of all the emotional difficulties of not being able to express my grief properly, feeling numb and/or not being able to control my anger or sadness when it does indeed surface, I feel completely helpless and without hope. I feel like I should just crawl into a hole and hibernate for the winter and come out when it's spring and all these things have gone away. I just don't want to face life right now, I wish I could just go away from myself and leave this horrible body that has turned against me and is shutting down part by part, piece by piece, and this horrible brain that is controlling me with defense mechanism barriers when I want to cry and grieve, and not holding me back when I feel overwhelmed with too much pain and sadness and emotion. I feel so frustrated and angry at myself right now, I feel like I should just go away and stop being such a burden to my friends and family, and stop being so helpless and unable to move on from everything I'm going through.

It is still painful to sit here and write, so that is all for today...

Journal entry #7 ~ November 4th, 2002

Today I am in less physical pain, but still having problems with my neck. Emotionally, I still feel very numb. I think having to deal with all these physical things is keeping the emotional stuff away for the most part, I am not sure how I feel about that. I guess it's what's best for me, I guess I have to trust my emotional protections. I feel really disconnected from life right now, like nothing is real anymore, and nothing makes sense. Life for me right now is just a meaningless string of interactions, one after the other. My body feels hungry, I eat something. Everything is in it's simplest form. I have no idea what to do from minute to minute, from day to day - I feel useless. There are just so many decisions to be made that I can't make any. The magnitude of all the larger decisions (should we try again? if we do, when? what's best for Harmony? what's best for us? what's healthy for me?) is blocking me from making smaller choices. I can't face anything right now, and that frustrates me. I am physically and emotionally dependent on others right now, and I'm such an independent person normally that I can't stand this dependence. I wish I could fall asleep and wake up a month from now.

Journal entry #8 ~ November 5th, 2002

The vicious cycle continues... I feel so horrible both physically and emotionally that I can't bring myself to accomplish very much. I'm scared to go back to school, both because I'm worried about how much my neck will hurt (it is still in a lot of pain) and how much my heart would break if people kept asking me how the baby was, and having to explain everything. But then the more afraid and unmotivated I get, the worse I beat myself up about it... I've always been the woman with everything on her plate- supermom takes on the world in one fell swoop... So depending on others and not being able to be the busiest person alive is taking it's toll in guilt. Every day I feel more and more worthless, do less and less, and then feel even more worthless.

I just don't know what my purpose is anymore. I feel like I'm really lost and wandering around without a goal in life. Obviously there are still things to take care of, Harmony, my relationship with Paul, my house, etc. - being pregnant did not all of a sudden consume my life and become my only purpose... and yet, I have lost focus. It was a very central part of my life, being pregnant and taking care of my baby and planning so much for the future. I'm sure I'll find my footing again, I just don't know when. In the meantime, I'm wasting energy belittling myself for having no energy. Even recognizing this is not enough to make myself stop doing it though. I still feel horrible for taking time to heal and to grieve, and still feel angry that I'm not coping the way I thought I would, that I'm not moving on because I've barely begun to really analyze and deeply feel what all this really means. Instead I do it anyways, and yell at myself that I should pull myself together, because other people have worse problems and why don't you stop sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself? But I can't, that's the problem.

Journal entry #9 ~ November 6th, 2002

I'm not doing so good today... it's a hate yourself loud music kind of day. I just feel like I'm scrambling to regain some control of my life and it's not happening. I wonder where did my life GO? I had all these wonderful things happening and then all of a sudden... I used to not want to get pregnant again for a very long time, if *ever*, but not my focus is shifting and I just want to be pregnant again, I want to have those feelings *back*. I ran into someone who didn't know yet, and she started talking before I could even interject - she said "Oh, I was watching a show and there was this woman who got pregnant and it was so typical, all the symptoms - how are you feeling? Are you tired?". All I said was "Yeah, I miss all those things... I guess you haven't heard." It's true though, I *miss* being pregnant, I really do. Even the goddamn nausea and tiredness... I would put up with it again no question if it meant I could have my baby back with me.

I finally stopped bleeding. 10 days of bleeding and the last day started getting so heavy again I was worried that I would be bleeding for another week, but no, after that it stopped completely. In a way it's made me sad though, like I hardly have anything to hold onto to remind me that I ever was pregnant. Not that bleeding is something nice to hold onto, it's not a memory, it's not a positive thing, but at least it's something. I don't know if that makes sense, but for some reason I'm not like "yay!". At least now I can go swimming or something, I'd been waiting and wanting to go. I remember how much better that made me feel after I miscarriage angel. If only my stupid neck would get better, I feel like it's really really interfering with any kind of healing I could be doing right now!! I want to do all the things that I know help me feel better and so many of them are out of bounds. Like swimming, I can't for a swim yet. And cleaning and movnig furniture, that often helps me, just rearranging things around. I think it's because when you're depressed and feel like you can't control anything, it helps to have *something* to control, even if it's furniture.

