Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

This is my first disclaimer: if you get queasy about girl-part details, don't read this post. Just wait for my next blog post.

Also, before I get to what I want to write about, let me first state that THIS POST IS NOT MEANT, IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM, TO BELITTLE, DEMEAN, OR IN ANY OTHER WAY DIMINISH THE EMOTIONAL AND/OR PHYSICAL HARDSHIPS OF LOSING A CHILD WHETHER THROUGH MISCARRIAGE, STILL BIRTH, OR OTHER MEANS AFTER BIRTH.

That was my second disclaimer. Because it's true, and some people may get sensitive about my seemingly heartlessness. Because what I'm thinking about this month, since October is apparently Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, is why I don't feel sad or think about my own loss. Granted it was six long years ago, but even a year after, even two months after, I did not feel any deep sadness or grief or emptiness.

And let me say that when it happened I DID feel terrible. It was excruciatingly emotionally debilitating. For about a week. Seriously. I cried my eyes out while waiting to go in for the D&C, I broke into tears when I talked about it. I cried at the damn mall when I passed the maternity stores because I wasn't pregnant anymore. It hurt to watch other prego-bellies walk in and out of the store buying fat clothes that they will only wear for the next 4 or 5 months because I wasn't one of them anymore.

But then I was fine. Maybe it was because of my lack of involvement. Here's how it went down: I conceived in April 2004. Presumably due in January '05. No insurance. No ob/gyn. Set up an appointment at the clinic at the hospital, but they couldn't get me in until the end of July. I guess I thought this was ok. That would have put me at around 4 months pregnant. Mid-July I started having slight cramping pains in my uterus-area, and started to spot lightly.

Up until that point I believed my pregnancy was going fine, that I was having a normal non-complicated pregnancy. Sure I felt sick quite often, but I put it off as just morning sickness. And this is what I mean when I said "lack of involvement." I was not involved in the pregnancy. I was stressed out (relationship issues, which is something I will probably never go into), and did not have a doctor to communicate with about what was going on. No blood tests, no ultrasounds, not even a blood pressure test to tell me if I really WAS having a healthy pregnancy. It was four months of mindlessness.

At any rate, the cramping (and by cramping I mean a slight pinching feeling every 5-10 minutes) continued for a few days, during which time I went on vacation with my family. I told my mom about the spotting, and I think she figured it out then, and I think I had it figured out as well, but I wanted to believe it wasn't anything serious.

Two more days went by and I wake up and both symptoms had gotten a little bit worse. Worse meaning the cramps, though not any more painful, had gotten to about 2 minutes apart. My mom insisted we go to the hospital. Two minutes later and there would have been a very bad mess in the car. We got there, I got admitted, I was asked to give a urine sample (and at this point I was still only lightly spotting), and when I went to go pee in the cup... Let's just say all hell broke loose. Literally. I felt like I was dying; the gushing just wouldn't let up for a minute (and that includes the tears from my eyes and boogers from my nose). My mind was completely in denial. All I was focusing on was giving that damn urine sample. I had the cup in one hand, and ball after ball after ball of toilet paper in the other, trying desperately to clean myself enough to put some clear pee in the cup. It wasn't happening.

I guess finally the nurse came in and gave me a huge gigantic pad to wear (which didn't help really, I think they changed the absorbant pad under me no less than five times), and they decided that the only thing to do was to put me under for a D&C because it was obviously too much for me to pass on my own. And in case you don't know what a D&C is, it stands for Dilation and Curettage. They surgically scrape out all the stuff inside (like scooping seeds out of a pumpkin) so your body doesn't have to do it on its own. It's basically what they do when you have an abortion.

I remember talking to the anesthesiologist, then I remember waking up and feeling really hungry. Painless. I ate a really awesome hospital meal of chicken, gravy, and mashed potatoes, and then was free to go home. They couldn't tell me the cause of miscarriage. By all counts I should have been 4 months along already, that would have meant a definite fetus. There was none. All the paper I clogged the toilet with made it impossible for them to get a sample of whatever was left. What they scraped out was nothing definitive either; just blobs and lumps and clots. Their best guess was that it was a missed miscarriage, where the fetus dies very early on, never develops because of chromosomal issues, and my body just hadn't felt the need to expel it until then.

That was it. I think I moped around most of the rest of the day, and the next day we went out for my dad's birthday. The next day I drove myself home and cried all over again (and got drunk. Really drunk). I may have had no more than 2 more complete break-downs about the ordeal.

The other reason I think I recovered so quickly is because I got pregnant only two months later and went on to have my daughter, Caelyn, the following June. And that is not to say I felt like she replaced the one I lost. I just never felt like I lost a child. Under the circumstances (which I have so graciously detailed for you), it never felt like a child. To me, there was no face, no footprints, no heartbeat, nothing. It was just globs of bloody tissue that had to get scraped out of me. I never felt a bond with that unborn being, I never got to think of that unborn being as a child growing inside of me. My mental thought process was "yay pregnant. wtf miscarriage." Period. End of story. And that may sound extremely callous to some. Maybe to most.

Let me also add that I was not in a happy relationship. I was not in control of my life. There was no focus, no long-term goals, no aspirations. I dropped out of college. My life was a real mess. I had no room to stress about bloody clots that I never thought were a baby to begin with.

All my sympathy goes out to all the women who have dealt with loss in a real way. Not my way. I will never understand those feelings, those emotions of grief and mourning because I have never truly felt them myself about experiencing my own loss. All my sympathy also goes out to all the women who have lost young children, because I watched, and lived through, my mom losing her daughter, my sister, Katie to cancer at only 6 years old. Now THAT still affects me to this day. She was in my life for almost 7 years; I watched and experienced her growing from a baby into an amazing little girl. And while I will always weep her passing, I will also remember the good times we shared together, and the brightness she brought to the world for such a short time.

And perhaps that is a third reason I don't mourn my own loss. It was a mere blip in my life compared to the pain and agony of watching my sister deteriorate from the moment of her diagnosis to the moment of her death almost exactly a year later. Bleeding for twenty minutes and then having surgery to erase what I had never even seen is nothing compared to watching my young sister, (and mind, I was 15 at the time) who was in my life for almost half of it at that point, take her last breath. My loss seems insignificant compared to that.

So, yes, I have all the sympathy in the world for those who mourn, for those who grieve, for those who have lost once or multiple times. Because I can do that, even though I don't mourn my own. Recognize, Respect, and have Sympathy for those who have ever lost this October, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.