Today I FINALLY got to hang out with the glorious miss Wendy and her fabulous kiddo.  It was splendiferous and marvelous and lots of other ouses that seem to spring into my vocabulary after spending time with her–kind of the way I lapse into LolCat speak after a visit with my fabulous sister in law (who has started a blog!) (on livejournal but it totally counts!) (not that I have anything against livejournal of course) (seriously, I really don’t).

Anyway, it was twelve shades of awesome and I feel ready to rejoin the drudgery that is working every day and making a living.  Because sometimes you need a day off to spend chatting with a good friend about…well, pretty much everything.  And getting hugs from a six year old because little kid hugs are the best.

Right now I’m sitting in the hallway of a building at PSU waiting for Will to be done with class and taking advantage of the University’s free wi-fi.

I’m thinking that maybe I’ll just designate Fridays as my “out of the house” days and use those days to go to the library, perhaps wander a bookstore (and then not buy anything because, hello, we are DESTITUTE) and then work via my laptop at one of the many coffee shops on this campus.  Trust me, if there had been a free table at the Seattle’s Best that is on the bottom floor of this building, I’d be there right now but there was no place to sit.

I’m thinking that getting out of the house regularly will be good for me, even if I do wind up working from a coffee shop or book store or even the seating area at Fred Meyer.

Or it could end up sucking the light fantastic.  I’ll never know until I try.

In other news not quite but sort of relatedness, I got an idea on the bus ride over here for a project.  I’m not sure about the project yet.  It’s still in the “this is brilliant! I have no need to look at it from a practical perspective because it is awesome and the best idea ever!” so I’m not really ready to talk about it.  I need to take a few days and mull it over and think out the practicalities of the situation.  And then, if I think it is still a fantastic idea I might post about it here.  Or not.

In the meantime I think I will start to pack this up because I think Will’s class is almost out.  I love free wi-fi!

It seems to be a trending topic this week in the blogosphere but…I think I have PMS.

All of the symptoms are there: the overly tired, the overly spacey, the easily annoyed at nothing, the wanting to curl up and not move for a few days.  All of the symptoms I used to have are back.

I understand that, technically, this is a good thing.  It means my body is healing and is getting behaving pretty much as it should.  It means that, if all systems are a go, then next week will be the week of ewwww and bleecchhhh and, well–because I have no sense of what is and is not appropriate fashion–spandex worn under my jeans because my Aunt Flo? She tends to…run at the mouth more than the average… well let’s just let that disturbing visual go, shall we?

I am glad that things seem to be getting back to “normal” physically.

But you know what?  I did not miss the PMS.  I do not miss the my ability to concentrate taking unwarranted and abrupt leaves of absence.  I do not miss the ennui.

But here it is.  And I have NO doritos in the house.

Thank god tonight is Estrogen Fest television night.

Today I learned that I can fit into my skinniest jeans again.  Normally this is the cause for rejoicing but today it just made me sad.  I’d be in my 15th week right now–just starting to do the “wide release” good news. I know this because even though I haven’t been really keeping track of where I would have been I keep getting these updates from The Bump (I signed up for the weekly newsletter the day before our first prenatal appointment when we got the bad news) and I can’t figure out how to turn them off.  I try not to think about it too much.  I do my best to keep distracted but sometimes it still really really gets to me.

We’ve made the decision to start trying as soon as I’ve had a regular cycle (so pretty soon) but part of me is reserved about this.  Part of me just wants to be pregnant again.  The other part is terrified of it all going wrong again.  I’ve been spending some time looking through the miscarriage support forums–lurking, not participating and this is a pretty common fear.  It is good to read about other women who have the same fears even if very VERY few of them know how to spell properly.

It’s a little lonely.  I have this great group of people that I can talk to about any and all of this whenever I want to.  I know that.  Everybody who knows has been really supportive but…what is there to say?  I’m sad?  Sure I’m sad.  But it’s more than that…more that involves emotions that I don’t have words for.  I don’t know how to explain this feeling.  The closest I could come the other night when I was trying to explain it to Will is that I just feel…less.  I don’t feel less than.  I just feel…. less.  Not muted.  Not quiet.  Not buried.  Not not me.  Just…less.

