Standing still: day 5

Fear.

The hate took hold by the time I pushed my way out of the Ob's office. The waiting room was filled with swollen bellies, new  moms, and crying babes. Fuck them. I wanted to hiss at them. I wanted to scream at those women that they will never understand how lucky they are. I wanted to claw at them and show them how their petty complains of swollen ankles or lack of sleep could never compare to my imploded heart. I'm scared at how full of hate I am. Fuck me.

In a situation where there is no right or safe answer, I think I'm going to go forward with the D&C. I'm terrified of this just as much as I'm terrified of the alternative. There is no comfort or relief with this choice, there is only second guessing and all consuming fear.

I started bleeding last night. The red blood, though I knew it was coming, made my knees buckle and a wail erupt from a very deep place. I'm petrified my body won't wait for the surgery and that I'm going to have to do this alone.

I'm angry at Mike for changing his mind on which direction we're going. I've been looking to him as the stable one, the logical one, the one that can make the right decision when I cannot. But his lack of being proactive has unnecessarily prolonged this process. Every second of every day, the fear of this dead thing consumes me. I'm terrified that I will forever blame my husband if it is too late.  

I slept next to a pile of towels and a bottle of Vicoden. This is not how things were supposed to happen. Since Thursday, I can't be alone without gruesome thoughts creeping into my head. For the few moments I have slept, I've been plagued by horrifying dreams of steep cliffs and dark places. I'm scared to close my eyes.

A year and a half of infertility caused thousands of hairline fractures in my marriage. Repeated loss has turned those into deep cravases. Mike doesn't understand my grief and thinks I'm over reacting. I don't understand his lack of compassion and question why he is so removed. Instead of finding strength in each other, we are further apart than we have ever been. I'm afraid of my marriage may not be strong enough.

My Ob didn't seem to think my Hashi's was to blame for this. So what then? 25-30% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. The number plummets to 5% for those that have two consecutive miscarriages. The stats are not in my favor. I'm frightened of what this repeated pregnancy loss means.

I feel sick when I think about returning to the clinic. I walked out those doors two weeks ago so proud, but today I'll be returning with my eyes adverted, shoulders rounded, and forever looking fearfully behind me. The appointments, the injections, the speculums, and pregnancy tests are almost too much to return to. The fear of continuing fertility treatments scares me just as much as choosing not to.

The girl I used to be, so generous with unsolicited smiles, compassion, and love for herself and others, is hardening into something that is almost unrecognizable. The irrational desire to lash out and hurt people that don't deserve it is bound to drive everyone away. I'm afraid that this hate and anger has forever changed who I am.

I'm just so fucking scared.

Standing still: day 3

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Disclaimer: This blog will not be pleasant for a while. I'm not going to censor myself because frankly, this is the only place I have where I can openly voice what is happening.

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I've only gotten a few hours of sleep since Thursday. Because every time I close my eyes, I either see what could have been or the image of my dead baby on the ultra sound monitor. And yes, it had grown enough in the last week and a half to resemble a little human form.

The knife goes in deeper.

And if it weren't enough to grieve the child I finally allowed to hold all my hopes and dreams, I'm forced to make a decision on how, exactly, I would like to expel it from my body. They've given me 2 choices, both of which carry risks and terrify me beyond words.

A natural miscarriage seems straightforward enough, but the process is, from what I hear, excruciatingly painful. You labor the fetus until it is out, by yourself, completely unaided. I guess they don't have labor and delivery classes for women with dead babies. Or maybe I just haven't earned enough points as a mother yet. Whatever the case, there is approximately a 10% risk of developing a severe infection if all the tissue doesn't expel on its own. If this happens, you have to have a D&C anyway. Sounds like a fun way to spend the afternoon, no? Oh, that's not quite right, it could take over a month for the bleeding to stop.

Or, there is the D&C- a surgical extraction of the fetus. You wake up groggy, in pain, and... empty. Sounds like the easier route to take, but there is an approximately 13% chance of complications due to the anesthesia or permanent scarring of the uterus, which of course, could render you permanently infertile. Oh the irony.

Two really great choices, how ever will I ever pick? But just maybe, while I am in the process of making this decision, my body will force my hand. It is a surreal feeling knowing that literally at any moment, the spotting that has already started, could turn into red blood and I'd be forced to my knees. Not that I'm really in the mood to go shopping at the mall or for a picnic at the beach right now... but still.

I cancelled the D&C that was scheduled by my Ob for Monday. For several reasons I was mad at her and didn't know if I trusted her to do the procedure. There is also the very real possibility that I'm just shooting the messenger because she was the one that delivered the bad news. However, the only doctor I *do* trust is Dr. D, and she is out of the country until early August.

So, I have scheduled a consult on Monday with Dr. D's partner instead. She spent some time on the phone with me yesterday and talked me through the options- something my Ob did not do which left me feeling very scared, very confused, and entirely alone. Mike will be coming with me because he's really concerned about the D&C and scarring. In his mind, he'd rather me go through the pain of a natural miscarriage if it means my fertility is preserved. Which, I totally get and I'm glad he is there to think logically because at this point, I've pretty much shut down. But I'm just so scared to have a natural miscarriage. I don't know if I can physically or emotionally handle it. I'm hopeful that Dr. S will somehow give us the direction we need. But in reality I know that she will just present us with the facts and tell us that this is a personal decision that we must make on our own.

In the meantime, I just want to curl up and die.

Standing still

I would have been 9 weeks on Saturday.

But today, we didn't see that sweet little heartbeat anymore. The ultrasound image was unacceptably still. And now my heart, is torn into a million tiny black pieces.