Here's hoping I'm feeling better tomorrow. It better not get any worse because I don't know how much more I can be like this. I just hate myself so much when I'm like this, but that makes it hard not to be. That doesn't make any sense either, but it's the whole vicious cycle thing I guess.

Journal entry #10 ~ November 8th, 2002

Today I feel calmer, more at peace with myself and my life and the way it's turning out... For two weeks I've felt anxious and in despair, it was almost a panick-y kind of desperation - searching for a way to grieve, searching for answers to why this completely cruel and unfair thing happened to me. Now some of those feelings are starting to fade. My bleeding didn't stop completely at the start of this week like I thought it would, but it's only come back in spotting here and there since Monday. It will be weird to see what my cycle is like this month - I haven't starting charting again (no thermometer out yet). I don't expect it to be anywhere near normal, with two weeks of bleeding and spotting to start it off...

I went to see the doctor yesterday, who had my blood results back. My HcG level is still relatively high (if I took a pregnancy test today, it might still show a positive!), but that's to be expected. I remember at around 6 weeks, my HcG levels were already around 10,000, and they only got higher between 6 weeks and 11 weeks, so of course it takes a while to get everything back to normal. In a way though, seeing that I still had some amount of pregnancy hormones in my system was reassuring somehow. Like it made me feel okay to be still feeling emotionally "out-of-balance" since I was physically rebalancing as well!

I find sometimes I really miss being pregnant, I really miss thinking about the baby growing inside of me, taking care of her. I miss Paul sliding my vitatin box over the kitchen table to remind me that I hadn't taken my prenatal yet that day- it was his way of doing his part, he'd said. I miss planning for the baby - planning how I would set up her room, dreaming and imagining what she would look like. I miss all the stupid pregnancy symptoms - my tightened belly, feeling kinda spacey and forgetful, hell, even the nausea. I miss that special feeling of having the responsibility placed in yours hands of a tiny life to nurture from now until forever. I really mourn all that I've missed out on with this little one, all that Harmony will miss out on, all that Paul will miss out on, and all that we will miss out on from now on.

Everything seems to be simplified though, which is a good thing. The other day I was feeling a bit sad, and Harmony gave me a hug and I said "I miss the baby" and she said "Me too mommy". And it was that simple... and it is that simple... I think sometimes we try to struggle to find all these different ways of saying things, and different ways of interpreting our grief, and different ways to be angry at ourselves, and angry at our bodies, and angry at God, but what it all comes down to is really a very simple feeling that it's ok to feel and express- I miss my baby.

Journal entry #11 ~ November 12th, 2002

Good days and bad days... Yesterday was living breathing hell. At the end of the day my eyes were literally red and sore and burning from crying so much. I had to go back to school on Monday and it just felt like being rudely shoved out of a cosier place into a harsh reality of being chained down to a metal desk and forced to do endless work that is completely meaningless to you. History wasn't too bad but Neuroscience was a rude awakening - after nicely asking how I was feeling, my prof then stupidly handed me the assignment of that week, where the first question was on research for teratogens ingested by pregnant mothers and what are the possible developmental and adnormal defects of the fetus, etc. How cruel... it took me ten minutes of crying and screaming in the washroom to calm down and tell her I was only answering the other two questions. That first one was too close to home - we are still waiting for the test results back to find out what was "abornormally developped" with our little "fetus" I told her. I cringe when I think about how most university students probably haven't given a thought to what they are researching. There are no feelings behind the question - fetal abnormalities is just another topic for them, when for me it strikes to the core of what I am experiencing right now. The thing with school though is that it all seems so meaningless... all that I'm reading and researching, I don't care about. All I want to think about is my life, my family, my future, my babies, my future baby or babies even maybe someday... I don't care about the different neurotrasmitters or the French Revolution or Attribution theory... it's all just nonsense, brain wasting nonsense.

Sometimes I just want to curl up into a little ball and be submerged in a warm pool of water. Sometimes I want to hide under my big blanket and just stay there. Sometimes I just want to be able to soothe my tears and red eyes somehow, with some miraculous potion that makes them stop flowing, or at least makes it stop hurting to cry so much, hurting outside and inside, physically and emotionally. I wish any of these things were possible.

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