A Tale from the Dark Side - Miscarriage

I've had this post written for a while. It's been sitting in draft while I've procrastinated about continuing on. If I don't post it now and force myself to write through the rest of our experience involving trying to conceive a second child which ended in a nearly crushing blow in the spring of 2011 I will never finish. Don't grammar police me, if I don't publish it now I will re-write it until my fingers fall off. So here is part 1. 

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Here's how it's been lately.

I'm in the shower and as I work in my conditioner, strands of hair surround my fingers like tentacles, clinging to both of my hands as I pull them away from my head. So many, in fact, that I have to work them off of under the spray of water, pushing them down and off my fingertips by rubbing them against my stomach. They are stuck to my shoulders, my back, and forming a web over the drain.

This has been happening for a few weeks now. I've been trying to avoid thinking about it. What's the big deal? I guess normally it wouldn't be on my mind so much but lately every freakin' time I pass a mirror I see hairs on my shirt, they are stuck in my brush, they are in my bed and on my pillow when I go to sleep.

Seeing them everywhere reminds me of the thing about how you will lose more hair than usual following a stressful event in your life. They say it will happen anywhere from one month to a year later, depending on who you believe. I know what happened to me, to us - my husband and I - 8 months ago and if anything could cause this sudden round of shedding... Well, that was it.

In March of this year I lost a pregnancy. Having a miscarriage is not in itself as horrible for me as it may be for someone else. It's physically painful, disappointing and sad, but I've had my share of them. But in March - that was different.

Let me start at the beginning.

My husband and I got married in July 2006. Shortly after we started trying to have a baby and over the Christmas holidays that year I started to feel nauseous. In fact, I spent an entire 2 hour ferry ride huddled in our car on the vehicle deck of the boat because I was too sick to move. It actually didn't occur to me that I might be pregnant until we got home that evening.

I went into the bathroom and took an early pregnancy test (EPT). I still remember sitting in the bathroom, waiting for the stick to say 'pregnant' or 'not pregnant', nervous as hell. When it came up 'pregnant' I felt all the blood drain from my face, I actually almost feinted I think. My first thought was 'Oh shit!' even though this is what we wanted, had been trying for months to achieve! White as a ghost I walked into the living room and told my husband. Scared as all get out, but happier than anything, we giggled and hugged and let the news sink in.

Five days later I miscarried. On New Years Eve. I had only been about 6 weeks along.

It was devastating to us - we'd tried and tried and it was such a quick transition from excited and scared to sad and confused. The doctor explained how these things are very common and that we should just go right ahead and try again as soon as we felt ready.

So we did. And we got pregnant again. And in early April that year I miscarried again, this time at about 7 weeks. The doctor offered us the option to go and get genetic testing done. We chose not to since we aren't a high-risk couple and we didn't really want the stress of it all. We thought we would be better off just taking it as it went for another try.

It was a good idea in theory. Unfortunately, my hormones were so completely out of whack and the stress of the situation put me in a pretty shitty state emotionally and mentally. I was high-functioning but a goddamned nightmare to my husband and where my personal relationship with him was concerned. We almost ended in divorce. Thankfully we saw a marriage counselor who advised me to seek help from my medical doctor in the form of medication. It worked. About 5 weeks later I was back to normal and appalled at what I had put my husband through.

A few months later and back on track we started to try to conceive again. In October I got pregnant  (ironically exactly 1 year after my first pregnancy) but this time everything went very well other than developing gestational diabetes and in August 2008 our beautiful, amazing baby boy was born.

To be continued. 


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This post is the first in my Project 365 series wherein (after this initial few posts of back-history) I will post a few short words on the daily bullshit involved in trying to conceive and what happens after that. Only it will be funnier. And probably kind of stupid, in a good smart way. You know what I mean.