Loss impacting others, more guilt & the future

I feel like my main iPhone photo album (when you go to camera -> pictures) is just a linear history of a heart breaking.  There are photos of the positive pregnancy test from last July.  The one decision I will always regret.

Then there's the positive line from December.  I remember that morning so vividly.  It was a week and a half after we returned from Paris; our selected locale for trying to conceive for the first time.  We thought, how romantic to begin such one of the most loving of endeavors in the most romantic city in the world.  I remember putting my hand on my pelvis, and quietly saying "hello.".   I remember trying so hard to take a picture of that light, but oh so present line, so I could text it to my sister for confirmation that I wasn't going crazy.  It was 12/21.  I didn't tell C until Christmas morning.  Then I remember on 1/2, making a frittata, happily chopping vegetables, excited to use a new roasted tomato and artichoke spread that I had found at Williams-Sonoma.  But then I felt a warmth.  And it was like my heart stopped.  Instinctively I knew what the warmth meant; I knew that the pregnancy was over.  Little did I know that the next couple weeks would be crazy because while I hemorrhaged on 1/2, the pregnancy progressed for at least a week, and completed itself at the end of January.  Which is why we didn't try again until the end of March.  And, as luck would have it, I have a picture of the positive line from that single March event; it's another picture on my iPhone.

In December (and April) called my doctor for a routine blood test - she likes to monitor hcg levels and progesterone in women who have miscarried.  I had all the blood work, received all the confirmations; but never a congratulations.  My obgyn office does not congratulate a woman until she passes the first trimester.  As someone who has lost, I see why they do this, and I am thankful for this practice.  For first time mother's, they sometimes wait until after the 8 week ultrasound confirms a heartbeat.  I think that happens more when the women want to be congratulated.  I fit solely into the other camp, the one that does not want to be congratulated until the terrifying first trimester is over.

I find it to be so crazy that there are women that go through this process blissfully ignorant; convinced that their pregnancy will result in a baby; screaming immediately from the rooftops. Maybe I'm weird, but I just don't have that in me.  There's just so much that can go wrong; so much pain that can be caused; I just can't bring myself to help create hopes and dreams and excitement in others, knowing that in the back of my mind that it may not last.  No one but C knew I was pregnant in December - I told him on 12/25 and was able to keep it from his family the entire time, even though we were there for 4 days.  Somehow no one noticed I wasn't drinking.  Or I made virgin drinks and pretended they contained alcohol. I told my mother only after I miscarried.  I'm relieved I did it that way.  I'm relieved I saved her the pain of losing that grandchild - or rather, of expecting it to arrive only to find out that it wasn't destined for us.

And, considering for us, no pregnancy has ever truly lasted the test of time, I don't know when I'll again share my pregnancy.  This time around we told C's parents on Mother's Day because we had seen the heartbeat and I was about 8 weeks.  We told my parents the day after via Facetime because my sister graduated from college on Mother's Day, and I didn't want to take that day from her.  I wanted it to be about her, as it should have been.

Next time, I guess we tell after the anatomy scan?  After the CVS?  I mean, if the amnio and microarray from this pregnancy are clean, then we have to wait until after the anatomy scan as a 'perfect' CVS just wouldn't be enough.

I feel like with every pregnancy I'll be afraid of breaking not only my heart, but the hearts of all of those who love us.  How fair is that?  How do you deal with those feelings, too?  Knowing that the loss touches and breaks the hearts of everyone close to you?  I know I'm not responsible for the feelings of others, but once you have caused such intense pain in others, even when it's beyond your control, it's hard to imagine how you will react when put in that place again. My cries for the son I lost are the most primal, guttural screams of pain that I ever knew existed.  I contrast that with the joy on my mothers face when she opened the frame containing an ultrasound picture, how she jumped up and down, tears of joy streaming down her face.

All of that is gone now.  And I played a role in robbing it from her. From everyone.  It's like a highlight reel that runs through my brain that just cannot be stopped.  Everyone acts strong for me when they're with me, because they have to put on that facade; but I know that's all it is; a facade.  I know that the people we love still break down over this loss.  And those close to us with children grab their children and hold them closer, thanking whichever god they believe in that they were not us.  Hoping with all hope that they are never us.   And our friends who haven't started trying yet probably partly think we are pariahs, and hope that our bad luck/ju-ju won't rub off on them.

This event, these events, will truly reverberate in every word, every action, every decision we make in the future.  They have reshaped the way that we look at the world.  That song about painting with all the colors of the wind?  Well, our palette has forever changed.

Happiness?

I feel like every day I'm greeted by the happy news of others.  Engagements, weddings, anniversaries, baby announcements.  The stack of thick envelopes on our counter grows thicker and thicker by the day.

But what about MY happiness!?!?!?  Why wasn't I good enough for happiness!?!?  What did I do to deserve to have my happiness ripped out from underneath me? To have to endure the moments, hours, days, that people only think occur in their nightmares, or to bad people, or to people who deserved to have their happiness stolen from them, like a magician's final trick.