Don’t get me wrong.  Most of the time I feel fine.  I feel like I’m dealing the best I can.  Physically I’m pretty sure that things are healing the way they are supposed to (though I’m really ready for the hoo-ha bruising to heal because I’m really tired of getting that quick sharp “ow!” pain when I sit down too hard or sit on a hard chair for too long).  I’m okay.

Until today, out of stupid morbid curiosity I tried on my skinniest jeans (really I should not wear these things in public, the words “camel toe” do not do these jeans justice in their skinny-ness) and….I could button them.  Without cutting off my circulation or suddenly developing a big ol’ muffin top.  And even though I had felt fine and ready for my day before I tried them on, once that button fastened, I just wanted to curl up for a while.

But! I didn’t. The world does not stop because my pants fit.

Enough!

This weekend was pretty fun.  I mentioned that we had friends visiting from southern Oregon.  We have a friend who has been deployed to Iraq since last March with his National Guard unit and he was on leave for about a week and a half.  We had wanted him to come up the weekend before this past one because we didn’t want to take away from his last days with his family and girlfriend before shipping back out.  We even thought about taking a trip down to make things easier.  As it turns out, he and his girlfriend wanted to do some Portland shopping.  And then they got busy the weekend that we had hoped they would come up so they told us that they would be up by Thursday morning and would leave by Saturday afternoon.

That’s right: they told us.  It is a good thing I like this friend a lot or I’d be pretty pissed off.   Nobody likes to be treated like a hotel.  Heck, even when I have to book a hotel room I still call them up and ASK if there are rooms available.

This has been a long standing thing with some people we’ve known: the telling us what our plans are.  It never stops being irritating.

Anyway!

This friend and his girlfriend made the plans to come up.  I had originally had plans with the lovely Wendy to hang out for some much needed chick time but I canceled so I could be available to show the friend how to get around.

We took them to Powell’s (the super awesome flagship downtown one) on Thursday afternoon.  Then, they slept in on Friday and decided to go to Ikea on their own (they needed to get a bunch of furniture for the house they’ll be sharing when friend gets back from Iraq).  This was fine with me–I wasn’t really up for Ikea.  But they didn’t decide until it was too late for me to call Wendy and ask if we could still get together.  Arg!

So I decided to spend the day working.  I sent them off with directions on how to get there and back (and then sent a text message with corrected return directions so that they wouldn’t accidentally end up in the Dalles) and spent the rest of the day working.  It was kind of nice.

Saturday we drove them to the Voodoo Doughnut in NE Portland (the one with parking! And seating! And pinball!) and then they headed back south at noonish.

Honestly?  It was a good visit.  I really like this friend and his girlfriend.  He’s my favorite of all of Will’s “game store friends” and I am really glad we got to see him.  I’m kind of harboring a hope that he and his girlfriend will eventually move up here so we can see them more often.  They’re fun.  And they don’t seem to mind my nervous non-stop chattering.

But I still would kind of like “is it okay if we” before telling us that they plan to stay with us for a while.

Even though it’s almost February I think I might be just about ready to make some New Years resolutions or plans.  They will include better posting (and better quality posts) to this here blog.  And to start replying to my own comments.  I even updated the computer room computer to answer my blog’s e-mail address as well as my work e-mail address so that in a down moment I can reply to people.

Maybe being present…er will help the less?

What a week, what a week.

I worked all week and now we have friends up from southern Oregon visiting (they went to Ikea for the day, I decided to stay home and do some work.  Aren’t I super responsible?) so I haven’t had a lot of time for fun or posting or blog reading.  I did get a chance to scout one of the FIVE coffee shops near my apartment to see if there was any promise to spending some time there just to get out of the house.  It looked nice.  Not as nice as the one up by PSU, but it was pretty empty, even during lunch hour on a weekday so I’d say it holds promise.

Because we’ve had company and because of Will’s renewed (effing) World of Warcraft addiction I haven’t been getting a whole lot of sleep.  This has led to a teensy fall off of my caffeine wagon, but I’ll climb back on soon.

