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Turmoil
I wonder if your body is getting ready to have a baby?
February and March were arduous. Winter dragged on. The strain of deciding to try again morphed into the raw suspense of actually trying. I was overwhelmed by the exigencies of mothering my six children, and exhausted by my grief, which hadn’t really diminished in spite of my expectations that it should. I contemplated taking antidepressants (at that point in my life, the possibility hung over me like an admission of failure) but decided not to because of the risks to another pregnancy.
Not Sure
The ob-gyn who performed the D&E for Loila had advised me to wait three months before trying again. At that point, he said, my odds of miscarriage would be the same as for any other expectant mother: one in six. The possibility of trying for another baby began to weigh heavily on my mind. I was 39: it felt like time was running out. And then, there was this devouring emptiness inside of me - “a hole in my gut the size of Manhattan,” I described it. I believed that having a healthy baby would help to fill that hole. Perhaps it would have.
I Didn’t Know
I couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t know why.
It was a Sunday morning in October, 2005. Andrew had gone early to church, to one leadership meeting or another. It was my job to get the six kids into Bubba, our big old van, pick up my neighbor and her brood, and drive us all to the chapel. My neighbor’s kids would fight over who got to sit by my two-year-old and help him out of his car seat when we got there. Andrew would be waiting with a bench saved for us, primed for the all-hands-on-deck operation of keeping our family contained, quiet, and - with luck - listening, during the sacrament service. I did this every week. It was a challenge, but I like to be challenged.
Between 2005 and 2008, I lost four tiny babies to miscarriage. In an effort to help others who may be experiencing similar losses, I want to share the story of that journey. If you click on the title above, and then follow the “Next in Miscarriage Journey” links at the bottom of each post, you can read through my story sequentially.