In My Head- A post-Miscarriage Journal Part 2: Unsettled, Unknown, and Waiting

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So the hospital part may be over, the burial is over, but now the actual due date.

I wonder if it will be just as bad every year when she should be turning another year older, wondering what she would have been like and looked like.

The unknown is the worst part. Most of the time you never know why. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know what your life would have looked like with them in it. You don’t know what to do with the stuff, the new stuff and all the hand me downs you have saved. You don’t know if you should try again. You don’t know if it will happen again.

I literally feel like something in my life is missing. That’s one of the most surprising factors for me. Again, how can you miss someone you never had? It is like you are waiting for something or looking for someone all the time. This awful place of the unknown and waiting.

My Body is Betraying Me

Then the most brutal realization I am currently facing is that it looks like it is not even an option for me anymore. My body is betraying me. As if the delivery wasn’t enough, then the bleeding never stopped. More delay in trying to conceive.

That landed me in the operating room 2 months later with a D&C for left behind “placental fragments”. Then I had to wait for my cycle to return to normal, which took its sweet time….more delay in trying to conceive!

But just because my mind is consumed with pregnancy I added insult to injury by taking a pregnancy test, just for it to be negative and send me on a downward spiral. A few days after that there was my first period after my D&C, a full 44 days!

Now here we are again, my body is acting so strange and weird things have come out and hormonal symptoms have occurred but no period. Because this time I really had myself convinced…I took another test. Negative again!

In the midst of all this, at a follow-up ultrasound, it shows some new tiny cysts inside my ovary that have never been seen before and have to be monitored every 6 weeks.

So here I am, no period, weird symptoms, surprisingly no pain at all indicating the ovarian cysts are growing, and a negative pregnancy test.

I am 37!

I don’t have time to wait around a couple of years to see if it all straightens out and then try to conceive.  Then again, I’m 37 and I pray this is not some new weird perimenopause trying to rear its ugly head.

If all of this is not God slamming a door shut, I don’t know what is. But I know all the body issues and symptoms combined with the grief and realization that I will never have a happy ending to this story has made it an interesting time to say the least.

I feel so stupid! I mean I have never been in control. How arrogant of me to think I would be now. This is where God shakes His head at me.

Out of the previous three times I got pregnant, none of them were planned or expected thanks to PCOS, but I thought that had straightened out now, I certainly went years without symptoms.

I just want to live my life, what’s done is done and I can’t do anything about it so why can’t I just move on?

I don’t want it to consume every thought?

I know the constant wondering and state of confusion trying to figure out what my body is doing is making it all worse. How long will this last?

If there were a list of the most hypervigilant, most sensitive people on the planet I really feel like I would be in the top 5.  So, when something like this happens, it’s quite a blow. It takes over all parts of me.

However, I think I’ve done quite a good job on the outside though of going on with life. Other than short little talks here or there with family or friends they would have no idea that I am living and breathing this daily.

I am completely functional.

I have a 2-year-old and a 15-year-old to raise. I have a household to maintain and a husband to take care of.

Besides, it’s not like I WANT to wallow. My mom doesn’t deal well with emotion so much, my sister doesn’t have kids of her own so she can’t relate, and my husband just simply doesn’t get it. Maybe it is a man thing but he tells me that he just never got a chance to feel attached so it doesn’t affect him to the degree it does me. I mean he was super disappointed and sad and then life went on.  Because life does go on.

Marking Time

That’s another thing; wow, so much life has happened in these 5 months. It feels so strange.

I find myself marking time by when we lost Delaney.

Thinking of certain trips, events, holidays, appointments, etc. that has happened since then, categorizing life in the form of “before” and “after”.

We put a roof on our house since that dreaded date. My son got his permit, my ex-husband and I got married, we went on a trip, there was Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

How…I don’t know because losing Delaney seems like yesterday.

Yet just thinking about how just less than a year ago in the beautiful warm summer months I was ignorantly and blissfully pregnant.

Doing all the summer things while my stomach wasn’t too big yet.

Being pregnant has this way of making you feel like you are doing something very important every day just by waking up… because you are.