Don’t you feel super special now that you are up to date on the goings on of the Snarke House?

Today Will and I went grocery shopping for the first time since…November? The end of October? I can’t remember.

Okay–we’ve gone to the grocery store plenty of times since then, but only for a basket full of quick stop items.  We’d get some quick frozen foods or order pizza or go get stuff at a drive through to keep us fed but the cooking real food for meals? Has been pretty much non existent for a few months–ironic for someone whose current favorite movie is Julie & Julia I know.

Why have we gone so long without doing a major “let’s stock up!” grocery trip?

Well, the big reason is that we had to wait for the funds to be able to afford a big shopping trip (tonight’s trip came in at $149).

The other biggest reason is that when I was pregnant I had no idea what I’d want to eat or what food wouldn’t make me immediately regret eating it.  So we’d wait for me to have a food craving that lasted longer than ten minutes and then go out and get whatever it was that I was thinking about.

And because when I was pregnant standing up and cooking a whole meal left me drained.  I’d need a nap just from standing up for half an hour.

And then after we found out there wouldn’t be a baby after all, I had the appetite of…a hibernating bear?  Something that doesn’t eat a whole lot or very often.

But a couple of nights ago I felt inspired.  And 100% sick of fast food and frozen dinners.  So I went out and bought some chicken.  And made a scrumptious and (not so very) complicated dinner of butter soaked baked chicken and canned corn.  And even though we’ve eaten this roughly a kwazillion times over the last few years (what? It’s tasty and easy to make!), it still tasted SO GOOD.

And I’ve been watching Julie & Julia like I’m afraid someone’s going to take it away.  And I’ve been reading through The Way to Cook like it’s a novel.  And seriously? I cannot take any more frozen dinners.  Bleeeccccch.

So we went to the grocery store.  And stocked up on pretty much everything.  And I am very much looking forward to the pot roast I’m going to make in the crock pot tomorrow.

We also picked up a caffeinated soda for me while we were at the store because one of my favorite things to do is to fall asleep with Will at the end of the day and he’s staying up late to work on homework (and play stupid World of Warcraft) and, as you can probably tell, it’s kind of taking effect.

So um… I’m going to go do something else for a while until it’s time to go to bed!

While I have spent all day lying on the couch watching television and movies (yay On Demand) I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t kind of wanting to go find a coffee shop to sit in and typeity type away at something.

Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday I’ll take this little netbook and do that.  My afternoon in Starbucks has awakened an urge.  An urge to sit amongst the people and appear as if I am thinking and typing deep and meaningful things while I do little more than blog and play on facebook and twitter.

Speaking of twitter, I was keeping track of the Golden Globes goings on mostly through twitter updates tonight and? I was surprised at just how bitchy everybody was about everything.  Strong! Mean! Opinions! abounded.

I turned on the show just in time to see Meryl Streep win for Julie & Julia and while I watched twitter light up with nasty comments about the movie all I could think was “I really liked it! And I loved Meryl Streep in it!”  And then when Drew Barrymore won for Grey Gardens all I thought was “good for her” and “this is a very cute speech!”  All the while people were lashing out about her dress.

And I realized something: I have become thoroughly nonplussed about these things.  Once upon a time I lived and breathed the entertainment industry.  I knew who everyone was, I’d seen everything that was nominated and I had Very. Strong. Opinions on who should win and who should definitely not win.

Now? I’ve barely seen anything that was nominated so I was thrilled when a movie I adore won something.  And I don’t really care what people were wearing or whether or not they had good hairstyles.  And I don’t feel negatively toward any of the actors.

And I can’t decide if I am just truly nicer than most of the people viewing who were tweeting or if I am far more easily impressed than the average bear (there is definitely something to this theory) or if I just don’t care as much as others do about these sorts of things.

I suspect it is mostly that I’m easily impressed.  I don’t mind if movies and television shows aren’t realistic.  I don’t care if there are corny jokes or truly forgettable and predictable plot lines or even if the writing and acting are terrible.  I go to be entertained and to escape the world for a while.  If a movie can make me forget about the world for ninety minutes or so then I declare it “fun” or “entertaining.”  I’m careful with “good” because I know the difference between good and bad but…well?

