Just a little bit longer.

Just until I was sure it wouldn’t be snatched away the moment I revealed it. My husband was the only other person that knew. Turns out it didn’t matter if we kept it to ourselves.

I kept it a secret and it was still stolen from me.

I knew it the moment I saw the first drops of blood.

My husband knew exactly what I meant when I walked down the basement steps, met his eyes, and said, “I’m bleeding.”

Our secret no longer needed to be kept.

It would never get to be revealed.

There would be no excitement.
No fawning over sonograms.
No baby.

JQ asked me the other day if we should tell G-tot our secret. I shook my head no, “not yet”. If…IF…if things went wrong, I couldn’t bear to have to explain that to him. Not again. I couldn’t dangle the prospect of a sibling in front of him and then snatch it away. He doesn’t deserve that—not now. Not ever.

But then, neither do we.

And yet…once again…it is my reality.

Once again I would find myself fighting off the pain and wiping away the endless flow of tears as the blood poured out of me.

Then just before dinner on Halloween I would feel it leave my body. This time I wouldn’t call my husband into the bathroom. This time I would just stare into the toilet myself.

Say may goodbyes alone.

And flush my dreams of another child away.

It’s bullshit.

I know therapy is helping. I’m recognizing things about myself that have been eye opening and healing. But I don’t think it’s enough.

I still spend a lot of time unhappy and in tears. Something is wrong. Deeply and painfully wrong.

It wasn’t always like this.

I used to be happy. I used to want to do things—to go out and have fun. I used to say “Yes” more than “No”.

I used to have a libido.

Now I’m just apathetic about life.

Like with cooking. For me cooking is a sign that I care. A little gesture of love. Something that I would take great pride and pleasure in. Lately we have just been eating crappy take out and paltry processed garbage.

What the hell is wrong with me?

It’s not an everyday occurrence. I’m not at the bottom of a pit of despair yet. But it is happening way too often and the pattern has been escalating.

Something has to change before I end up losing everything important to me.

I don’t play with my son enough anymore. I used to plan all the fun activities and things to do with him on my days off work. I’ve become an observer instead of an active participant.

I’m not creating the way I used to. I don’t take as many pictures. I haven’t touched my screen printing stuff in months.

Everything just seems hard and not really worth the effort. And that statement right there is the one that is most devastating. Because those are the things that are worth the most effort. The things I love. The ones that create an insurmountable feeling of bliss inside me.

They are the things that I’ll lose if I continue to push them aside to make room for my own self loathing.

Then I’ll be left in that pit of despair.

Maybe I should try the drugs again. Perhaps I was too quick to turn my nose up at them in a gesture that said, “I don’t need you. I can take care of myself.”

But changing my mind comes with its own set of fears and questions. How will the drugs affect me? Will I get through the zombie haze? What if I get pregnant? Then what happens? Will I be worse off having had the chemical change happen at all? Will quitting them, coupled with a hormonal shift and the fear of another miscarriage, send me spiraling back into an even darker depression?

So I sit caught up in my head with those 29 little pills still sitting in the cabinet.

I don’t know why I never threw them out. Maybe subconsciously I’ve known all along that I would need them again someday.

I was spent. Exhausted. Overwhelmed.

Devastated.

For weeks after that horrifying weekend I wondered if I would ever be happy again. I wondered when it would stop hurting so much. I hoped it would be sooner than later.

I was permanently altered in those moments in the bathroom. I had fear shoved down my throat for three days and saw things I can’t unsee.

It made me scared to try again.

I’m still scared.

Reading the posts from those first few days and all of your comments has me in tears all over again. I’m not sure I can ever express just how grateful I am to have received that outpouring of love from everyone. I did not grieve alone in those first few days.

I still hate that this happened to us. I never thought a miscarriage would be how my second pregnancy would end. Now I’m afraid it will always happen to us.

I’m not sure I could handle that.

But these past five months have taught me many things about myself. Especially about my unhappiness.

I’m still figuring out how to overcome that. I’m hopeful.

And I’m getting better.

Little by little my deep-seated wounds are healing. Thankfully.

Every day but Saturday.

And let me tell you something, it felt so good to not cry for that one entire day.

It was kind of a big deal for me.

You see, on Saturday JQ had a gig at a funky little bar in Maumee called The Village Idiot. Always fun and always peppered with people I’ve known in my lifetime. Plus they have amazing pizza there. Like the Greek one that has feta, artichoke hearts, olives, banana peppers, and tomatoes on it. Yum.

Anyway.

I’m not sure if it was because the gig was in the town we grew up in or what, but my grandma offered to take G-tot overnight so I could go see JQ play. So I did. And so did approximately 25 of our friends and family members. Most of whom I hadn’t seen since the miscarriage. But all of them already knew and I was actually able to talk briefly about it and accept their condolences without crying.

Without crying.

And since I spent the previous fourteen days in tears and generally avoiding the company of others it was a pretty big deal. Maybe I had enough distractions throughout the day that I didn’t have time to dwell on the loss and the grief. Maybe it was the full moon. Maybe it was the music.

Whatever it was it felt really good. I think I’m ready for more of those tear-free days.

