An empty room

I am a prolific knitter, crocheter, and spinner. My large stash of yarn and fiber is stacked nice and neat in what was our extra closet. It just happens that the extra closet is in the room that I haven't opened for the past week and a half. It was the room that was supposed to belong to our son.

For the first time, today, I opened the door. The hand-me-down strollers are still sitting in the corner, where I saw my husband run up and stash them when I was still in shock, lying in bed and unable to so much as move from despair. So is the pile of baby books so helpfully provided by my and his mothers, and the half dozen baby outfits that his mother picked up on sale at Kohls and just had to get for her first grandchild. So also hangs the gift I got for my husband for Valentine's Day - a onesie with the Duke logo on it, so our child would proudly display his school spirit when he inevitably got dragged to that first basketball game.

I could deal with all of that. Even the onesie. I know logically that we have an excellent chance of being able to conceive again and carry to term. We have no known genetic or hormonal issues that might have caused a miscarriage. We have an excellent chance of being able to use all of the items in that room in the next two years, less with any luck.

But then I opened the closet and in searching for a particular skein of yarn, I found his socks.

They were an impulse purchase at Target, just a couple of weeks after I found out I was pregnant with him. They were selling off all of their baby holiday socks, as it was the end of January. Hidden in the pile were a pair of teensy tiny white socks with blue toes and heels, with little puppies embroidered on them. They were some ridiculously cheap price on clearance, less than a quarter, and they were my first baby purchase.

I held the socks and sobbed. I never thought such a tiny object would mean so much to me. They were just a pair of socks that cost barely more than a few pennies, and yet they meant so much to me. Those little socks were tucked away in my purse at my first ultrasound, when I saw his little heart beating.

I don't think those little socks can ever belong to anybody else. They're his, and noone else's. I couldn't leave them packed away in the closet, so I moved them, stashing them away in my side table in the bedroom, so I'll always know just where they are. They shouldn't mean so much, but they do.

Memorials

Each day gets a little bit easier in its own way. Some days have their tough moments - the play, the television show, a text from my cousin informing me that their healthy baby is a boy. Each day I do a slightly better job of living. I'm certainly not "over it," nor do I think I'll ever be completely, but one week and one day past the moment that my dream fell apart and I find I can work again. I can smile again. I still can't go into the room we were saving for him without breaking down into tears, but that step will come too, eventually.

This blog entry is a step as well. This is the first entry that I've written without crying. I don't want the memory of my first child, however briefly he existed, to be one that always hurts. I had wonderful moments that I shared with that little tiny spark of life. Someday, God willing, I want to share with the other children we'll hopefully have that they have an older brother, even if they can never meet him in this life.

I've been thinking a little bit about ways to remember this first child. I went out and bought a piece of jewelry, a ring, with an opal and blue topaz in it. Opal would have been his birthstone. Blue topaz is mine. Now I get to sit here and glance at it any time I want and remember him, even if it's only a ring.

Things that should have warning labels

Apparently "Miss Saigon" is far worse for me than the five minutes in Battlestar Galactica. Mother in law gave hubby and I tickets for the show so we could go do something fun together. We left at intermission, both of us sobbing. It's probably easier if we don't tell anyone. She'll just feel guilty for putting us through more pain.

12 weeks

Somewhere about twelve weeks ago, my husband and I conceived a child. Today is a hard day. If I'd managed to make it to this point (which I thought, when it happened, was only a week away) my chance of miscarriage would have been at around 5%, or less. According to the doctor, before the heartbeat is seen, the chance is near 30%. After - between 7ish and 12 weeks, where my baby died - it's 20%.

Seems incredible, doesn't it? Almost one out of three pregnancies end with a baby who can't survive. Some women don't even realize they're pregnant before it's gone.

I guess I've finally reached a place where I can be happy for those brief weeks that I knew my child, though it doesn't make the pain of losing him any easier.

Television shows should come with warning labels that are a little more specific than the regular ones. Warning: do not watch this episode if you have lost a child. Last night was the worst night since Friday. We'd missed the last two episodes of Battlestar Galatica because of my mom's visit and Friday's surgery, so my husband popped on the TiVO. Lo and behold, less than ten minutes into the second to last episode, there's a baby shower looming at me from the screen.

I don't get to have a baby shower.

Haircut

I went and got a haircut this morning.

Doesn't seem like a big deal. I get haircuts every few months. For me, however, this particular haircut was a huge step that I desperately needed to take. When I found out I was pregnant, I decided it might be fun to just let my hair grow. Then, the pictures of me with my belly growing would also have my hair growing, so when I looked back I'd get to see all of the changes over the months.

I walked into the salon and told them to do whatever they wanted. It looks nice, I think. The whole time, all I could think about was how my hope was gone.