Today I watched Post Grad on On Demand.  I actually ordered it because I like Alexis Bledel and it looked like a cute and predictable flick.  And? It was a cute and predictable flick.  And it had, in addition to Alexis Bledel, Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch and Carol Burnett.  All performers I admire (and how often do you see Carol Burnett in anything anymore?).  Was it good? Heck no.  Was it entertaining? Sure!  Would I have spent money to see it in a theater? Heeeeeeellllll no.  But I’m also very hesitant about spending money on Avatar.  So there you go.

Hmm.  Apparently I care more about this issue than I thought I did.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m not sure what to do with myself.  Our apartment is cleaned.  The laundry doesn’t need to be done until Monday.  I have a batch of cookies in the oven baking as a treat for Will when he gets home from work.  The rest of my weekend, so far, is totally free.

I have a lot that I could do.  I have a stack of books that I checked out from the library.  I got the next three discs of Ally McBeal from Netflix in the mail today.  There are a few movies that I want to see on On Demand and even more movies that I love and haven’t seen for a while on On Demand for free. I have a knitting project that I could work on.  I have a ginormous bag of doritos just waiting to be eaten.  I cannot decide which fun thing I want to do.

Should I read?

Should I lie on the couch and watch tv?

Should I lie on the couch and watch one of the DVDs that came in the mail?

Should I watch tv or one of the DVDs that came in the mail and knit?

Should I put on some music and knit?

Should I play on the internet some more?

It is kind of weird, especially after all of the woe and bleccch that we’ve been through over the last few weeks, to be sitting here and realizing that I have a whole weekend of fun stretching before me (so far, unless Murphy’s Law decides to eff it up) and I don’t know which fun thing I want to do the most.

I am very Very very Very grateful for this, btw.  I just had to put that out there in case any part of the universe thought I was taking this situation for granted–a phrase I just realized sounds perfectly natural but looks really weird when it is typed out.

And no, I have not had even a single sip of anything caffeinated today, why do you ask?

This is the second time in a week that I have spent most of the day in downtown Portland.

The first time was on Wednesday.  The basic plan was that, while he was in class, I would have a long and leisurely afternoon at the library.  I had some books on hold that I wanted to pick up and I wanted to take some time to really browse–you know, take the time to actually look through the books instead of just grabbing and taking them home to sort through later.

Yes, I could have easily done this on my own while Will was at work but I didn’t want to walk to (and from) the train station in the rain.

So, I drove in with Will and we found a (coveted) five hour parking spot up on the PSU campus.  I was tasked with feeding the meter while Will was in class.  This spot? Was about ten blocks away from the library.  I walked those ten blocks through the rain and…the library? WAS CLOSED.  CLOOOOSSSSSEEEEEED.  I may or may not have growled very loudly and angrily shook my fist at the Closed sign.  I’m not admitting to anything but it is a distinct possiblity.

Defeated and irritated (and wet) I hiked all the way back up to the PSU campus and parked myself in the Student Union.  And there I stayed until it was time to meet Will at his last class–totally forgetting about the meter because I thought he had told me that he was moving the car to his friend’s (free) parking space.

Thankfully we did not get a ticket (unless there is one being sent in the mail) but I was still pretty upset about the whole day.

1.  Wanted to avoid walking so far in the rain (when I’m supposed to be taking it easy to ward off any infections that might be trying to get me after last week): FAIL.  Walked almost 30 BLOCKS (over the course of the day) in the rain.

2.  Wanted to have a long leisurely day at the library: FAIL.  Library closed for new equipment installation.

3.  Wanted to help Will avoid a parking ticket by feeding the meter while he was in class: FAIL.  I mis-read the text message he sent me about his moving the car to his friend’s building and (free) parking space.

4.  Wanted to work outside of the house.  Okay, this one I actually did because–with the library closed and nothing on hand to read but blogs (which I got through pretty quickly), I had nothing else to do but concentrate on work stuff.

