amaryllis
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So I thought I'd start a conversation about the weeks following a miscarriage, and how tough they can be. I'll start by sharing my own experience.
When I was pregnant, I'd wake up in the morning, gather my electronic devices (laptop, ipad, Nintendo 3ds) and settle in our loungeroom. We have wide open windows that look out into our messy, overgrown yard. I saw birds out the window every day, butterflies. It was spring so the sun was beaming down. My location in Australia has the bluest skies you could imagine, the prettiest blue you've ever seen. I was glorying in the beauty of the days, feeling connected to the nature around me. I was sick as a dog from the hormones, but the happiest I have been since I was a little child and in my mother's arms. It felt wonderful to know that I was going to experience the other half of that relationship, of being the mother.
After my miscarriage, I was in a lot of pain, and I was very, very tired. In the days that followed, I took time to look after myself. I cried a lot, and my mother gave me a lot of hugs and support. My sisters and friends were there for me too, and I took the support where I could get it. I am an artist, and before I had fallen pregnant, I had bought a whole new set of oil paints to do some landscape paintings. I had to go digital because of the pregnancy. I realised as I was going through the miscarriage that I could paint with the oils again, and that I could to that to get through my sadness.
My coping mechanism with deep pain in the past year has been to be as busy as possible, not to avoid what I need to feel but to stop myself from dipping into a dangerous depression. When I sit too still and don't do anything, I fall into a terrible place. So I tried to get busy.
But in a single day there are a thousand little cuts that on their own are bothersome, but after a while end up leaving you with considerable emotional pain. Choosing what clothes to wear, realising you don't have to make room for an expanding belly anymore. Having issues with older shirts and bras, even though you've not been pregnant for weeks. You're faced with the reality of having to buy new clothes, because your boobs haven't had the memo that you're not expecting anymore, and they don't seem to be going back to their old size.
You go to take care of yourself and you don't really feel like it. You don't pamper yourself like you did when you were pregnant. You don't need to, and it breaks your heart. I didn't want to stop feeling special, important, connected.
Facebook is a minefield of triggers. My cousins and friends are all at the baby-making age and there are so many photos of newborns, so many little girls, which I felt like I was going to have. I check on my sister's facebook page because seeing photos of my nephew brings me some comfort - he's an older baby, ten months, so it's not quite the same as seeing newborns.
I went to a Christmas party function with my boyfriend with his work, and one of his workmates walked in in a black and white patterned dress, tummy full at about seven months by the looks of things. I grit my teeth and tried not to let it get to me. It was so hard.
As time goes on I feel less of a right to be sad. The world moves on, but some she-animal inside is weeping all the time, crying, "How can the world go on? I lost my baby! Don't you all understand the terrible thing that has happened? Don't you understand the horrible heartbreak!?" The most sacred, beautiful bond has been broken, but it's been weeks since I stopped hurting and bleeding, so with the physical symptoms goes the sympathy I feel entitled to.
I have my first period since the miscarriage. It's the Christmas season. I was looking forward to having a ripening belly, watching my nephew open presents under a tree, being with my brother who is living in Japan but is coming home for the holidays. I will face all that but with an empty tummy.
Activity is my saviour. I write my novel, emails to friends that I had put off, and out come all my sketching things. I overburden myself with projects in the hope that I can ride whatever creative wave is taking me and make enough product to get some income. I always think now of the baby that I want to have in the future, and how I don't want to be surprised or unready ever again.
Visits from friends and family are also wonderfully distracting. My nephew has learned to point at things, he likes to sing along to music and he has a wicked sense of humour. He always makes me laugh, has done since he was born, and continues to surprise me every time I see him with his cleverness and strength of personality.
Since becoming pregnant, a strange polarity has become me. I am now "not a mother", and my aim and hope is to "be a mother". Where-as before this all happened, I was just me. Just myself. I ache for that simplicity again, that core of being myself outside of my status as a parent. I realise a lot of my grief and depression is linked into this thought pattern, and I try to search out the individual in me, to treasure and care for myself as I did when I was pregnant. But it's so hard to do when you've experienced the joy of being a duality. Once you've been exposed to that, being alone seems such a cold, isolated way of being. I battle to work against that thinking pattern. I am not alone.
