December 1st. 2 days ago.
December 1st, 2007. 5 years ago.
The reason I don’t care about Thanksgiving. The reason I’m having to learn to like the holidays again.
I lost my second baby and lost my fertility. I should have a 4 year old.
I was so excited, I shared the news to family on Thanksgiving Day. I bought my mom this silver plated rhinestone fortune cookie that opened up and inside was a little metal plate that I had engraved to say, “I love you already, Mema.” My mom didn’t get it and started to set it aside. I stopped her and told her to read it again. She did and just looked at me. See, the grandkids call my mom “Mema”. I asked her, “Why would I be calling you “Mema”? She blinked at me a couple times and then the light bulb went on, DING.
Just a few days later, I started to lose it. In Babies R Us. Go figure. I was looking at crib bedding sets, I had found one I liked, it had cute mice on it. My mom used to call me her mouse, I thought it would be fitting. I was walking over to go look at the price (way too much, I’m sure) and I cramped so bad I doubled over. Then I felt the gush and ran to my car and home to call the nurse line. I was told, “1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, sounds like you are having one, sorry.” and got hung up on. Later that night the pain got worse and I talked to one of the doctors on-call. She was much nicer and told me if the pain got worse and the bleeding increased to call her. The next morning I was in so much pain my teeth were chattering uncontrollably so I called the Dr. again. She told me to come in right away and told me she would send an ambulance since there was a snowstorm. I declined and got to the hospital.
The Dr. met us there and ordered an ultrasound to check for ectopic. The man who did the ultrasound did his thing and asked if I was for sure pregnant because there was “nothing in there”. Pretty sure my sobs gave him his answer.
Then I was sent home with some pain meds told to come back in 2 weeks to check my blood levels. When I went to the follow up I was told my levels were down and officially no longer pregnant. The nurse asked me how I was and I just cried. She handed me a box of tissues and left. She just left, didn’t say a word, and didn’t come back. I waited about 20 minutes to see if there was anything more I needed to do. I was given no support, not even a lousy pamphlet on how to cope. I’ve never been back to that practice.
The 10 year anniversary of my first loss is in February. Both these dates have been on my mind so much the last month. Most years I don’t even notice until sometimes a couple weeks later.
Why is this year so hard?
Why did I announce it on a holiday?
Why do I have to be infertile and a loss mom, isn’t one or the other bad enough?
For all of us, just, why?
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