And if anyone can tell me where the anonymous meetings for this "habit" are held, I'd be really, really grateful, because I would really like to quit.
I am also a daughter.
I am also a sister.
I am also a cousin.
I am also a granddaughter.
I am also a wife.
I am also a depressive.
I am also a customer service representative.
I am also a reader.
I am also a cleaner.
I am also a high strung person.
I am also an ENFJ.
I am also a pet owner.
I am also an animal lover.
I am also a believer in retail therapy.
I am also a Catholic.
I am also an aunt.
I am also a cosmetics lover.
I am also a friend.
I am also a New Yorker and a Michigander.
I am also a Yankees fan and a Tigers fan.
I am also a stubborn person.
I am also a fan of baseball and basketball.
I am also a sorority girl.
I am also a blogger and a blog reader.
I am also a coffee and tea drinker.
I am also a foodie.
I am also a TV junkie.
I am also a movie goer.
I am also a lover of accessories.
I am also a daughter-in-law.
I am also a spiritual person.
I am also a talker.
I am also a loud person.
I am more than my losses and infertility.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Laughing and Moved at the Same Time
I was looking for books about miscarriage on Amazon. It suggested Knocked Up, Knocked Down by Monica Murphy Lemoine. She also posted a video dedicated to her stillborn son. It is very touching and funny at the same time. Don't get me wrong, after losing four pregnancies in less than a year, I feel for any woman stuck in this sorority of pregnancy and infant loss. It is a horrible place to be. However, Monica seems to cope with a snarky sense of humor. Read her blog and listen to the words in her song and you will see what I mean. It is a good representation of what parents of angels think about. I can't wait to read her book!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
And Sometimes the Miracles are Not That Small
This story was in our local newspaper. The event happened at the church my husband and I attend.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
"And the World Spins Madly On."
Yesterday was my first day back to work after we discovered I misscarried a third time. I woke up and all I felt was dread. I was in tears at the thought of facing it all. I just I kept thinking since Tuesday was my day off, I would just call off Monday and give myself the extra two days. But the logical part of me knew, whether I went back on Monday or Wednesday, the first day back after the loss would be hard. It did not matter what day of the week it was. It did not matter how many days I was out. One day would have to be the first day back after loss. One day would have to be the day that life went on.
I think there's part of you when you suffer a loss, any loss, not just that of a child, that makes you look at the world differently. You get so engulfed in your grief that it is incomprehensible that everything hasn't just stopped. Because to you it should. Because to you it has.
There's this part of you that wants to scream at the grocery store clerk when she tells you to "Have a nice day.", "I WILL NOT HAVE A NICE DAY. SOMEONE I LOVED DIED." There are times long after the sympathy cards and the flowers come, long after whatever closure is supposed to come with the ceremony, that you will sit alone with your grief and nobody is calling to console you anymore. "Grief lasts longer than sympathy."
After my first two losses, it was months until I did not have to pause before I answered the question "How are you?" For awhile when someone who knew about my losses asked me how I was doing, I had to wonder "Are they asking me in that casual way people do to be polite or are they asking me in context of my loss?" I live in context of my losses. Would I have made it past the twelve week mark, that week that so significantly decreases the miscarriage risk? Would I be twenty weeks today and know the sex? Is today an estimated due date? Or, as it is almost a year later from when we started this journey, did I lose a baby on this day? All those things determine, how I am really doing on any given day. Every day I live with my losses. But I live.
So I got up yesterday and went to work. I waited on guests and did the rest of my daily activities. Because life goes on. The pets have to be fed, bills have to be paid, the apartment needs to be cleaned,etc.
In fourth grade, our teacher read the class a poem about a family that suffers the death of the husband/father. The mother makes items for the children from the deceased father's clothes. When the children ask her why she is destroying their dear dad's things, she responds, "Life goes on,children. I just forget why." Indeed,life goes on.
I think there's part of you when you suffer a loss, any loss, not just that of a child, that makes you look at the world differently. You get so engulfed in your grief that it is incomprehensible that everything hasn't just stopped. Because to you it should. Because to you it has.
There's this part of you that wants to scream at the grocery store clerk when she tells you to "Have a nice day.", "I WILL NOT HAVE A NICE DAY. SOMEONE I LOVED DIED." There are times long after the sympathy cards and the flowers come, long after whatever closure is supposed to come with the ceremony, that you will sit alone with your grief and nobody is calling to console you anymore. "Grief lasts longer than sympathy."
