The Emotional Journey

So I have many nicknames for my cat... cat hat because he sits on my head sometimes or above my head in bed while I sleep, cat scarf because he lays behind my head with his feet hanging on either side of my head, but right now or just a moment ago he was sitting with his front paws on my shoulder... I don't really have a good article of clothing that I set on my shoulder... all I could think of was "Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro, can you tie them in a knot can you tie them in a bow, can you flip them over your shoulder like a continental soldier, do your ears hang low." LOL so maybe that's what he is, low hanging ears flopped over my shoulder. *shrugs*

So I wanted to post a little about the process I have been going through after the loss, hopefully I can post it without getting all sobby and teary eyed, that would be good. :) The whole grieving process in general is different for everyone who goes through a loss, some people get angry right away, some people just get depressed for a long long time, etc. What I experienced, starting at the beginning, in the first few weeks after the loss was a small sense of loss, but also along with that was disbelief, hope that it was all a dream and thoughts of "I am still pregnant!" Well slowly over time that disbelief and hope were shattered and I was in despair? depressed all over again? I guess you could say that, I mean I had finally realized that I wasn't pregnant again, all the symptoms of being pregnant had started fading, my belly felt empty where as the day of the loss, before the hospital visit, it had felt full of life and hope. Things started deflating I guess, belly and everything else. Now most people would be happy for deflating but in my case it was sooo depressing.

After that I started to feel hopeful again, we talked about getting pregnant again and we were just waiting for my monthly times to come back so that we could start trying to conceive if we wanted to. So that hope from another baby really helped. Along with those feelings though are doubt and fear about future pregnancies. I think especially with this being our first child, I began to wonder if we would get past this point again, would I be able to carry a baby full term. Everyone says it is likely since most people after a loss like ours do end up getting pregnant and having healthy happy babies (so still holding onto hope here at this point but lots of conflicting emotions). Well then came time for my monthly, and I was finally happy at this point (before this point I had other happy moments as well, just this one I remember clearly!). This was a sign that my body was healing and moving on and that I could as well (not easily done by the way). It was around this time or a few weeks before this time that I had an upsetting conversation with our ex-doctor (it was because of this conversation and a few other things that really sealed the deal on him being no longer my doctor), I had called him to see if he had gotten the autopsy report back, so he called me back. 1. it takes up to 3 months sometimes or longer to get an autopsy report, and 2. the doctor had received lab results from the hospital. They had run a urine drug test and apparently it had come back positive for cocaine and marijauna. So I tell the doctor "Well those can be wrong right? cause I have never done drugs in my life so I don't know how that would have happened." He then proceeded to say, "Well that is what you said at your appointment, but you know drug use can cause a miscarriage." I was stunned ... he thought that I was lying to him or something, what a jerk! So after persistingly telling him this had to be a false positive, after a few tries he finally said "Yes I guess it could be a false positive." Bah! what a jerk! Paul was mad too. And that sealed the deal... if you can't talk to your doctor and tell them the truth without them second guessing you then you shouldn't have that doctor. Right?

So it was after my monthly and after this doctor's office that I started to experience the angry emotions. I really wanted someone or something to blame, the doctor at the hospital the first time I went there. My doctor here when I went to see him at 16 weeks and we listened to the wonderful heartbeat. For both of them I wish that they had performed an ultrasound on those two days, maybe they would have seen something. If they had insisted on an ultrasound on either one of those days, believe me I would have been more than happy to show them my belly and to see our little guy, see how things were going. But they didn't, so I went through a time of blaming them. I also went through a short time of blaming myself, thinking of things I should have done to help our baby, if only I had been more knowledgeable about things that could have caused the miscarriage. Although I know that this was not productive behavior, for a short while it made things feel better, letting the anger boil things up. Well that didn't last very long, because as much as I wanted to be angry, I also wanted to move to a happier place.

Within a week or two of that I had something unexpected hit me, jealousy. My philosophy for a long long time with my pregnant friends and family members is to be happy for them. Ignore my own sadness about not being pregnant yet, and realize that we aren't like everyone else. Reminds me of what my parents used to say at times, "We are not ____'s parents, we are yours so we are acting like your parents". So I did the same thing with pregnancies for a long time, I am not so and so, and they aren't married to my Paul, our situation is different than theirs, We will have kids soon enough, it will just take patience. So when we finally got pregnant ahh it was happiness beyond any that I had ever known. We were finally getting our little one and I was finally going to be able to experience motherhood for myself and not just through the eyes of friends and families. So when I started feeling jealousy and deep deep sadness about our loss, it was mostly when talking to pregnant friends or seeing pregnant friends and stuff. I knew it would be hard, since I have a ton of people in my life who are pregnant right now, seeing and talking to pregnant people. But I can't allow myself to shut myself off from them. I can be friends with them, hang out with them and try to push aside some of my feelings, because the strongest feeling I have for them is happiness. Unfortunately though the jealous and depressed sides of me likes to push down the happiness so this becomes a huge internal struggle sometimes. I guess this is a current emotion that I've been dealing with for the last 2-3 weeks, which might be why this darn cold or whatever seems to be hanging on. For the most part I feel fine but then my throat will start to hurt or I just feel exhausted.

Each day is a new day, new emotions, new hurdles passed, so I am just working on them as they come. Remembering the day to day chores that need to be done is hard sometimes. So I just do them as well as I can and hope that one day I am not so distracted by my emotions that I can get everything caught up and clean and organized and all of that wonderful stuff. :) So speaking of those wonderful things... well gotta do some paper organizing and filing so that it doesn't feel too crazy in here. :) Later!