For some reason, I didn't let my husband take any pictures while I was pregnant. I didn't want to have any reminders if something went wrong. I planned to let him start when I was in the second trimester. Never got a chance. Now the hair's gone, too, the last physical reminder (other than the baby weight) that he was ever there.

Mornings

For some reason, right now the grief is worst in the mornings. I'm still feeling cramping from the D&C operation, so I've never awakened and forgotten I wasn't pregnant anymore, or anything, but every time I open my eyes, it hits straight on, like a pressure against my whole body. I feel like I age a decade in that single moment. I creak when I manage to leverage myself out of bed. The image of his little face at that last ultrasound flickers in my mind. My heart hurts worse than the physical recovery ever could, and the tears start again.

I haven't been alone for more than an hour since the doctors left the exam room on Thursday. I don't want to be. If I'm alone for too long, all that happens is the crying. I don't think it's a good idea for me to attempt it for a good long while. That makes work a bit difficult, though. I work from home as an editor. I'm used to being able to turn on a bit of music, spread pages out on the coffee table, and get down to business. Now I can't. Just staring at the pile of unread pages (sorry, Professor, your manuscript may return a bit late because of an unforseen loss in the family...) makes me start to despair. When I pick up the pages, none of the words make sense. It's all a jumble of letters and numbers. And why should it mean anything to me? My baby is dead. Academics, tables, words about racial relations - some big topics, some not so big topics, and none of it makes a bit of difference when my world has closed in on itself.

So I can't sit alone. And as much as I wish it would, the pile of work is only growing larger. My boss understands - of course she does, she is also my mother-in-law, and spent all of Friday at my side, holding my hand when my husband was in the bathroom or if I needed a hand for both of mine. My life has not ended, though, even if his did.

Today I'm going back to work for the first time. At the office instead of at home. They have an extra desk I can use, and a pile of easy correcting that doesn't require the words to make sense. Maybe I can only manage an hour. Maybe I can manage two before I fall apart. But... that's one hour, two hours, that I'm not alone and there might be a span of entire minutes when I don't think about how much my heart hurts.

Not a Blog I Wanted to Create

This certainly isn't a club anyone wants to join. That's the very reason I decided to start this exercise in therapy. I've always been a writer at heart, and talking things out is supposed to make it easier eventually. I'm doing plenty of talking to other people. I think if I hear the phone ring with a message of sympathy one more time, I might open the window and throw it as hard as I can, and hope it breaks into a million little pieces of plastic.

So, I'm going to start my story here. It's not a story anyone wants to tell. It might be a story that no one but myself ever finds or ever wants to read, but that's equally fine. This isn't for anyone else but me, a place to remember what I've lost and what might have been.

We conceived in early January, probably on a vacation to San Diego. I found out about two weeks later - really early, actually, thanks to how sensitive the at home pee-on-a-stick tests are. I couldn't have been happier. At my seven week appointment, we saw the little heart beating on the monitor, and my worries melted away. I knew logically that there was still risk. We hadn't reached the end of the first trimester, after all. However, I started telling people, after seeing that little tiny heartbeat.

I had a dream around that point that I was going to have a little boy. I don't know if I was right, of course. We wouldn't have found out until ten weeks after that appointment or so, but in my mind I started to call the baby 'him.' I was having trouble coming up with boy's names. Girls were easy, but I just couldn't find the right name.

Something happened at eight weeks. We don't know what. We'll find out when the results of a few tests come back, but it was probably a 'chromosomal abnormality,' which is such a complicated phrase for saying that something just didn't match up right. For some reason, he couldn't grow anymore, and the little heartbeat that I'd fallen in love with stopped.

I didn't know. That's probably the thing that hurts the most. For three more weeks, I thought my little baby was doing fine. Blood tests and urine tests came back okay at nine weeks. My mother purchased some maternity clothes for me when she visited. My mother-in-law was so excited that she bought baby clothes every time she saw a sale. My mom and I bantered around names, and I finally found one that, in my mind, sounded perfect - even though my husband and I never had any chance to discuss it. Mark.

The eleven-week appointment came. I woke up that morning and almost cancelled it because of an overwhelming feeling of dread. I was supposed to try to wake my husband up to go with me, but for some reason, I didn't. I just got in the car and went to the appointment.

The dopplar machine couldn't find the heartbeat. The regular ultrasound couldn't find the baby at all, and at eleven weeks, he should have been large enough to find easily. When the nurse stepped out to go find the doctor and get the more sensitive vaginal ultrasound, I already knew. When they found him on the other ultrasound, I got to see his little face for the last time. There was no heartbeat, and the hushed tones of the doctor said even more than his words.

The D&C procedure, the surgery to remove the oh-so-medically labelled "contents of the uterus" was the next day.