After my first two losses, it was months until I did not have to pause before I answered the question "How are you?" For awhile when someone who knew about my losses asked me how I was doing, I had to wonder "Are they asking me in that casual way people do to be polite or are they asking me in context of my loss?" I live in context of my losses. Would I have made it past the twelve week mark, that week that so significantly decreases the miscarriage risk? Would I be twenty weeks today and know the sex? Is today an estimated due date? Or, as it is almost a year later from when we started this journey, did I lose a baby on this day? All those things determine, how I am really doing on any given day. Every day I live with my losses. But I live.
So I got up yesterday and went to work. I waited on guests and did the rest of my daily activities. Because life goes on. The pets have to be fed, bills have to be paid, the apartment needs to be cleaned,etc.
In fourth grade, our teacher read the class a poem about a family that suffers the death of the husband/father. The mother makes items for the children from the deceased father's clothes. When the children ask her why she is destroying their dear dad's things, she responds, "Life goes on,children. I just forget why." Indeed,life goes on.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Coffee Stains
The title of this post was going to originally be the title of my blog. One, the blog is about me and the kids in Jr. High used to call me "Coffee Stain" because of a scar on my right arm due to a coffee burn I recieved when I was eight months old. Before you go into the "kids can be so cruel" mantra, neither the nickname or the scar ever bothered me. But the second reason I was going to call the blog "Coffee Stains" was because as a perfectionist, I often get sidetracked and discouraged by all the imperfections in my life, much like when those few drips of coffee that you can't get out of the carpet make you cringe every time you look at them. But after the year I've had, I started thinking that how if you let them those few drops of coffee on the carpet, that are bound to happen, can make you hate that carpet even if the rest of it is pristine.
So instead this blog is about the small miracles that happen everyday. The opposite of "coffee stains", these miracles are such a part of everyday life we forget see them as such. It's the extra cash that comes in just as the hospital bill does. ( My dental bill was $256 and change, my state tax refund $256.) It's the extra shifts they offer you at work when money is tight. It's the phone call from a friend just when you need it, the minimal damage to your car and yourself in what could have been a very bad accident.
So often we ask, "Why me?" when bad things happen. As if for some reason we should be exempt from them. As if it makes more sense if the person down the street, around the corner, on the other side of the country, falls into the percentile of the statistic of the bad thing. I am that person. The statistics say that twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Include situations where the women didn't even know that she was pregnant (chemical pregnancies perhaps) and that statistic increases to almost fifty percent. Recurrent miscarriages only happen to one to two percent of the fertile population of women. I fall into that fifty percent. I fall into that one percent. But what happens when we fall into the other side of the percentile? Why don't we ever ask "Why me?" when the good things happen? Maybe if we spent more time appreciating the good things instead of FMLing (and after a fourth loss, I have plenty of reason to FML), we would all be a little happier. I've learned in the last year that most of the time the small miracles are there if we decide to recognize them as such. And the coffee stains, well if they don't scrub out, you can always move a piece of furniture to cover them up.
So instead this blog is about the small miracles that happen everyday. The opposite of "coffee stains", these miracles are such a part of everyday life we forget see them as such. It's the extra cash that comes in just as the hospital bill does. ( My dental bill was $256 and change, my state tax refund $256.) It's the extra shifts they offer you at work when money is tight. It's the phone call from a friend just when you need it, the minimal damage to your car and yourself in what could have been a very bad accident.
So often we ask, "Why me?" when bad things happen. As if for some reason we should be exempt from them. As if it makes more sense if the person down the street, around the corner, on the other side of the country, falls into the percentile of the statistic of the bad thing. I am that person. The statistics say that twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Include situations where the women didn't even know that she was pregnant (chemical pregnancies perhaps) and that statistic increases to almost fifty percent. Recurrent miscarriages only happen to one to two percent of the fertile population of women. I fall into that fifty percent. I fall into that one percent. But what happens when we fall into the other side of the percentile? Why don't we ever ask "Why me?" when the good things happen? Maybe if we spent more time appreciating the good things instead of FMLing (and after a fourth loss, I have plenty of reason to FML), we would all be a little happier. I've learned in the last year that most of the time the small miracles are there if we decide to recognize them as such. And the coffee stains, well if they don't scrub out, you can always move a piece of furniture to cover them up.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Fine Pink Line
After our second loss, a missed miscarriage discovered at 11 weeks, I wrote the following as my facebook status: "If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then sometimes there is a fine line between insanity and hope." For couples suffering with recurrent pregnancy loss, that line gets blurred everytime they try to concieve after loss.
