Still no progress

Nearly a week and a half has gone by since we learned our baby has no heart beat. There is still nothing more than slight contraction pain and spotting. Perhaps a TMI, but I do want to be 100% open with all of you; I have had the runs for the past three days. Don’t worry, I am well hydrated. Remembering back to the actual labors of our two sons, I was either throwing up or having the runs the hours before birth. It has me wondering if this is normal with miscarriage too. No one has touched on the subject, so this is me opening the door, hoping others will answer and open up too.

With the days ticking down towards our move, I am left feeling antsy and frustrated. Why won’t the end come? I very much want this to be over with and to be able to move on. It pains me when our two year old pats my belly and says, “baby,” and I have to say, “No honey, baby is in heaven now. No more baby in Mommy’s belly.”

I could let this sink me down into depression but I am not letting it. I have been there and I didn’t like it. It’s not my desired place to be at all. The misery, weight gain, emptiness…I don’t want that. I am leaning heavily on my faith in God and on my husband. Right now it hurts not being at my weekly MCCW (Military Council of Catholic Women) and being surrounded by my sisters in Christ. I want to go but since I am still playing sitting duck waiting for this miscarriage to actually happen, I am staying home. I will probably do a Rosary around 8:45am so I can at least be praying with my sisters at the same time.

On to the weight gain issue, my husband and I started using the Lose It application again a few days ago. It is helping us keep track of our calorie intake/output. I used the application a lot while he was deployed and dropped 22 pounds and got back to the weight I was in High School. Since he’s been back, I gained 12 (thank you Disney World). Ok, not all of that was DW, about 3 of it is what I gained during pregnancy. Already we are seeing results and I am finding myself grab a yogurt or piece of fruit instead of cramming chocolate into my mouth. It makes me feel better about myself. Plus, it feels great having my husband alongside me to get healthier.

Once more, I’d like to mention my husband and how supportive he is. A couple of days ago I asked him if he’d write a blog post about his emotions through our miscarriages. I noticed a lack of information for us women and figured men must have absolutely nothing to go off of. So many men are raised to think that showing their emotions is not ok, that they have to bottle it all up and tuck it away deep down. No, they have every right to show how they feel. Women want to know, other men need someone to relate to as well. Yesterday, he blew me away and wrote a blog. Ok, not only that, but he started his own account here on WordPress. I’m proud of him for stepping up despite his initial trepidation. May more men follow suit and open up. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Thanks to those of you who continue to read. I encourage every one of you to let it all out. It may seem intimidating at first, but once you start it becomes liberating.

God Bless.

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The Male Perspective of Miscarriage

My awesome husband sat down today and wrote a blog post about how our miscarriages have made him feel. Yes, I cried a ton when I read it. Menfolk, read that post, then maybe share your words too. If we can all reach out to each other and others, then perhaps the taboo placed on miscarriage will vanish.

This man is my rock!

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Reflections on Miscarriage

Today I find myself reflecting back quite a bit. Slightly more than six years ago is when I had my first miscarriage. It shook my husband and I to the core. We planned that baby and wanted one so badly to have it taken away from us almost as soon as we found out I was pregnant. Our due date was April 1, 2007. I allowed myself to get depressed. I gained weight, I just didn’t care anymore. Three months after the D&C, we tried to get pregnant again and we did. The result was the birth of our oldest son. We were so happy to finally have a baby in our arms. Yet, whenever that due date of our first baby goes by, I get into a mini-funk but I snap out of it because we do have two wonderful children.

Now, as we wait for this miscarriage to actually happen I am determined to not get depressed or gain weight. With this pregnancy I gained about 3 pounds and found myself wearing a size up from before I got pregnant. The day before my last ultrasound I actually caved and bought maternity jeans and a maternity tank top because nothing was fitting right anymore and I needed something to wear for a Welcome Home party for our Battalion that week. There were some other tops I longed for but something held me back.

The next day at the ultrasound I felt guilty for buying those clothes. I wore them to the party that night. I tried to slap a smile on my face around all those people. It was really hard. At entrance to the party, those of us drinking were given green bracelets to wear. I took one and my husband grabbed me a beer. It felt odd walking around knowing many others thought I was still pregnant with a live child and here I was chugging back a Corona with a wedge of lime stuffed inside. Eventually, my husband was the one that started explaining what was going on and I was choking back tears. There were a few times I let them fall and quickly wiped them away. We were there to have fun and cheer on our troops for coming home safely after all. It wasn’t supposed to be a sad night. There was dinner there and I ate maybe half the food. Nausea hit me. I still had pregnancy symptoms. It left me frustrated and awfully sad. I requested that we leave early. I just couldn’t be around everyone while I felt sick. At that point I just wanted to be home and curled up in my husband’s arms. We said our good-byes and even that hurt because word had spread at that point or I had to explain why we were leaving early.

That night, I logged into Facebook and let everyone know what was going on. Please know that earlier that day we called immediate family and let them know. I figured sharing the news in that format would keep me from having to re-tell what was going on. There was an out pouring of support and I am so grateful for amazing friends and family.

Even now, as I write up what’s going on with this miscarriage, I have a ton of support. Not meaning to through my site stats at you all, but in less than 24 hours this blog has had roughly 140 hits. No doubt it has grown even more by the time I have posted this. That means 140 people are aware what miscarriage is like. One hundred forty people have a story to relate to. That’s a big deal to me. Yes, there are some people who commented that I do not know who they are, but they got the information they needed. I hope to continue to do so.

Also, if any of my readers are male and have dealt with a pregnancy loss in some way, please let me know. It was hard digging around finding a woman’s perspective; I can only imagine men trying to dig around the net and falling short. If you’d like to share your perspective, drop me a comment with your email address and I will contact you and we can do an interview. It’d be nice to have more than one male perspective because everyone deals with this differently. Each miscarriage within a couple is different too. My husband and I have dealt with this one in different ways than the first one.

Again, thank you for reading and please come back. If you’ve lost a baby, I am sorry and am sending prayers up daily for healing for all of us who have lost a child.

God Bless.

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