It's now been exactly one month since my last miscarriage.
I'm not sure how to feel a lot of times. Most times, I stay busy and focus on other things. I excel at keeping myself busy lately, as I am a mother to a toddler, writing a book and spend a lot of time educating myself about health and fitness. Yet there are times when the grief creeps up on me. Like an emotional wave that crests and falls.
This is my second miscarriage this year. Only 2% of women go on to miscarry twice in a row. I often ask myself...how did I get so "lucky?"
...and should I talk about it?
On January 2nd, 2013, Eros and I discovered we were expecting our second child. We were ecstatic, as we had wanted very much to add another child to our family, having had such a blissful and lovely experience with our son.
I miscarried that pregnancy when I was almost in the second trimester. After we'd already told a lot of our family and friends. It was disgusting, the way it felt at the doctor's office, when I learned my baby had no heartbeat...and I had to walk through the lobby to another room, fighting tears with my bad news, wading through all the pregnant women who had been luckier then I was to keep their pregnancies.
It was even more grotesque when I decided I had to wait for my body to miscarry naturally on its own. For more then a week I existed in a surreal state of being. I had a dead baby inside of me and yet I had to keep living. It was so fucking weird and unnatural.
When the miscarriage finally happened, it was like a labor. I had contractions, gushing blood and finally, a little baby came out. I could hold it in my hand.
What was worse was telling everyone what happened and hearing all the terrible responses. I heard horrible, horrible things in response to my pregnany loss...meaningless platitudes meant to console me, or guilt me out of my grief, or try to push me to a place of acceptance before I was ready. I heard people say so many heartless, cruel things, in the guise of trying to "help" me. It was then I realized nobody fucking understood what I was going through. Nobody. What hurt the most was people acting like my grief didn't count because I already had a beautiful, living child. How fucking heartless and cruel can you get. I love the child I have and was grieving the child I lost. It still hurt just as bad. I HAD JUST LOST A CHILD. It still fucking pisses me off when I think about it.
I've experienced a lot of death in my life, but nothing devestated me like that loss. For weeks after it was like I lived a half-life. I did get a lot of solace from my son. He kept me busy. But I was still grieving. My pain was simply getting quieter, and buried deeper. I didn't want to think of it anymore. So I didn't. Even though I felt so depressed.
I stayed busy, and got more work done on my novel then ever before. I started thinking that if I couldn't have a baby belly, I wanted to have a six pack and be ridiculously fit. I distracted myself over and over again. And the grief slowly started to fade. It only presented itself again when I encountered a pregnant woman. I would eye her baby belly enviously, wondering why. Why did this happen to me. I reviewed every decision I'd ever made over the past decade. I felt lost, but also determined. I would try again.
I had one chemical pregnancy, and then got pregnant again about 7 months later. That pregnancy didn't last long either.
Which is where I find myself now. One month later.
I am doing okay. I really am. I am simply riding the wave. I am allowing myself to shoot off into the stratosphere. I'm ferociously determined about everything and anything now. I have so much power behind my life due to these miscarriages it's insane. So maybe that's the mixed blessing of it all. The grief has transmuted into a sense of willpower so profound that I know now that NOTHING and NOBODY will stop me from doing ANYTHING. I have no fear anymore about anything. I have been broken down into little pieces of shattered soul. It's a private thing, for the most part. So few people understand the depth of the losses that I think it's pointless to talk further about it. It is what it is. Yet I still feel the loss, vividly. I STILL DO, and even if I seem to be doing amazing, my victorious incredible life is fueled by what happened when death visited my womb. And I don't really want to talk about it, day to day. I still feel pangs. I still feel upset about it. I still feel bitter, and angry. But sometimes, I write about it. Sometimes I just have to express the grief empowering me, even just a little bit.
Don't worry about me. I'm a fighter. I'm going to keep going, keep pushing, keep thriving. Keep searching for answers. And I believe I've found some. I believe I know why these miscarriages happened to me and I think I am correcting the problem. I might write more on that at a later time.
But it's still sad.
The only thing I can do is use these experiences in a productive way and be stronger and engage life more intensely then I have before.
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