I got pregnant quickly with Squirt. We had only been trying for a month and frankly, I was a little surprised when the test came up positive. I didn't think I was ready to be a mother yet and was hoping the universe would buy me some time by letting it take a few months before I got pregnant. Instead, the universe taught me one of the hardest lessons of being a mother. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our children still have bad things happen to them. We lost Squirt at seven and a half weeks.
The doctor told us to wait two cycles before we started trying again. My husband and I were eager. I missed that second period and yet again there was a positive test. And just as with Squirt, we did not wait to tell people about Chicken Little. Because although miscarriages are fairly common, two in a row would surely not happen to me. Oh, how naive I was. There was no heartbeat on the doppler at eleven weeks. The baby had died at eight weeks. We knew we would try again and that is what inspired the facebook status because although the same thing seemed to be happening over and over again, we would try again. The next time, in the new year, with progesterone treatments and baby aspirin. All my tests had come back negative for miscarrige causing disorders so that treatment is considered "the can't hurt, might help" treatment for those with unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss.
The new year started and again I got pregnant on the first try. I tested five days before my missed period because I just "knew" that I was pregnant. The early test came up positive. You would think we would have learned by now. But we were crazy with hope. This time we only told our parents. Out we went to buy me a prenatal fitness DVD and Fit Pregnancy magazine. For a third time, I signed up for those weekly emails that send you an update of how your baby is developing My first one was titled "You are three weeks and six days pregnant." I had not even missed my period yet. By the time I had finally tested after I had missed my period (because when you suffer from recurrent pregnancy loss, you test like a maniac to make sure there is still HCG in your system), my tests were coming up negative. It was a chemical pregnancy. Snowflake ( I came up with that nickname because it basically melted as soon as it landed) never implanted.
So after three lost pregnancies, we continue to hope. We continue to try. We will continue to plan for each child after discovering it's conception. Because what else can we do?? Not telling people and not planning for them isn't going to keep me from miscarrying. I would rather live in hope that a subsequent pregnancy will stick, than the constant fear thet it will not. Call me insane because I keep expecting a different result even though prior experience tells me otherwise, but to quote Dale Carnegie "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
I got pregnant quickly with Squirt. We had only been trying for a month and frankly, I was a little surprised when the test came up positive. I didn't think I was ready to be a mother yet and was hoping the universe would buy me some time by letting it take a few months before I got pregnant. Instead, the universe taught me one of the hardest lessons of being a mother. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our children still have bad things happen to them. We lost Squirt at seven and a half weeks.
The doctor told us to wait two cycles before we started trying again. My husband and I were eager. I missed that second period and yet again there was a positive test. And just as with Squirt, we did not wait to tell people about Chicken Little. Because although miscarriages are fairly common, two in a row would surely not happen to me. Oh, how naive I was. There was no heartbeat on the doppler at eleven weeks. The baby had died at eight weeks. We knew we would try again and that is what inspired the facebook status because although the same thing seemed to be happening over and over again, we would try again. The next time, in the new year, with progesterone treatments and baby aspirin. All my tests had come back negative for miscarrige causing disorders so that treatment is considered "the can't hurt, might help" treatment for those with unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss.
The new year started and again I got pregnant on the first try. I tested five days before my missed period because I just "knew" that I was pregnant. The early test came up positive. You would think we would have learned by now. But we were crazy with hope. This time we only told our parents. Out we went to buy me a prenatal fitness DVD and Fit Pregnancy magazine. For a third time, I signed up for those weekly emails that send you an update of how your baby is developing My first one was titled "You are three weeks and six days pregnant." I had not even missed my period yet. By the time I had finally tested after I had missed my period (because when you suffer from recurrent pregnancy loss, you test like a maniac to make sure there is still HCG in your system), my tests were coming up negative. It was a chemical pregnancy. Snowflake ( I came up with that nickname because it basically melted as soon as it landed) never implanted.
So after three lost pregnancies, we continue to hope. We continue to try. We will continue to plan for each child after discovering it's conception. Because what else can we do?? Not telling people and not planning for them isn't going to keep me from miscarrying. I would rather live in hope that a subsequent pregnancy will stick, than the constant fear thet it will not. Call me insane because I keep expecting a different result even though prior experience tells me otherwise, but to quote Dale Carnegie "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
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