Today I came back in to downtown with Will with the same plan. I don’t know if I was trying to make up for Wednesday’s ongoing debacle or what.  But the plan was, again, a leisurely day at the library (we had thought we’d have friends come up this weekend but they decided to come up next weekend instead.  Don’t get me started.).  So we drove in and the only spot we could find to park? Was even FARTHER away from the library (irony: there were PLENTY of parking spaces close to the library but then Will’d have to hike through the rain to class).  So we parked, paid and I hiked all the way through downtown (no joke, we parked at the very top of the PSU campus, close to the bridges) through the rain to the library.

So my plan to avoid walking in the rain? FAIL. For the second time in a week.  Today, though, I’m much cheerier about it.

Thankfully the library was open but because it had been closed for three days, the place was a MADHOUSE.  (I’m very caps locky today)  It was loud and crowded and while the new self check machines are teh awesome, it was impossible to find a quiet place to sit down and look through all of the books I wanted to look through.  The tables were pretty much full.

I did, however manage to pick up the books I had on hold.  One of them is Julia Child’s The Way to Cook.  In Hardcover.  It weighs roughly a kqatrillion pounds.  And I had to carry it back across downtown along with about forty pounds of other books.  While it was pouring rain.  And, again, somehow this does not bug me as much today as it did yesterday.

This might be because today I was smart and I took the streetcar back up to PSU and cut my walking in the rain time down by quite a lot (even if I did get off the streetcar a stop early).  I had  lunch with Will, dropped my (many pounds of) books in the car and now I’m parked at a Starbucks.

I have always been adamant about how much I DISlike Starbucks.  It comes from learning how they roast their coffee and how they invented their own lingo that messed up all of the other coffee shops and how these places are freakin’ everywhere now (there are FOUR within a mile of my apartment) and, if we’re being honest, spending years working at a non-Starbucks cafe and having to deal with customers who insisted that a macchiato does too have flavoring and lots of milk in it (for the record? IT DOESN’T) or who looked at me like I was insane when they’d order in Starbucks lingo and I’d have to confirm what they wanted in real coffee language.

Anyway…

This Starbucks?  Is kind of awesome.  It isn’t crowded.  The tables are nicely spaced (aka far apart).  The music is a little loud but that might be because I’m right under the speaker.  I’m parked at a back booth–a booth that has an electrical outlet built right into it.

So I’m parked here with my tiny caramel non-coffeed frapu-something and typing away on my netbook.  All I need now are thick, black rimmed square (or rectangular) glasses, badly died hair and some Chucks and I’ll officially be a hipster.

Honestly though, I kind of like it in here.  It’s warm and bright and sure the music is annoying but its dry and mostly quiet and everybody is doing their own thing.  I have always been a fan of being alone while amongst other people and this place is very conducive to that.  If any of the (4) Starbucks in my neighborhood were this nice I might hang out in them more.  Or at all.

I have to say that, in spite of not being able to avoid walking many blocks in the rain and in spite of having to carry what felt like double my body weight in library books back across town, this has been an okay day.  It’s been really nice to get out of the house and spend some time in the world.  I’ve been very hibernatey lately and this is a nice alternative to that.

Plus, I got a bunch of work done yesterday and that always cheers me up.

Every year I completely forget about de-lurking day but I figured that this year I’d give it a shot.  And then I realized that the post on the top of my page is not exactly fun to read (though I’m glad I posted it) so I thought I would write something shorter and easier to digest on a day when bloggers are frantically reading through posts and trying to think of something to say as a de-lurker.

So here is your assignment: don’t worry about being clever.  Just say hi!

Unless you want to be clever and then go for it!

For the longest time, I didn’t think I wanted kids.

When I was growing up all of that traditional stuff—settling down, getting married, procreation—none of it was really my thing.  Then I met Will. And then one day, my biological clock went off with a giant clashing clanging gong and I knew.  I knew I wanted kids.  I wanted the whole big family—the crammed to the gills with people mini-van, soccer Mom, old woman who lived in a shoe big family experience.