There are so many women that have experienced what I experienced, and it's something I try to never forget. Connecting and discussing things helps. I talked to my mother about how helpful I found the support forums and so forth. She said, "Well, once upon a time we lived in villages, and the women talked to each other and shared their experiences so things weren't a surprise to them." I imagine the women I speak to at the forums, sitting comfortably in a big room, sharing food and support. It's a nice thought.
I think the thing that dogs me the most is that my body is recovering quicker than I am, but has also changed in a way that it won't recover from. I have a period, and at first I am happy for being back to normalcy. I am also sad that I am having a period at all. Then it comes on heavy, the cramps far less than I usually experience by the blood far more heavy. I go through a king's ransom worth of sanitary pads and I feel like my uterus is mocking me for some reason. "Wanna period? Here's your period!" I wanted a period so I could track my fertility again. I didn't want a re-enactment of The Shining in my pants.
I wake up and I feel that horrible tug of grief. And then I face the day, and people ask me how I'm doing. I hate having to lie every day. I sugarcoat it, "I'm okay. Ups and downs. I'm coping." I can't tell them the truth. "Some moments I'm grieving horribly and I'm crying inside. Other times I'm okay, but that's usually when I forget I was pregnant in the first place."
I would be lying, however, if I didn't mention that I had been improving. Slowly. Inch by inch. More of the day is filled with good times than bad. I'm still over-sensitive and I have to be gentle with myself, make sure I don't expose myself to certain triggers or upsetting events. But I'm needing to tiptoe less and less, and I am coming to understand my body in a new way. I try to eat right, I take up my weight training again. I go for long walks, the ones I had yearned for when I was pregnant but unable to undertake due to fatigue. I do it all while I can because I cannot take my free time for granted ever again.
Because I know that I will be pregnant again at some point, and when that happens, I will yearn for the days I had time to waste. But I think the next time around, I will be more thankful for every day I experience.
When I was pregnant, I'd wake up in the morning, gather my electronic devices (laptop, ipad, Nintendo 3ds) and settle in our loungeroom. We have wide open windows that look out into our messy, overgrown yard. I saw birds out the window every day, butterflies. It was spring so the sun was beaming down. My location in Australia has the bluest skies you could imagine, the prettiest blue you've ever seen. I was glorying in the beauty of the days, feeling connected to the nature around me. I was sick as a dog from the hormones, but the happiest I have been since I was a little child and in my mother's arms. It felt wonderful to know that I was going to experience the other half of that relationship, of being the mother.
After my miscarriage, I was in a lot of pain, and I was very, very tired. In the days that followed, I took time to look after myself. I cried a lot, and my mother gave me a lot of hugs and support. My sisters and friends were there for me too, and I took the support where I could get it. I am an artist, and before I had fallen pregnant, I had bought a whole new set of oil paints to do some landscape paintings. I had to go digital because of the pregnancy. I realised as I was going through the miscarriage that I could paint with the oils again, and that I could to that to get through my sadness.
My coping mechanism with deep pain in the past year has been to be as busy as possible, not to avoid what I need to feel but to stop myself from dipping into a dangerous depression. When I sit too still and don't do anything, I fall into a terrible place. So I tried to get busy.
But in a single day there are a thousand little cuts that on their own are bothersome, but after a while end up leaving you with considerable emotional pain. Choosing what clothes to wear, realising you don't have to make room for an expanding belly anymore. Having issues with older shirts and bras, even though you've not been pregnant for weeks. You're faced with the reality of having to buy new clothes, because your boobs haven't had the memo that you're not expecting anymore, and they don't seem to be going back to their old size.
You go to take care of yourself and you don't really feel like it. You don't pamper yourself like you did when you were pregnant. You don't need to, and it breaks your heart. I didn't want to stop feeling special, important, connected.
