I’ve even left the house a few times.
I know, big hairy deal.
Except, actually, it is a bit of a big deal. The one thing I can’t shake is this endless sense of exhaustion. I stopped spotting altogether a week ago, so it’s not continuous bleeding. I finished the whole course of antibiotics on Thursday, so my bowel function (sorry, but antibiotics play hob with said function) is returning to normal, and I am eating sensible healthy meals and taking my vitamins and iron supplements. I’m even sleeping quite well. What more can I do? I have been signed off work until next week, so this is in no way a vital or pressing question. I am just. So. Fucking. Tired. So I am very proud that I went out, walked about, and came back. Especially so as I got to meet Womb for Improvement for hot chocolate (squeeeeeee!)
Last time I miscarried, I was very emotional. Devastated. Heart-broken. Raging and inconsolable. This time I feel, chiefly, tired and bitter. So far at any rate. We shall see what spectacular outbreaks I come up with as time goes by. Because, oh, yes, H and I got into a deeply, deeply pointless fight last night, based on the sort of infinitesimal misunderstanding we’d normally clear up in seventeen placid seconds. It then occurred to me that we went through this sort of stupid blow-up and resultant disproportionate fury from last time. It’s like misery-induced paranoia, as if there was no possible way anything could be meant in all innocence. The universe is, after all, a heap of shite, right?
I personally attribute the lack of immediate devastation to:
- a) Denial. It’ll smack me upside the head at some point. Heigh ho.
- b) I’ve already lost my miscarriage virginity. The first time, I knew intellectually that shit happens, but, in my innocence, thought getting pregnant was the hard part, and that I had, therefore, paid my ‘hard part’ dues. This time? Feh. I am comfortably tucked into the box marked ’shit happens’.
- c) By the time I knew I was pregnant, I had already been cramping and spotting. I knew it was doomed. I had no chance whatsoever of getting attached, or invested, or whatever. Actually, I suspect that this will be the part of this loss that will come back to haunt me most. Me, watching the second pink line coming up on the pee-stick, and thinking not: ‘hurrah, I’m pregnant!’ but ‘oh God. This isn’t a wonky period. This is a miscarriage. Oh, please, no. Not again.’
H also seems more resigned. He is also more communicative (yay for counselling!), and we both seem to find the fact that we’re being taken very seriously and sent off to specialists reassuring. Last time, we were adrift on a vast ocean of confusion and loss, and nobody in the least bit interested in hauling us in to shore. Contrary to popular (medical) belief, there is nothing in the least bit reassuring or comforting about the diagnosis ‘It’s just bad luck, it almost certainly won’t happen again.’ Statistics may say this is so. We, the couple sitting before you, are not statistics. Statistically, any given couple should get happily, innocently pregnant in one year of banging away. We have already flicked the V at statistics. We can’t possibly feel that statistics apply to us any more. The unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘bad luck’ is also the unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘there’s fuck all we can/will do for you. Now bugger off.’
*Momentary pause while I feel some sympathy for doctors saddled with having to give the diagnosis ‘bad luck’, and the powerlessness they get to ‘enjoy’ too.*
And now all is onwards and upwards. Take more blood. Do more tests. Test both of us. Find a cause. Treat it. We may turn out to be in a shitty-bad place, but at least we won’t be lost in the dark anymore.
At least, I hope so.