Will and I spent a long time deciding when the right time should be. After a lot of talking we decided that the best thing to do would be to simply stop using birth control after the wedding.  After the wedding I finished out the pack of pills I was on and that was it.  No back up method.  No net.  We looked procreation in the face and said “bring. It. On.”

We thought it would take months to get pregnant.  We prepared ourselves for months of waiting.  We did not expect to get pregnant almost right away.

On November 15 I was two days late so, as a joke, Will and I bought a home pregnancy test.  We never thought that the test would be positive so when that second pink lined showed up telling me I was pregnant I was shocked.

I’d like to tell you that I was immediately excited and screaming for joy and jumping all over the bathroom.  What really happened was the sound and the air got sucked out of the world for a moment and the only thing I could think clearly was “oh crap.”  But in a good way.

Will could tell by my face as soon as I walked into the computer room that the test was positive.  He pulled me into his lap and hugged me and we stared at those two pink lines—pink lines that changed everything about who we were.  And then Will took a picture of the positive test with his iPhone.

And then I took the other test in the box just to make sure.

I was so afraid that the tests were wrong I went to Planned Parenthood for a “professional” test to make sure.  It was only when that came back positive I started to trust that maybe I really was pregnant…and let myself get excited. Okay, who was I kidding?  I was already attached to and excited about the life that was growing inside.

My first prenatal visit was scheduled at the OHSU Women’s Clinic for December 15—when I’d be 9 weeks along.  I’d hoped to get in sooner but was told that most first visits happen at the 8-9 week mark unless the mother has a history of miscarriage or is considered high risk.  So I tried my best to be patient.

In the meantime, we bought What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  We watched as my naturally poochie belly got poochier and I started to develop the teensy tiniest of baby bumps and all but one pair of my pants stopped fitting. We gave our baby the interim, gender neutral name of “Snuffleupagus Yip-Yip Farley” and called it “Snuffy” for short.

When my appointment got pushed back from December 15 to December 29 I was devastated.  I wanted to see my baby.  I was worried because—even though my belly was growing—I didn’t really feel pregnant. I was worried that something was wrong and nothing anybody said could make me feel better. I had reached the point where the ONLY thing that was going to make me feel better was seeing my baby on the ultrasound screen and hearing its steady heartbeat and having my doctor tell me that everything was healthy and normal.

We went in to the doctor’s appointment on December 29 thinking that I was about eleven and a half weeks along.  The intake nurse assured me that I would be getting an ultrasound that day and I felt my spirits rise.  I had a good conversation with my doctor who I liked instantly and then she had me lie back on the table for my ultrasound.  Will stood up near my head and held my hand and we waited for the image of our baby to appear on the screen.

Only it didn’t.

The doctor turned the screen away from us and was very quiet.  After a few minutes I couldn’t take it anymore and asked “is everything okay?”

And that’s when she put her hand on my leg and said “okay, let me tell you what I’m seeing and what I’m not seeing.”  And I heard her sniffle.

I don’t really remember what all she told us.  She wasn’t ruling anything out yet, but she wanted us to know that even though she was seeing a large sac, she wasn’t seeing a baby.

She wanted to send me for more tests with better machines.  When she left the room to talk to the people in the blood lab and the radiology lab, Will pulled me to his chest and we both started to cry.

We told each other not to get too worked up yet.  Maybe I wasn’t as far along as we’d thought.  Maybe with a better machine we’d see something.

Only we didn’t.

I was diagnosed with a “missed miscarriage.”

My D&C was scheduled for January 5 (by my own choice).

On January 5 I woke up feeling… I don’t quite know the word for it.  It was quite a lot like the feeling I had the day I woke up knowing I had to go to Abbott’s funeral. A lot of “I don’t want to do this” storminess mixed with quiet resolve and certainty that I was about to go through something awful and that the only way out was to go through it.

Will drove us to the clinic and we got there exactly on time for my appointment.  We were taken back to the procedure room almost as soon as we got there and our doctor talked us through the procedure again and asked if we had any questions.  I know I asked her a few but I can’t remember what they were.