Facebook is a minefield of triggers. My cousins and friends are all at the baby-making age and there are so many photos of newborns, so many little girls, which I felt like I was going to have. I check on my sister's facebook page because seeing photos of my nephew brings me some comfort - he's an older baby, ten months, so it's not quite the same as seeing newborns.
I went to a Christmas party function with my boyfriend with his work, and one of his workmates walked in in a black and white patterned dress, tummy full at about seven months by the looks of things. I grit my teeth and tried not to let it get to me. It was so hard.
As time goes on I feel less of a right to be sad. The world moves on, but some she-animal inside is weeping all the time, crying, "How can the world go on? I lost my baby! Don't you all understand the terrible thing that has happened? Don't you understand the horrible heartbreak!?" The most sacred, beautiful bond has been broken, but it's been weeks since I stopped hurting and bleeding, so with the physical symptoms goes the sympathy I feel entitled to.
I have my first period since the miscarriage. It's the Christmas season. I was looking forward to having a ripening belly, watching my nephew open presents under a tree, being with my brother who is living in Japan but is coming home for the holidays. I will face all that but with an empty tummy.
Activity is my saviour. I write my novel, emails to friends that I had put off, and out come all my sketching things. I overburden myself with projects in the hope that I can ride whatever creative wave is taking me and make enough product to get some income. I always think now of the baby that I want to have in the future, and how I don't want to be surprised or unready ever again.
Visits from friends and family are also wonderfully distracting. My nephew has learned to point at things, he likes to sing along to music and he has a wicked sense of humour. He always makes me laugh, has done since he was born, and continues to surprise me every time I see him with his cleverness and strength of personality.
Since becoming pregnant, a strange polarity has become me. I am now "not a mother", and my aim and hope is to "be a mother". Where-as before this all happened, I was just me. Just myself. I ache for that simplicity again, that core of being myself outside of my status as a parent. I realise a lot of my grief and depression is linked into this thought pattern, and I try to search out the individual in me, to treasure and care for myself as I did when I was pregnant. But it's so hard to do when you've experienced the joy of being a duality. Once you've been exposed to that, being alone seems such a cold, isolated way of being. I battle to work against that thinking pattern. I am not alone.
There are so many women that have experienced what I experienced, and it's something I try to never forget. Connecting and discussing things helps. I talked to my mother about how helpful I found the support forums and so forth. She said, "Well, once upon a time we lived in villages, and the women talked to each other and shared their experiences so things weren't a surprise to them." I imagine the women I speak to at the forums, sitting comfortably in a big room, sharing food and support. It's a nice thought.
I think the thing that dogs me the most is that my body is recovering quicker than I am, but has also changed in a way that it won't recover from. I have a period, and at first I am happy for being back to normalcy. I am also sad that I am having a period at all. Then it comes on heavy, the cramps far less than I usually experience by the blood far more heavy. I go through a king's ransom worth of sanitary pads and I feel like my uterus is mocking me for some reason. "Wanna period? Here's your period!" I wanted a period so I could track my fertility again. I didn't want a re-enactment of The Shining in my pants.
I wake up and I feel that horrible tug of grief. And then I face the day, and people ask me how I'm doing. I hate having to lie every day. I sugarcoat it, "I'm okay. Ups and downs. I'm coping." I can't tell them the truth. "Some moments I'm grieving horribly and I'm crying inside. Other times I'm okay, but that's usually when I forget I was pregnant in the first place."
I would be lying, however, if I didn't mention that I had been improving. Slowly. Inch by inch. More of the day is filled with good times than bad. I'm still over-sensitive and I have to be gentle with myself, make sure I don't expose myself to certain triggers or upsetting events. But I'm needing to tiptoe less and less, and I am coming to understand my body in a new way. I try to eat right, I take up my weight training again. I go for long walks, the ones I had yearned for when I was pregnant but unable to undertake due to fatigue. I do it all while I can because I cannot take my free time for granted ever again.
Because I know that I will be pregnant again at some point, and when that happens, I will yearn for the days I had time to waste. But I think the next time around, I will be more thankful for every day I experience.
