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.