The procedure was…

Most of the procedure was…

It wasn’t pleasant.  The numbing shot in my cervix was not fun (imagine getting a Novocain shot…there…) but the actual procedure itself? For the beginning and middle it felt a lot like the cramps I used to get pre-birth control when I’d have my period.  They were bad cramps but I guess I’d built up a tolerance for them—something that really impressed the doctors and the nurse.  They kept telling me how tough I was.  At one point Will even called me his “Rambo Wife.” I didn’t feel tough.  I felt terrified.

The end of the d&c is where the pain is.  The minute or so right before they are finished is the worst part of the procedure and I won’t ever forget it as long as I live. It hurt.  A lot.  I had a hold of both of Will’s hands and was squeezing them for dear life.  And there was a definite and grotesque tugging sensation. The tugging of the sac being removed. It didn’t last long, probably a few seconds, but it felt like forever.  If I close my eyes and think about it, I can still feel it.

The doctors made me stay on my back while they cleaned everything up as best they could so that I wouldn’t have to see any of the… anything, which is how I wanted it.  I don’t want to know what anything looked like.  I don’t want to know how much blood there was.

After they cleaned up, I started crying. Big crying. Scared crying. And it really surprised me. I hadn’t planned on crying.  I had planned on trying to keep it together until we got home but I had no control over this.  This was post-trauma bawling.  This was crying that even Will couldn’t escape and he cried with me.  I was clutching his shirt and crying and telling him how sorry I was for everything and I had no control over any of it.  I couldn’t stop or calm down for what felt like a very long time and then I told Will that I needed a treat.

Seriously? I had no control over this.  It was like I reverted back to being four years old when getting a small treat or present after having to go to the doctor was the norm.  Once the words were out I realized what I said and tried to tell Will that no, never mind, I don’t need a treat but he insisted that I needed at least a new book to read and a chocolate milkshake.

The nurse gave us some time to work through my sudden burst of hysteria and then she and the doctor came back in with pads for me to wear and prescriptions for antibiotics to ward off infection and for severe pain (if I had any) and instruction sheets with warning signs to look out for and how to take care of myself and then they left us in the room with instructions to stay however long we needed to and that we could leave whenever we felt ready.

I managed to get dressed pretty quickly with Will’s help but we stayed for a little bit after that because I discovered that I could not sit down without it hurting.  So I paced around in the room for a little while until I could sit down without feeling like someone was shoving an ice pick in places an ice pick should never go.  This was important because the drive from the doctor’s office to our neighborhood is not short (and then we got lost on the hill behind OHSU, but that’s another story).

My Mom came up that evening and stayed for a couple of nights for moral support and so that Will could go to class without feeling like he was leaving me without a way to go back to the doctor if I experienced any complications.  It was good to have her here.  She kept me good and distracted and full of Doritos, chocolate and caffeinated soda and, surprisingly, mostly good cheer.

It took a couple of days for my hormones to start to drop so even though I felt mostly okay for the couple of days after the procedure, the last few days have been rough.

What is hardest about this is how unpredictable everything has been.  One minute I feel fine and then the next I’m crying my heart out.  Two minutes after that I’m shaking it off.

I keep thinking about the baby—our baby.  There was a life inside of me and it died.  It died before it got to really be anything.  It didn’t even get to be a boy or a girl.  And I grieve for this.  And then I think that it was better this way.  I can’t imagine how much more this would hurt if there had been a baby in there but there had been no heartbeat.  I think about how, if this had to happen, that I’m very lucky that this was the type of miscarriage I had.  There are so many women who go through so much worse than I have.

And then I feel guilty for being so sad.  I feel guilty because there are so many who have gone through so much worse, who am I to be feeling this awful?

And I feel stupid.  I got attached the second that second pink line showed up.  I got attached to somebody that might have already been gone by the time I found out they existed.

And I’m mad.  I’m mad that my body didn’t recognize this by itself.  Intellectually I know that it was a good thing—my body knows how to try to  hang on to a pregnancy.  Emotionally, however—if my body had recognized what was going on earlier we might have been able to start trying again by now.  Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so attached and I wouldn’t be so sad.

