Road to Recovery

It's an education I wish I didn't have to have, but I have learned a lot from miscarriage. I've learned that while becoming pregnant can seem instantaneous, becoming unpregnant takes a few weeks for the body to achieve. I've learned that the answer to the question "why?" is confusing and frought with more and more questions. I've learned that some people do not understand that we are grieving a death.

We are grieving a death. I understand that until you go through it, you probably can't imagine it - I know I couldn't, before it happened to me - but consider this a public service announcement. Whatever your intellectual thoughts on pregnancy and human life may be, I can assure you that the emotional experience for me and for Mike is not that I had a health-related mishap or a medical emergency, but that someone has died. 

Every day gets easier, though. Sometimes a thought, a song, or the sight of a baby can send you reeling backwards with surprising force, but then you forge on again. I can't imagine how we would be coping if we didn't have each other and a strong marriage to fall back on... if we didn't have the solid and reliable power to make each other laugh, still, even on the worst days.

It's funny how, when you're pregnant, everything becomes in reference to pregnancy. Every food you eat, every move you make, every thought you think points back to I'm pregnant. When you lose a pregnancy, everything then points to I miscarried. One of the many, many random thoughts I've had in the last week and a half was, "What a time to cancel cable!" I thought there could be no worse time to lack the immediate & compelling escape of television. But for the one millionth time in life, I was wrong. The silence of the television has been unexpectedly pleasant. Instead we've spent our mornings and evenings listening (and even dancing) to music, talking, or just sitting quietly together. It's peaceful, and perhaps just what the doctor ordered.