Where are my smiles?? Where are my laughs??  When do the guttural sobs or biting my tongue while tears silently march down my cheeks, when do they stop?  When do they make the change over to joy, excitement and happiness?

Why wasn't I good enough for happiness?  Why, out of everyone in this world, was it taken from me?  From us?  When do we start moving from the hell that is statistical significance, to the rest of the insignificant world?  When do we rejoin the living???

Surgery, Recovery and Day 1

My surgery itself appears to have gone well.  The doctor called it 'straightforward' and it took only about 16 minutes.  Amazing that it took olive almost 5 months to come to that point in it's little life, not to mention the difficult journey it takes for egg to meet sperm, etc., and only 16 minutes to end it.  The nursing staff was so kind to DH and I - he asked if we should send them an edible arrangement or something to thank them.  They made the most difficult day of our lives a little more tolerable (and comfortable in terms of drugs <for me, not DH>)  that's the most one can ask.  We got the impression most procedures they see are unwanted pregnancies, so I think that to see two people feeling such obvious grief and pain was a change for nursing staff.

DH's pain was palpable yesterday.  I saw in his eyes when he was saying good bye, and he told me multiple times that it isn't fair that I had to be the one to go through it.  How much it hurt him to see me in so much (emotional) pain and undergoing surgery.  For me, it was a full 100% onslaught of non-stop pain.  I thought I detached a bit the last week, but yesterday all I could think about was every ultrasound.  Of seeing his heart beat for the first time, seeing his little arms and legs flailing about on the tv screen.  DH laughing and smiling as he observed his son.  Oh, how the memories make my heart swell with pain, but at the same time leave me with the hope that we will one day be there again.

I left the hospital feeling more hopeful, and feeling a bit more of the closure that was so needed.  I didn't by any means feel peace, but part of me felt hopeful for the future, and that hopeful that maybe this Christmas we will receive the same present we did last year - a BFP.  Though we lost that pregnancy on 1/2/13 (and this one officially on 8/2/13); so I don't like the 2nd day of each month and I don't really like the year 2013.  So, maybe I'll have to temper my hope for 2014.

This morning I'm angry for something that will likely make me angry for a long time.  I'm mad that life continues to go on exactly as it did before; in the ultimate scope of the world, what happened to us and our physical pain, is just a blip on the radar.  The sun will continue to rise and set, rain will fall (oh, how I wish rain would fall), and life will just go on.  And with that our lives will go on.  Every single morning I'm reminded that our lives will go on.  As I've said before, that doesn't mean they will be any easier, or that they will be without pain or reminders, but the world truly will go on. And we have two options - we either slowly wade back into it, or we stand from the sidelines and we watch.  Right now, watching may feel right, and it may feel easier, but in the long run, it's not right,

Olive, we miss you so much.  You have left a hole in our hearts and our lives that will never, ever be filled.  We can continue to fill it with love and remorse, but it will never truly be filled.  I've never really believed in heaven, the logical side of my brain has a difficult time with such a concept, but I do hope that if there is one, that you have found it, and that you were welcomed in with open arms.  At this moment in time I cannot let myself believe that there isn't a heaven, or that there isn't more to life than what we see, because I cannot and will not believe that you are truly gone and that your tiny little life in my uterus was all in vain.  If I let myself believe that; then that's an entirely different battle that I end up losing, and right now I will let myself believe that my logical brain in wrong.  I've never wanted to be wrong before (well, other than when deep down I knew that there just wasn't something right during your development).

While I was in recovery, being forced to drink apple juice and eat a muffin, I requested to speak to the on-site clergy.  He was very kind, a Presbyterian minister who graduated from Princeton 2 years after DH and them went on to the seminary school.  I spoke to him alone, as DH is still firmly an atheist, and while I am more agnostic, I requested to speak to him because I wanted to know what he would tell someone in my position.  If he would tell me that this happened because God wanted my baby, or that my baby was too beautiful for this world.  Thankfully he didn't say either of these, and was able to engage in the type of theoretical, existential conversation I needed, and at the end of the day he conceded that he too had no answers.  He told me that he believes that rather than having a larger plan for everyone, God is with is constantly, walking beside us as we face this life.  As a scientist I think I'll eventually find a place for faith and logic to co-exist, but right now I feel like both have failed me.  In a Darwinian fashion I was told that in this case my DH & I's genes were not fit to reproduce, and that our little one was not the fittest.  For a geneticist, there is much pain in that.  My logical brain can rationalize and accept that, but it's not particularly comforting.

Today I face the challenge of moving, as just me.  It's the first day in nearly 5 months, that it's really just me.  That's a very uncomfortable truth.

I did learn that Tiffany has an olive branch line this year, so this morning we are going to pick up a few pieces.  Anything with his birthstone would be too painful because he never it made it to his birthday, but I know that these, more subtle pieces, will be a gentle reminder that I can touch or grab when I need to feel just a little closer to olive.  For that who do not know, olive branch means peace, and while we called him olive and not olive branch, I still like to think that the name is appropriate.