And it is like having this built-in milestone of life to look forward to. Excitement and anticipation grow every day.

I was completely unaware that it was all about to come crashing down and taken away from me very shortly.

How could I have known, everything appeared to be fine and because why would anything bad happen with this pregnancy, it never ended in tragedy before.

Jealous

I had no idea I would feel like this.

I never dreamed I would harbor resent for others for something that is completely out of their control.

I do not want to see or hear about anybody else having a baby.

I’m sorry but I just don’t.

My prayer is that one day I will be healed and I can share in the joy with someone else celebrating a new life but I have come to terms that time is definitely not now.

I feel gypped. I felt robbed when my mom sent back baby clothes and furniture. I feel heart-wrenching jealousy that the cases of Pampers in my sister’s garage will now go to her pregnant friends.

I feel like it is completely unfair that others will go on to have healthy babies and I didn’t get mine.

Oh, and here is something super important…the fact that I already have 2 healthy children seems to do absolutely nothing for the fact that I have one that is not with me.

Does that mean I am not thankful for the ones I have?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

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When I said I was weepy, most of the time that comes from just looking at my children and realizing how it is an absolute miracle that they are here with me today. It makes me understand just how delicate life is.

The Truth

Speaking of which, there are truths to be known.

Throughout these past 5 months, I have been desperate to find out WHAT NOW.

I have read book after book.

I have spent hours on my knees and even more hours in scripture desperate for answers.

I have talked with my pastor, my family minister, and other friends. I’ve reached out to people I don’t know. I have messaged random people that have gone through similar situations.

Compiling every ounce of information, truth, and scenario out there to make sure I knew what to do next.

When at first, I thought I was done and never wanted to experience pregnancy ever again, to a sudden shift to just try to at least replace some of the hurt with a new life.

I wanted to change the last pregnancy memory I ever had to something positive and not negative. For the result to be a new baby for our family.

I realize now that God wants me to deal with this grief.

Not to scheme, plot, plan and dodge the intense hurt. He has made it clear that I have to stop focusing on filling the void and focus on Him.

Time and time again he has pointed me to scripture that keeps saying “He is working it all out for my good”. A couple of months ago I thought that meant redemption by another baby.

And then for a while, I really got hung up on Proverbs 16:3 “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed”. I took that one and ran! Yes, I want a baby, I will plan to have one and I will succeed because yay God!!

But nope, what that means is that His plans will become my plans. And THEN those plans will succeed. Oops, had that backward. Once I get out of my way and turn my thoughts to Him, I get a lot more answers that way.

His plan will be fulfilled. Only He knows if that means another baby. But as it stands right now more than likely it doesn’t. And I have to, absolutely remember that it is for my good.

The truth is, Delaney is in Heaven. She is with Jesus. She is not in this world. She got spared of its cruelty and harshness. She is fine, more than fine, she is not hurting.

She is not mad at me; she is not sad.

She doesn’t miss me because she knows I will be with her in the blink of an eye because time is nonexistent there.

I don’t have to worry about her. All that is good and true. And I can logically tell myself that it is good.

It is selfish to want her here when she is somewhere better.

And it SHOULD make me feel better. It SHOULD give me peace, and again, logically when I really think about it, it does.

So, I just have to get my heart and my mind to get on board.

Whatever happens next is what He wants to happen. Because His plans are perfect and His idea of good is not ours.

He knows things I can and will never know so I do not know what is best for me and my family.

Why….WHY would I want something He does not want for me? I repeat that to myself daily.

He is building my character constantly and He is on pins and needles hoping I get it together and get out of this what He really wants me to.

He has seen me whine and cry and doubt. He has seen my anger and confusion. Even with me knowing these truths, it is still hard.

Because being human is hard. We have intense emotions. And when Jesus was here, he knew exactly what it felt like. He wept. Even though he knew He would raise Lazarus from the dead and all would be well, He felt our emotion, our grief, and it overpowered Him and He wept.  

I have to accept that everything that happens is for my good, even if I can’t recognize it, and especially when it doesn’t look like it. He has wanted me to give up control for a long, long time and I think He found a way. The truth is; He will deliver me from all of this if I will just let Him.