It's over

I miscarried yesterday.

I've been sitting here, staring at that sentence and trying to figure out what else to say. It sums up everything but says nothing - it doesn't explain what happened, or how we feel. So I'll do my best to write those things, if I can.

The night before last, I started spotting. Not a lot - it was only visible when I wiped. I knew that brown blood (i.e., old blood) was normal, even expected. Pink was a minor worry, but probably OK as long as it stayed light. But this was a bright red-orange. I frantically googled to see if it could possibly be normal, and though most reports were bad, there were a few women who said they had that kind of spotting their entire pregnancy and everything was fine. So I clung to hope, even though I got out of bed every hour so see if it had gone away or gotten heavier. Neither happened, so early the next morning, I called my doctor.

When my husband and I arrived at her office, she sat me down and gently explained what I already knew - I was miscarrying. My HCG levels from the blood test the day before, which my multitude of pregnancy symptoms had clearly shown to be elevated, had dropped like a stone. There was simply no way a pregnancy could be sustained. She explained that the spotting would worsen until it was a steady flow, and I would feel cramping - that it would seem like a heavy period and might last longer, even as long a couple weeks. At under 10 weeks, there was no need for an invasive D&C - nature would simply take its course.

Why did it happen? There's just no answer. My doctor's suspicion was that because I became pregnant so quickly after coming off birth control (period --> off birth control --> surprise ovulation --> even more surprising positive HPT), my body might not have had time to fully prepare itself. Maybe the uterine lining wasn't thick enough, or the egg didn't implant quite well enough. The same thing happened to my doctor when she and her husband were first trying to start a family; she also became pregnant nearly instantly after going off birth control, before miscarrying at 12 weeks. There's no real reason, no good or sure reason other than things just weren't right. No one did anything wrong. It just happened.

As I sat there crying and holding my husband's hand, she leaned forward and gently told me to cry as much as I need to. "It's not just the sadness, you see, even though this is painful and you ARE sad. It's the hormones, too. They're dropping right now, and that leaves you in a terrible state. It's the same reason women get the baby blues after giving birth, it's all those hormones leaving your system. So I want you to understand - right now, it seems like this will never get better. But it will. It will."

Intellectually, I know that's true. But she was right that it doesn't feel like it. I spent all of yesterday in tears, and much of this morning. The constant reminders are hard - my stockpile of caffeine free teas, the bedroom we had plans to turn into a nursery. Even just walking around the house is difficult - the day before it happened, I cracked a joke about being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while I made dinner. I can't step foot in there without thinking of that.

In a bizarre way, under all the pain and tears, I feel remarkably calm (not happy - simply calm, or perhaps it's more like numbness). I don't know what to attribute this to, except that maybe - this is it. This is as bad as it can get. There is nothing more I can possibly worry about, because this is the bottom. I feel utterly drained. My husband is struggling with his own sadness - last night he told me that he didn't realize just how much he wanted this baby until we lost it. I know what he means. I'm glad we can be there for each other - I can't imagine going through this alone. We spent most of yesterday holding hands or curled up together.

I used to wonder how badly an early miscarriage affected a woman. I understood that it was bad, a terrible thing, but in my ignorance I assumed that since you couldn't feel the baby at that stage, it couldn't be that bad, right? I was so very wrong. I didn't understand the emotional investment you have, even at just 6 weeks. I used to talk to my baby. Every day I would whisper that we loved it, tell it how excited we were. At home I'd constantly run my hand down my stomach, and at night I'd fall asleep with one hand on my abdomen. This is the worst part, in a way. When I wake up in the morning, I have to stop myself from thinking, "Good morning, baby. It's a pretty day outside." I step out of the shower and put my hand on my stomach out of habit, then catch myself when I realize that there's nothing there anymore.

The hardest part was telling our parents. We hadn't even told them we were expecting a baby - we wanted to wait until after the first ultrasound - and now we had to tell them that we lost it. How do you tell someone that they were going to be a grandparent, but aren't anymore? With my parents on the other side of the globe, my mother-in-law was the only mom available for a hug. We've had our differences in the past, but I can't begin to say how much I appreciate her presence right now.

I know there's probably more I could write, but I'm so tired, so drained. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, I'll have something more to say. Right now I just need to go hug my husband and cry again.