It is a frustrating thing to feel your own body betrays you. Not in an aging way, or in a broken down aches and pain way, but in an integral, basic function sort of way.
My body doesn't like to stay pregnant. It doesn't matter with what sort of desperation I desire the baby, it doesn't matter when I bruise my body over and over every day with the appropriate blood thinners, it doesn't seem to matter what I do at all. I have jokingly said before that I have no problem getting pregnant, it's the holding the pregnancy I can't seem to do, and like a car reservation, it's the holding on that really counts isn't it.
I have three lovely kids, I am happy to have them. I remember my OBGYN in Philadelphia telling me he was not sure how my placenta managed to support poor Hank, but here he is, and I am appropriately grateful. I am grateful for postpartum hemorrhages, postpartum Lovenox, and even the postpartum depression that has gotten me the three sweet faces I own. I hope my frustration is not mistaken for not counting my blessings.
They don't fill this fourth little void I feel in my heart and in my family. They don't take the space of what I was holding in my mind and my arms ten months from now.
The truth is, I wanted this baby. I wanted it with such a fierce desperation that I gave myself a lot of false hope over this last week. I fooled myself into thinking it was meant to be, because the only way we would have a fourth baby was by complete chance and mistake. And for that reason alone, I felt it just might stick.
Unlike other times, this one was particularly drawn out and painful as I twice witnessed the slowest little beat, then came home and prayed each day that it would get stronger not weaker, and I silently telepathically urged that baby to get stronger each night in the quiet of my bed. I held my husbands hand and wept when it didn't, then I held my friends hands in the O.R. and wept while they removed this tiny thing I never wanted to let go of and felt guilty for letting it be gently drawn out of my body. When you are all emptied out, it is a different kind of grief. It's one most people don't talk about much, because it is awkward and hard to verbalize what it feels like to lose something so small that no one saw with their eyes or held with their hands. I held it in my bones and my blood, in my very inner self. While I am grateful for the relief, I still grieve the loss of morning sickness and nausea at every turn of my day. I grieve drinking and enjoying coffee again, and I feel guilty for my grief. It is an awkward thing to impose on the people around you. This is why women don't talk about their miscarriages I think.