And I’m mad because I worried that something was wrong and everyone, including me, chalked it up to my unique ability to worry about things even when there is nothing to worry about.  But I felt like something wasn’t quite right—something I couldn’t explain and I didn’t want to call the doctor and be that woman, the hysterical one who calls every day convinced that something is wrong when she’s fine.  I’m mad that I didn’t’ listen to my gut.  I’m mad because I had to wait so long for my first doctor’s appointment.  Maybe if I had been able to go in sooner it would have been caught earlier and even though I’d still be devastated I could have moved on and maybe be trying again now.

And I’m scared.  No.  Terrified.  Before the d&c I was ready to try again.  I was surprised at how ready I felt to try again after we got the diagnosis of my missed miscarriage.  I looked forward to being able to try again. Now that I’ve had the d&c…. I don’t want to go through that again.  I am terrified that if we get pregnant again something new will go wrong and the same thing will happen or worse—we’ll have a healthy baby for a while and something will go wrong and I’ll have to go through it all over again.  I’m terrified that if we do get pregnant again I won’t let myself get attached to the pregnancy or the baby growing inside.  I’m terrified that I won’t let myself bond and that somehow the baby will pick up on it and it will be born feeling like it isn’t wanted or loved and that it won’t ever be able to trust me.  I’m terrified of my kid never feeling like it can relate to or trust me but never knowing why.

And I feel cheated.  I feel cheated because I don’t know how I’ll be able to relax if we get pregnant again.  I already have to say “if” instead of “when” just for my own sanity.  I feel like I won’t ever get to enjoy being pregnant or bonding with my baby because I’ll always be afraid of something going wrong.  I feel like I got cheated out of a normal and good pregnancy—the pregnancy where you marvel over all of the changes that are happening and moan about the morning sickness or the back aches or the having to buy ugly maternity clothes.  I feel like I’m never going to be able to have that because it could all go wrong at any second and I’ll be constantly worried that something is happening that I have no control over.

I think that’s the hardest part.  All of the doctors and nurses that I’ve talked to throughout this have been wonderful and supportive and adamant about how healthy I really am.  They’ve all talked about my good numbers and how I should be able to conceive again without any problems and that, because I’m so healthy, I shouldn’t have to wait as long as some people do after something like this to start trying again.  They’ve all assured me that there was nothing I could do to prevent this from happening that it was just bad luck.

Having my situation chalked up to “bad luck” isn’t something I know how to deal with.  I’m good with blame and guilt and taking responsibility for my actions.  Knowing that I had no control over this doesn’t really make me feel better.  It makes me feel scared and unsteady.

At the same time I have to talk about some of the positive things.

The doctors and nurses and techs we’ve met at OHSU have all been wonderful.  They have all been incredibly supportive and easy to talk to and I felt like they truly care about Will and I.  I know that if I get pregnant again that I’ll want to have my prenatal care done there, by all of the same people.

And, finally (because he is the most deserving), I have the awesomest and most amazing husband in the whole wide world.  Will has been my rock through this—holding me when I wake up in the middle of the night crying because I don’t know how else to work through all of the wild and uncontrollable emotions, bringing me gifts the day after we found out, staying out on the couch with me while I wallowed and watched chick television. He’s taken time off from work to just sit with me—even when I didn’t feel like talking and I worried about the money he wasn’t making, he would say that sitting with me was more important than anything else in the world.  I am so grateful to be married to him and for his support.  I am very lucky to have such a wonderful husband.  I know that I complain a lot about “why are boys so dumb?” but I really am thankful for this amazing man I married.  He is the best husband in the whole wide world and I love him with every single cell of me.

This has been a really really rough couple of weeks.  And it is going to be a really rough few weeks as I work through the grief and the fear and the post partum depression and everything that comes from going through something like this.  And I’m grateful that I have a space where I can come and share it all.

And if you made it through all of this in one sitting, I’d really like to give you a cookie.

Thank you for reading.  I’m hoping to return to our regularly scheduled snarky/humor programming soon.