Despondent in through the looking glass.

I ended up having to have a D&C. When they told me, I nearly lost it. Even this, miscarrying what would have been our first child, I can’t do right?

It sounds strange to say, but it was actually one of the nicest days I’ve had in the past month. All the nurses were gentle, understanding, kind. I had the space to just be, to worry about nothing else but my own health and peace of mind. I had my very first positive experience with anesthesia. And afterward they wrapped me in warm blankets that I spilled saltine cracker crumbs all over. David introduced me to Curb Your Enthusiasm that afternoon and I laughed, genuinely, for perhaps the first time since we knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable.

The days since have been unequivocally harder.

I started passing blood clots the first day we were in Charleston (a planned vacation that happened to fall four days after the D&C), among the company of an old friend, new acquaintances, and their preteen children. A couple days later, during a thankfully lazy afternoon, the blood clots grew bigger, more frequent, and scary. We contemplated a trip to the hospital, but ended up not going. The physical part, at least, seems to be getting better, but it’s been so up and down, so unlike the “light bleeding” described to me at the hospital, that I’m not entirely convinced it’s over either.

Navigating work, friendships, and life generally has been even tougher. I’m having to constantly pretend to be OK, when inside my head I’m just screaming about all that I’ve lost.

I am despondent. My now intense awareness of the uncertainty of life begets hopelessness. What if I can’t get pregnant again? What if I do, and I suffer through more months of exhaustion, just for things to end in the same heartbreaking way?

What if we, ultimately, can’t have children?

I watch, at work and at shul, as people surround pregnant women and new mothers with kindness and compassion. I am so lonely, so desperate for someone to do the same for me. I dream of being enveloped by a warm embrace and comforting words, though I know it’s not to be. It’s so hard to ask for help. It’s so hard to know who to trust.

There’s a sad irony to it all. So many of the ways in which I struggle come from being the product of an, at best, ambivalent mother and an absent father. What sort of unfair world do we live in, where I am born, accidentally, to unprepared parents, and then lose a very planned, very wanted pregnancy?

I can very distinctly remember the pain I felt, as a child, when I would spend an afternoon with a friend and their family, only to be sent home for dinner. It was a constant, firm reminder - you can’t just become part of someone else’s family; you won’t ever really belong.

So many of the choices I have made in life since center around my need to build a family, a community to make up for what my childhood lacked. But now even that seems unattainable. What if we spend the rest of our lives, metaphorically, being sent home for dinner?

Last updated November 03, 2017