It’s been eleven days since a piece of my soul died. Eleven days. And while I’m no longer crying uncontrollably over my loss, the sadness is still there. All you have to do is look into my eyes to see it.

But I’m getting better.

Thank you for being exactly the kind of online community I’ve grown to connect with and love for so many years. I have read each one of your comments more than once and I can’t begin to tell you how much they mean to me. JQ is reading them. My mom is reading them. My dad is probably reading them. My loss is their loss and heartache. I imagine your words are also helping them heal.

Thank you.

For the card. For the email. For the book. For the meal. For the message left on my office voice mail after watching me completely not keep it together in front of the class, thank you. It was sweet and awkward. It made me cry. All of it has made me cry.

Thank you for calling me strong. Courageous. Admirable.

Those words are very powerful and I’m not sure how deserving I am of them. But thank you.

Thank you for every kind gesture you have made over the last week. They mean more than you know.

I try to avoid the temptation to use Google to diagnose my problems. It just isn’t a good idea. This was especially important for me to remember over the last several days. I knew what was happening and I didn’t need the added stress of the BAD stuff I was guaranteed to find. I was freaking out plenty on my own. But I couldn’t not do it. So I did a couple of searches for first trimester bleeding on Friday when things still had a glimmer of hope around the edges. I tried very carefully to pick the ones that seemed reputable and were not Yahoo! Answers where  anybody can answer the question and proceed to put more fear in you than you started with. I looked at a few with URLs that had “med” or something in the title, scanned them for hopeful information and that was it.

But here’s the thing. Sometimes if you don’t Google that crap you may not realize that what some of the BAD might be. Like this scenario.  You pass a bunch of tissue all at once. You mourn your loss. You say good-bye. You try to start some sort of grieving and healing process. Then a couple days later you pass another clot the size of a silver dollar and resting within it is a tiny visible baby about the size of a nickel. There is no mistaking it.

And you have to say good-bye all over again.

That was what happened to me on Monday afternoon. And it really sucked.

I’m devastated. I’m heartbroken. I’m numb.

I hate that this happened to us.

I watched my entire loss unfold right before my eyes and I was helpless. There was nothing I could do about it. That sucks so much. So much that I just want to spew expletives across the page as I weep with every word I write. Fuck you Master Plan. This isn’t a part of life that I ever wanted to experience.

I knew something was wrong. I knew it Thursday night with that first sign of blood. That’s why I called the doctor. The ultrasound confirmed a heartbeat. Then it all went downhill from there.

I never really stopped bleeding after that. I called the doctor again and was told not to worry too much about it. Try to relax. The ultrasound looked good. But the bleeding wouldn’t stop. So I called again. This time it was the on call doctor. She told me the same thing. I tried to explain that there was a lot of blood. So much blood. Too much blood. She told me if the bleeding persisted through the weekend and filled up a pad about every half an hour to call the doctor on Monday. She told me if I was passing the baby it would look different than bleeding with clots. So I asked her what it would look like. “It would be white and look like tissue.” she said.

I tried to relax. I laid down on the couch. I didn’t pick up G-tot. I watched a movie with JQ. And every single time I went to the bathroom the blood just seemed to pour out of me. I think I went through an entire roll of toilet paper on Friday. Then I went to bed and hoped that when I woke up on Saturday the worst of it would be behind us.

Instead I woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning on Saturday in excrutiating pain. I made to the bathroom and sat on the toilet not sure if I wanted to puke, poop, or pass out. I was shaking uncontrollably and the pain was almost unbearable. It was the same pain I felt when I started going into labor with G-tot. I could hardly breathe and when I finally got back into bed JQ wrapped his arms around me and helped me gain enough control to take long deep breaths. The pain subsided and I fell asleep.

When I woke up Saturday the pain was gone and the first pee seemed promising—no sign of blood. Or at least, nothing like the night before. But I was wrong. Oh so very, very wrong. The next trip to the bathroom would change my life forever.

*This is the part of the story that may be a little too much for some people.*

It happened sometime between 10:30 and 11:00. I went into the bathroom just like I had so many times in the past 24 hours and sat down on the toilet. I started to pee, the blood came with it and then I felt it. I felt it come out of my body. I heard it hit the water in the toilet. I didn’t need to look. I knew what had just happened. But I did look. What I saw I will never ever forget.

I called JQ into the bathroom and told him he needed to come alone. When he got to the door I told him I lost the baby.

“No. No, no, no.” he said.
“Yes. Yes.” I replied. “I know that is what just happened.”

And with that I turned around reached into the toilet and scooped our little zygote out with my hand. “See. This is not blood clotting. This was the baby.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to pick it up. I could see it through the blood stained water in the toilet. Even though it was stained with blood  I knew what it was. It was so frighteningly obvious what it was. I think I was just in shock and at the time it did not seem gross or wrong to me. But I can’t get that image out of my head.

I tried to say good-bye. I told the little zygote that I loved it. I told it I was sorry. Then I closed the lid to the toilet, put my head down on it and cried. And cried. And cried. And cried.

I’m devastated. I’m heartbroken. I’m numb.

I feel like a part of my soul has died and I have no idea how to move forward.