(no subject)

[rivka]

On Wednesday, someone from Mercy Hospital (where I had my D&C) called and left a message. She said that if I wanted to talk about my experience, she was there to listen. Yesterday's mail brought a sympathy card from the same person, who appears to be a nurse working in the pastoral care department. The card said that she was sorry for my loss and praying for me and my family daily. She hoped I was being kind to myself, and that I was being helped by support from family, friends, and God. She enclosed a little religious poem. (Not my flavor of religion (it's a Catholic hospital), but not offensive to me.)

It was nicely timed, I thought: two weeks after my miscarriage, a point at which an experienced counselor should be able to identify which patients are having a normal grief reaction and which ones are in real trouble. Also a likely point for someone with inadequate support to be feeling as if everyone's forgotten her loss.

Years ago I read a book about a woman who had a late second-trimester miscarriage. Afterward, none of the hospital staff - including her own OB - were willing to talk to her about what happened. They deflected her questions, avoided her eyes, refused to let her see the body. And my mother recently told me two stories. When she was a young married woman, my grandmother told her that she should never tell anyone she was pregnant until four months had passed - because that way, if it didn't work out and there was a miscarriage, no one would ever have to know. And a colleague of my mother's who also did maternal/child nursing once staffed a table on pregnancy loss at a community health fair. An 80-year-old woman came up and told my mother's colleague all the details of a miscarriage she'd had 60 years before. It was the first time she had ever told anyone at all. Sixty years later she was still burdened by her secret grief.

I am so grateful that it's not that way now.

Throughout this awful process I have been sustained by an incredible outpouring of love, support, and kindness. I've been stunned by the number of women who have quietly taken me aside to say that they too had a miscarriage, and that they know how terrible it is, and that I have their love and support. Instead of feeling alone, I've felt encircled by a large community of women, kind and gentle with me because they've shared this grief. Some of them are my age. Some of them are grandmothers or great-grandmothers. All of them survived, but none of them ever forgot.

I've also been sustained and upheld by all of you. It's touched me more than I can say to receive loving sympathy from my friends who are committedly childfree, as well as the ones who know what it's like to desperately want a child. To have people who barely know me refuse to walk away from the raw pain dripping all over my journal. To have repeated assurances of concern and support pour in again and again when even I have begun to be exhausted by my own neediness. To get presents in the mail: cookies, chocolates, more chocolates, an unpublished novel draft, a mix CD, cards with messages of love. It's been so much. It's helped so much.

I still feel sad and fragile, and I expect that I will for quite some time. But I also feel loved and cared-for. I'm pretty sure I'll be okay. For which: thank you.

Comments

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. As you already know, we love you :)

*stupid internet hug*

N.

[morning-glory.livejournal.com]

*more hugs* Do you need more cookies? I'd happily make some for you this weekend. Or granola. I do a mean homemade granola.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

[headbonk]

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

When my daughter died, I had that similar reaction of astonishment at how many women took me aside and told me their miscarriage stories. Some were women I had known well for decades; others were near strangers. The stories helped a lot.

I often think about how many women that I pass on the street or sit next to on the BART have similar stories. I hope all of them had someone to tell.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

It's good to know you'll be all right. My best friend's wife is going through the same process, and knowing that support is helpful gives me something I can do.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I've felt like it's some vast, sad, secret sorority. I had a similar experience. You are greatly in all our thoughts.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Did you do anything to memorialize your loss, or participate in any kind of... thing?

I just made contact with the woman who called from the hospital, and she told me that in October they have a prayer service in their chapel, and a little ceremony in which each woman who's lost a pregnancy is given a tulip bulb to plant in their memory garden. It sounded kind of nice and kind of terrifying.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you feel your community around you.

I've found that underworld of bereaved women to be a theme too; it's almost shocking what a taboo it is to mention a loss to a happy woman of childbearing age, and how a loss brings those stories out of the woodwork.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

it's almost shocking what a taboo it is to mention a loss to a happy woman of childbearing age, and how a loss brings those stories out of the woodwork.

That's so true. I've felt awful knowing that at least two of the women who have been reading my posts and being supportive are pregnant, and that two of my RL friends who have been very supportive are just beginning to try to conceive. I feel like the bad fairy at the christening feast.

[ailbhe]

I'm still reading, and very glad you and your family have support near you.

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

I know the guy who wrote this essay (http://www.rowantreefoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=84&Itemid=2) about him and his wife enduring through a stillbirth. You may find some comfort in it.

I wish you strength, and better days.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh. I read that in the New Yorker when it was first published. What an awful, awful story. I can't re-read it now, but I kind of don't need to - I remember it so vividly.

I am so sorry for them.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Still reading and thinking about you. I’ve been wondering if you’d gotten any word on your hormone levels yet.

I had a similar experience (only similar, nothing like losing a pregnancy) when I had ulcerative colitis. So few people are willing to talk about it, because it’s “butt stuff”. Once somebody does open up, people come out of the woodwork. It’s amazing how many people, even people that you are friends with, are suffering from an illness that it’s considered taboo to talk about.

I’m over and done with it now, but I still talk to people about what it was like for me, because I was young, and because I had surgery. They need to talk, and I can listen.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I’ve been wondering if you’d gotten any word on your hormone levels yet.

My blood test from last Friday was excellent - HCG had dropped to 192. I had blood drawn again today, and am hoping that the level is now down to zero.

Given how low the HCG levels were one week after D&C, I'm feeling optimistic that when we go for our follow-up on Monday we'll be told that it was a blighted ovum rather than trophoblastic disease. I think with GTD it typically takes months for HCG levels to drop to zero.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

There are pretty wide age gasps between the three kids in my family. Nine between me and my older sister (I'm 51, she's 60), and seven between me and my younger brother (he's 44.), and I never really thought anything of it. Then maybe 15 years ago my sister said something about mom having had two miscarriages. I've sometimes wondered about my two missing siblings.

You've been in my thoughts lately, and I really wanted to send you some massive words of wisdom, but nothing came up that wasn't pompous up the tuchis. However your use of the word "fragile" reminded me of something from my second depressive smack-down. When I got stabilized after-wards I remembered thinking "Boy,I'm a lot more fragile than I ever thought, and a lot stronger than I ever could believe."

And I think that's true of many of us.

[ahforgetit.livejournal.com]

I'm glad, and I'm still thinking of you, and of Michael and Alex.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad that you feel cared and loved for and that you're pretty sure that you'll be okay. I never know what to say in these situations.

I know that people still dispense the 4-months advice but I think it's usually these days said that it saves you from having to answer the, "How are you coming along?" questions or the "What happened?" questions if things go poorly. I've just accepted that, since I don't have any personal experience with it and don't know what would be best. But I always wondered if that was better. If you haven't told anybody then of course if you're very overcome with the grief process and unable to keep up with certain tasks or responsibilities than you might otherwise have had, you can't readily explain why without talking about it anyway. Maybe it's different for different people.

Anyway, I know I haven't done much myself -- I mean, I'm almost a stranger and I'm not good with helping with grief anyhow -- but I'm very glad that people who are good with that and close to you and know how to help have helped. *hugs*

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The cynical side of me says that not telling anyone primarily protects other people from having to deal with tragedy. Maybe I'm wrong. I know that I am much more comfortable being open about my life than some. But I can't think that many people would say, "If I have to go through an experience that's physically painful, medically complicated, and emotionally devastating, I want to do it on my own - without help or sympathy."

You can still be exposed to difficult questions either way. With Alex almost three years old, we're at the prime time for people to start thinking that "When are you going to have another one?" is a legitimate conversational gambit. The more people who know that I had a miscarriage, the less likely it is that I'll be asked a question that will make me cry.

Informing people about the miscarriage has been hard, though. I posted pretty freely to LJ, but it has been much MUCH harder to actually say what needs to be said aloud. Fortunately, I have friends who have been willing to spread the word appropriately - not gossiping far and wide, but making sure that I won't be congratulated by someone who's still under the impression that I'm pregnant.

[marith.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad. Have nothing to offer but stupid internet hugs (I like that phrase, nexos), but those and thinking of you and Alex and Michael still.

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

Still here. Still thinking of you. The fact that I have my own Infertility Dramas to deal with in no way lessens that - in fact, it makes it easier to empathise, I think, since I have some idea how deep feelings can go on issues like this.

Feel free to say what you want about this stuff, as much as you want. Or not. I for one won't be averting my eyes, and I'm sure that's the case for a good many other folk who care about you.

*some more stupid internet hugs*, if you want them. :-7

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you have so many good, loving, caring people around you.

*more stupid Internet hugs*

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I have given birth to four strong, health babies. I have had four miscarriages. I see those four children in my dreams; I hunger for them. I weep for them. I cherish the children that I have, but the joy of my living children does not lessen the sorrow I feel over the ones that I lost.

Thank you for writing this post. The last time I became pregnant, when I was pregnant with Luke, I waited, waited to make sure.

This is a sisterhood I would not wish for, would not wish on anyone, but it is a sisterhood. We know.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Still here. Not going anywhere.

I'll be watching on Monday for an update about the pathology report. The news thus far looks encouraging.

*hug* and all that goes with it

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

oh, and PLEASE keep us all informed about the report. Sending you low HCG level wishes... Lots and lots and lots of love.

Ya know, you are only getting back what you put out there. Payback can be a bitch, but it can also pay amazing dividends... ; )

[larcb.livejournal.com]

I went through a miscarriage Dec. 2006, at 11 weeks. I was amazed how many women had been through it. Sisterhood, for sure.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

I have had three times in my life when I felt I joined a sisterhood.

* when my mother died
* when I had my miscarriage
* when I gave birth to my first child

Interestingly, only one was a joyful occasion (and not always joyful, as I think all parents can attest).

[(Anonymous)]

I'm still reading and thinking of all of you.

Carol

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

*hug offered*

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I agree that things have improved out of all recognition with this kind of thing. I have a friend who had a stillbirth and several miscarriages in the 40s and 50s and had essentially no emotional support. Nobody should have to go through that.

There's another package on its way, for values of "on its way" that mean "all the contents are in the house and will be put in an envelope soon". I have many skills. Going to the post office is not among them.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who had a stillbirth and several miscarriages in the 40s and 50s and had essentially no emotional support. Nobody should have to go through that.

I will always wonder now, based on what my grandmother told my mother, if I ought to have had more aunts or uncles.

[kate_nepveu]

I'm so glad you're finding all these comments and everything else sustaining. I hope your physical and emotional health continue to improve.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

It's touched me more than I can say to receive loving sympathy from my friends who are committedly childfree, as well as the ones who know what it's like to desperately want a child.

I know that I don't ever want to have a child. I don't mind other people's geeky, book-loving, well-behaved children - but I don't want to be responsible for one for more than a few hours at a time. But I can see how, having a child like Alex already, you would want to have another.

Besides, I've only ever met one person who was so childfree he congratulated one of my friends on a miscarriage. (Yes, said person is a well-known internet asshole.) You don't have to want children to recognise that losing a child (or the potential of one) sucks. It even sucks if you didn't want to be pregnant and were thinking about abortion - even if part of you is glad that you don't have to make the decision because your body did it for you, it still hurts.

I don't have to want to have children myself to recognise that you are hurting, and I can't see you hurting and not want to do something to help. Even if all I can do is offer you clumsy words of little solace.