(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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I did. After the first, I planted two lilac trees in the front yard. (Well, to be specific, I made my husband plant them.) And there's the Christmas ornament which was my chosen way of remembering them. It got more complicated, though, with the second miscarriage. In some ways that was closer to a baby than the first had been, but I'd also kept myself more emotionally distant, so I had to sort of decide what to do with that one as well.

Honestly, I don't think I'll be able to truly honor and lay to rest the miscarriages until I have a baby or give up on doing so (much more likely have a baby!), because I won't quite know how many losses I'm memorializing. Which is almost terrifying to say "out loud", but true.

I'm really sorry if that's not reassuring. I like the tulip bulb and prayer services quite a lot, though.

[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.

[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.

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.rowantreefoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=130&Itemid=2) is the postscript to that essay, published a year later, describing the birth of their daughter Willa.

[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.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I think people who are sensitive to others feel that way because it is such very hard news, in the first place, during a vulnerable time for others. And because reproductive medicine's come such a long way, we no longer have that sense that every woman has that story - even though so many do.

And second sometimes people who are opening their hearts to having a child really are unable to hear it and really do give off 'please don't tell me this' vibes.

And all that is messy, and human, and real. But you're no bad fairy; they bring curses - not just themselves and their stories.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

A good friend of mine who was had always wanted children had three miscarriages, which was a hard time for her. She went on to have two wonderful daughters. I hope you will experience the same.

<Hugs> and >Hugs> to rivka

[ahforgetit.livejournal.com]

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

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Still reading and thinking about you.

Yes, that. And about Misha 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*

[ailbhe]

The bad fairies are the women who take pregnant women aside and say "And how far along are you? 16 weeks 5 days? That's when my leg exploded and they discovered the placenta was growing in my ear - you should have another scan." Or worse, "If you just relaxed your fallopian tubes would grow back" to infertile women.

You are a woman dealing with a loss. You are not seeking out pregnant women to scare them, nor imposing your long-past horror stories on their announcement of joy. And everyone knows this.

[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.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

That's very good news, and I'll choose to feel optimistic along with you.

And I'm glad the community of women has shown itself to you, and held you in its circle. It's done that for me, too, at terrible times in my life, and it's been such a consolation.