I measured at about 8 weeks, 5 days when we went in for our first sonogram. My husband and I saw our baby moving around on the screen, heard the heartbeat, then saw the doctor measure the heartbeat. We’d cried tears of relief, let out breaths of relief, because of our previous miscarriage and the despair and hardship that that had brought us.
Two weeks after our first sonogram, we went to see the perinatologist (this is a specialist you go to if your pregnancy is considered high risk). This was where we learned that our baby had stopped growing and had no heartbeat. At that time, I was 12 weeks pregnant. We were shocked. We were extremely upset. I went in for surgery two days later, on December the 7th, and now here I am.
I didn’t realize how far they were putting me under for the procedure. I was in and out of it for a few days. After everything wore off (finally), the sadness and reality set in: it all really happened.
Sure, I can sit here and look over the past year from December of 2016 to December of 2017 and decide that nothing is fair and that I’m mad at the world and that I want to give up.
The truth is that I am devastated; I am sad. There are a lot of days where I don’t know what to do with myself and I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t know that there’s a right or a wrong way to cope with this type of loss. I don’t know that there is a right or a wrong way to grieve this type of death. But it’s so difficult. Grief, sadness, and tragedy are unpopular topics and emotions and so it’s hard to find others who have experienced the same thing. No one wants to talk about a tragic, unexpected loss like this.
For a while I tried busying myself with arduous, complex tasks that took up hours of my time so that I was distracted and so that I was busy. All it did was delay my grief. It didn’t make it go away. On top of the immense sadness that this type of unexpected tragedy brings, my hormones have shifted dramatically since the loss of the baby, once again making my emotions even harder to diagnose, much less deal with. Being a writer, one of the ways I deal with emotions is to write about them. It’s sometimes the only outlet that I have.
There are days when I can’t even watch the TV with the sound on or listen to music. I go through my feelings of grief sometimes all at once, sometimes in a circle, and sometimes I just feel numb altogether. I’m not moving through the stages in a linear fashion. Some days are better than others. And some days I just don’t want to get out of bed. Some days it’s hard just being alone – and I’ve never, ever been like that. I used to enjoy time to myself. Now, for some reason, it makes everything feel too real to bear. The silence is deafening and the thoughts fraught with guilt, anger, and despair are too loud to bear. I stay in my pajamas most of the time. I try and avoid conversations when I can. I’m not myself.
I have really amazing friends and an amazing family who have all been here for me. I received phone calls, cards, gift cards, letters, and even a friend who drove hours to stay with me for a few days. Another friend came over and cooked lunch and vacuumed. Everything everyone has done for myself, my husband, and my two kids is much appreciated.
Thanks for reading, guys.
Kelly
