Worst month of my life... so far.
That’s one of my favorite Simpsons references. But that’s not really why I’m here. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve created this post correctly but we’re just going to dig it out and push on through.
I’m here because I have a tendency to journal when I’m having a tough time in life. I’m one of those “make every change you can, try every trick you can” to stay strong instead of falling into self-loathing and despair (too dramatic?). But really, that’s how I operate. I have had roughly 40 journals throughout my life and inevitably they end up in the gar-bage because as soon as I pull myself together and jump back on the happy train I worry that some nosy nugget is going to stick their nose in one of my journals and bear witness to my vulnerabilities. Humiliating. No, thank you.
No, I am not sure if I used the correct “bear” in that last paragraph. Yea, you are right.. I could have looked it up but I didn’t. I’ve got bigger fish to fry tonight.
Said fish is the fact that I had a miscarriage this week, my grandma died last week, and there’s been a lot of general ridiculousness that I’ve had to deal with. So yea, not too worried about “bear” v “bare”. (The savvy reader will have picked up that me mentioning the “bear” debacle this many times means I do in fact wish that I would have looked it up.. we’re in too deep now).
Also, I will not (but might) apologize for any grammatical errors throughout my entries. I’m not an English major and this is supposed to be a safe space.
I guess I should start sorting through my thoughts about these fish I’m frying. I don’t know, really. I know everyone has their own experiences so I’ll just speak to what I know from my own recent (yesterday) experience.
My last period was mid-October. My husband (we’ll call him Sunny) and I were trying for a second child (my first babe is 15mo at this point- we’ll call him Sunny Junior). I was feeling quite tired, much more than usual so I decided to take a test mid- November and bang! Baby dreams are coming true again. Absolutely pumped. Well, with my first pregnancy I had a lot of symptoms early on. So imagine my surprise over the next several weeks when I have ZERO symptoms. Nada. Nil. I thought “wow, what an awesome baby already”. Yet another part of me had alarm bells going off. That doesn’t seem right..
One of my friends asked me if I was excited for the first ultrasound the day before our appointment to which I responded “to be honest I’m worried. I’ve had no symptoms and don’t really feel pregnant. I hope nothing is wrong”. (Man, I really hate being right all the time.)
So we get to our appointment and go through all of the warm up nonsense before the doc finally gets to the good stuff- let me see that little gingerbread man (or woman). She does the US and there’s the gingerbread! A little small but still the best. The doc does all the measurements and in a very calm voice explains that the baby is measuring at 6weeks instead of the expected 9. Well, alright, whatever- the baby is right there so that’s cool. I really didn’t get it. What she was saying did not phase me for a good few minutes. She eventually got it through my thick skull that either the calculations were off.. or we lost the baby.
So from there we got to play the waiting game. We had to wait 9 excruciating days before the next US to determine if the baby was viable or not. But wait, it gets better. Our US was scheduled on the Friday before a holiday weekend. Ha, of course! Because why wait only 10-11 days to find out if you’ve miscarried when you could wait 13-14 days. To make these living hell weeks more memorable, that’s right when we lost our grandma that we were extremely close with and Sunny Jr earned his first trip to the emergency room at 2am on the morning of our second US.
Grandma was the absolute best. A real butt-pincher, snarky, old Italian woman. She declined so fast. I mean up and walking/talking on a Thursday and done by Monday. Honestly it was better that way. She wasn’t a person who would’ve been okay just laying around in bed, unable to do anything for herself (like anyone is really “okay” with that life but alas, I’m sure you get my drift). She was totally (mostly) with it at the end too- other than seeing dead people for a few days. She knew we were pregnant and kept talking about how happy and excited she was for our baby girl (we obviously had no clue what the gender would’ve been. The baby never developed that far). That was probably the hardest part for me- lie straight to my dying grandmas face and pretend the baby was perfectly fine. I knew in my heart the baby wasn’t but that I couldn’t tell her that.
So we lost her. I was one of the fortunate people in life to get to say goodbye to someone knowing it would be my last time. Hope you’re having a drink for me up in heaven with papa 🧡
So, the hell weeks slowly but finally passed with minimal mental breakdowns from me. Sunny and I have a wonderful habit of breaking down one at a time. There’s usually one strong one and one weak one at a time- thankfully.
The doc called me on Tuesday night. She said I lost the baby. The baby still measured at only 6weeks. We talked about the options: