Still Passing Open Windows ....

A loss

Please go to Meg's blog. She has lost her precious daughter at 22 weeks. 

What shall I worry about today?

My aunt is planning to finish two projects before the end of the year. Being competitive, I thought I should too so I picked up Julia Cameron's Walking in This World, my aim being to finally finish the last two chapters. It's a 12 week course, I think, and I started it all inspired and managed to do the first 10 weeks more or less on schedule but the last two chapters have been on hold since ... oh, let's see, April?

So, I was reading the eleventh chapter on authenticity and being true to yourself and forging ahead with creative projects despite lack of encouragement or support when this picture popped into my head. I was living in a house with two kids (and H, of course). The two kids were at school and I was at home being ... a mother, I guess, and I suddenly the idea hit me that all this soul searching I am doing now and energy I am devoting to finding out who I really am, which was motivated by the huge road bump of infertility and diabetes in my life, were only essential now and that to be a good mother and wife I would have to put my desires and dreams aside.

It's a disturbing belief. I don't agree with it. I think that everything I have learnt over the past five years has made me into a more real person and less the good girl who tries to please everyone. I believe that this actually helps me to be a better person, a better wife, a better friend and hopefully one day a better mother because I have a better idea of my priorities. However, obviously, lurking in the depths of my subconscious is this idea of the necessity of female self-sacrifice to the ideal of the perfect mother and wife. Scary.

I mentioned my fear of having to sacrifice myself in order to be a good wife and mother to H and he looked at me, "You are fucked up," he said, "And you look so normal."

You don't know the half of it, babe. At least it keeps me from worrying about (a) putting on weight on my arms and my thighs, (b) a miscarriage starting so (c) running to the loo to check and (d) making it to Christmas and 26 weeks. Can you believe my number one worry is putting on weight? I am fucked up.

Doing without

Last pregnancy I had a cerclage to deal with my short cervix. It possibly lead to an infection which brought the whole thing to a crashing halt so this time I am not at all keen to have another cerclage. I have discussed this with two doctors so far and they both seem willing, if not exactly happy, to monitor the cervix and see how things go. As a result there is a possibility that I could be put on bed rest and as the good little Amazon addict researcher I am, I was checking out the books on bed rest the other day.

I found a couple I liked and they had that option where you can see inside so I read a few pages. One author spoke of the unexpected losses you suffer being on bed rest and that you have to give up certain things - a spotlessly clean house, the meals you would have cooked, the tasks you would have performed in a certain way. This is not that big of a deal for me but I can understand how it's difficult to hand over control when you are used to running things. But then she goes on to say that she couldn't go out and buy baby clothes and that when her husband came home with the little t-shirts and onesies and newborn outfits, she just burst into tears because she had wanted to buy the clothes for her baby. This is where my infertile little frozen heart just goes, "What?! She's crying about not buying clothes??" I cannot relate to that. I want the baby, a healthy baby that lives, that outlives H and me. I do not care about buying clothes, and besides I don't think I could buy clothes until the very, very end when I was almost sure that there would be a baby. Even when it comes to pregnancies at risk and bed rest, it seems to me that there is still a difference between the recently not-infertile and the fertiles.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who commented on my loss. I totally wasn't expecting it. It happened a long time ago, 18 months ago now, and I sit here, pregnant, knowing how lucky I am to have been given another chance.

I wrote a long post about this all and typepad collapsed and it all vanished, which might be a good thing actually now that I come to think of it. So all that remains is my thanks for your support, as always it is very precious and it surprised me.

Book Tour: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

I loved this book. I read it in two days and I already want to read it again. I loved Emilia's character and her friends and her whole world, even the evil ex-wife. I'm hunting down other Ayelet Waldman titles now, but first the questions for the book tour:

• On page 65, Waldman writes, "She (Mindy) think we are members of the same sorority of pain, that we are sisters in grief… But when I'm with Mindy I'm afraid every minute that I'll that I will tell her she has no fucking idea that a curl of flesh and DNA floating in a toilet bowl full of blood is not a baby, and that the remnants of pregnancy running down your legs is nothing, nothing like holding your dead child in your arms…"  React to this statement as a woman who has lost a baby through miscarriage. In addition, can a similar sentiment apply to women experiencing different levels of infertility?  Is one person's "pain" moot in comparison to another's if one has only failed with IUI versus one who has failed with multiple IVFs?

The other day my aunt told me about an acquaintance who is pregnant after having kidney stones at the end of her first pregnancy which resulted in an emergency Cesarean and a long stay in hospital for her and her baby. Apparently this second pregnancy is putting pressure on her kidneys and they doctors are worried about possible kidney failure. It is an awful scenario but I am ashamed to say that all I could think was, 'She fell pregnant easily. She has a child. She's already 5 months pregnant with her second. Things will probably be fine.' So much as I hate to admit it, deep down I do have a hierarchy of pain in my mind even though I agree with Getupgrrl's comment about the futility of the pain olympics, no-one can say their pain is more than anyone else's because you don't feel the other person's pain. I lost a pregnancy at 19 weeks and it was awful and at the same time it was just life. You get up, you brush your teeth, you eat lunch, life goes on and people forget and it's only now and again that I feel tearful. I have a friend who also lost a pregnancy at 5 months and she was on anti-depressants, she cried in her Pilate's classes, she cried in church and she refused to go off the pill for almost two years afterwards because she couldn't bear the pain of losing another child. Was her pain more than mine? I don't think so, I honestly don't. I think we just experienced it differently. I don't think we can judge other people's pain. Everyone feels it, people just express it in different ways. It is simply my bitterness that makes me discount someone's else's tough experience because I think I have gone through much worse and maybe that is what Emelia feels, that she has survived hell and her friend has only seen the gates.

• How did you interpret Emilia's interactions with William?  What did they say about her as a person, and in turn, her grief?

I thought Emelia's interactions with William were very realistic. She has just lost a child and she has to look after a child she does not get with but she does it for the sake of her love for her husband. I think it must have taken tremendous emotional courage to go and pick up William at school and to spend time with him every Wednesday. It shows she is making an effort. I think I would have cancelled those Wednesday afternoons, I wouldn't have been able to cope with being in such a child-full environment. During the book her relationship with William deepens and she even speaks to the manager of Le Pain Quotidien to find out if he can make a pink dairy-free cupcake. She begins to get know William on her own terms and I thought this showed a spark of character which appealed to me and which was despite her tremendous grief.

• How did you feel about the walk to remember scenes in the book?  Did you think it was healing for Emilia?  If you have dealt with pregnancy loss, do you find that commemorating loss in community is helpful to you?  If you are dealing with infertility do you feel that community has helped you deal with the struggle? In which ways?

I would have felt the same as Emilia felt about the walk to remember in the beginning, a bit dubious about the usefulness of it all. I think in the end it was healing to Emilia and it helped her to come to terms with the lack of perfection in her family and possibly it also helped her to let go a little of the grief she was carrying around with her. Despite this I am wary of commemorating my grief in my community. Perhaps it is just a certain English embarrassment at expressing my feelings publicly.  I found that in the beginning my community did help me to deal with my grief. I received an enormous amount of phone calls and women telling me unexpected stories of their losses. I still get support from people I would never have expected it from and it means a lot to me. I think what bothers me is people not mentioning it, as if it's over and it's all dealt with or people saying stupid things like 'it's just a miscarriage. There is no such thing as 'just a miscarriage, you lose a child, you lose hopes and dreams and there is no guarantee that you will ever achieve these hopes and dreams. I think it is very difficult for people to acknowledge grief as you never know what the other person is comfortable with, you have to be extremely sensitive and life sometimes moves fast and something tactless gets said in the heat of the conversation. What touches me is when someone will acknowledge that I could be hurt by something that was said, even if it is just a glance at me to see if I'm ok.

And now I am off to read other people's answers as I know there are some excellent writers and thinkers out there who capture the essence of a subject much better than I ever do. Why not join me and follow the link below?

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Love and Other Impossible Pursuits? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Tour by visiting the master list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #7 (Happiness Sold Separately by Lolly Winston) and all are welcome to join along . All you need is a book and blog.

Rest and as little recreation as possible

'Well, this will give you something to blog about,' said H on Sunday afternoon.

'Mmm,' I replied, 'I could have happily skipped it all.'

So, to start at the beginning, we went away for a two day break for my birthday which was a sedate three hour train ride from here. It was wonderful, the hotel was beautiful, the view was spectacular and it was a lovely trip. We got home on Friday afternoon, lay around all Saturday and then got ready to go out with my cousin on Saturday night.

I was standing in the bathroom when suddenly I felt a gush.

'Those damm progesterone suppositories,' I thought and looked down to see three bright red drops on the bathroom floor. I stood there watching the blood run down my leg.

'H!' I called, my voice shaking, 'Come here.'

I couldn't do anything, I was frozen.

'Let's go to the hospital,' said H.

'No,' I said, 'I don't want to go, what can they do?' I didn't want another night spent in hospital, praying against hope that my child would survive and trying not to cry in front of nurses doing their best not to show how hopeless the situation was.

We cancelled dinner and I lay on the couch for the rest of the evening and most of Sunday, feeling the blood seep out. At least there was no pain but there were four huge clots, the size of lamb kidneys on the cooking channel which I inspected to see if I could spot a developing baby while thinking, 'What are you doing, Carlynn? You will freak out completely if you see anything that looks remotely like that.' Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Maybe it is too much CSI.  All I could think was, 'What does a miscarriage feel like? How long does it last? Should I go to hospital?' I felt completely clueless.

H is travelling this week and he didn't want to leave me if it was the end of everything so he finally persuaded me to go to the hospital. The doctor had a look and did an ultrasound (H has now seen it all, I don't think he realized marriage would be this bloody) and all is fine. It seems that a piece of the placenta broke off and the placenta bleeds enormously but this can and does happen in some pregnancies and everything should be ok.

I am just so relieved. I honestly thought it was the end. Now I am on rest for two weeks and then I go and see my RE for the last visit before moving on to an obstetrician. Well, that is the plan.