Fine

About a month after my miscarriage, I went back and read the emails I'd sent out to announce my loss to friends and family in the haze of my shock and sadness. They were bizarre; reassuring, and almost chipper. I told everyone was fine and looked forward to delivering happier news in the future. I think I was still partly in denial, and partly trying to convince myself that I was fine. For some reason when I got the trans-vaginal ultrasound to confirm miscarriage, I interpreted my empty uterus as a diagnosis of good reproductive health. I guess I thought that it would show whether anything was "wrong with me," and not simply that my baby was gone. I thought that because I had stopped cramping the next day, my body was "bouncing right back," as I repeatedly told people. I thought that because I could go more than an hour without crying, that I was "coping ok."

I don't know whether anyone was sensitive and insightful enough to see through my facade. I sense that enough people believe that miscarriage is a minor setback, that most of them were perfectly satisfied with the idea that I was doing well the very next day. Few have asked me how I am doing since then, and to few have I volunteered any further information.

I would say that for the first month I was completely in a fog, for the second I was working hard on moving forward, and now in the third month I am letting myself finally accept how devastating this was and how it's still affecting me. I remember when I first arrived on the Pregnancy Loss board at the Bump, I was horrified to see people there who were saying that they still grieved months after their losses. Although I knew I would always remember mine, the idea that I could actively grieve months after the event terrified me. Inside I wailed, NO, I do not want that to be my life! Now that it is... I'm less resistant. This is my life. I didn't ask for it, it just is what it is.

Recently I had to ask four friends to write recommendations for me to the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization. My old college friend Michelle (not her real name) left me a voicemail the other day letting me know she'd sent the email for me and we should talk and catch up soon. I think I have talked to her once since the miscarriage (honestly I can't even quite remember), or at least emailed, and I didn't talk about the loss at all. I feel like what people want from me is a demonstration that I don't even think about it anymore. But now I'm past that. I wrote her last night and I was open about how hard things have been for me lately. That our first unsuccessful cycle of trying reopened the wound. Michelle and I were close in college, but when it comes to feelings she has always been a little detached; this is not the kind of think we usually talk about, but I'm tired of hiding it. How can I not mention this thing that occupies so much of my thoughts?

I also sent an email to my dad. He had sent me a guest sermon he delivered the previous weekend, and I hadn't had time to listen to it, because I just had so much going on emotionally last week. So I told him that. He sent me back a cryptic message about how he knows the feeling of love lost, and that love is a purifying fire that makes us vulnerable, and eventually we will gain so much we will realize we never have lost. It just kind of makes me want to cry again. I know that my parents never lost a baby, and I don't think he did with my stepmom either. I know that he is probably speaking of his divorce, and it's different... he did gain so much by remarrying, but I will never feel like my miscarriage was not a loss. And it hurts to feel misunderstood, to feel a bit like he is minimizing my pain. It's not my parents' fault that they don't understand what I'm going through, but it's lonely for me that they just don't get it.

I don't want to become the Miscarriage Monster, as I once sarcastically called myself on the boards, constantly reminding everyone of what I've been through. But I'm backpedaling a little after initially telling everyone that it was all fine and I was fine and moving on. I want people to know, even if they can't understand, that what happened was important.