Two close encounters of the pregnancy kind

Why right here, right now?

It’s been just over two months since miscarriage #2. And I am waiting for the pain to ebb instead of flow.

Almost a year ago, my husband M and I started this whole infertility and miscarriage thing. Ah a year ago, when I was excited and optimistic about the treatments, a regular infertility Bambi. Doe-eyed about the power of modern medicine and confident in my body to give me what I wanted most in the world. And really, our naivety was well founded. The first month on Clomid, one pregnancy test two weeks later and we were pregnant. So lucky. So happy just touched a tiny bit with the nervousness any wannabe mom would feel. It’s amazing how much my knowledge and vocabulary has expanded since I saw that faint positive sign on the “most advanced technology I ever peed on” almost a year ago.  

I thought a miscarriage was a messy, painful affair. At first the early pregnancy twinges and tugs freaked me out. Could this be the rumbling, tumbling start of a miscarriage? No, no, no. 

But I learned that miscarriage can creep on you silently. You can be thinking about paint colours for baby or puking in the bushes on your way to work and deep inside something is growing twisty and wrong. I learned a new phrase, missed miscarriage, when I went for an ultrasound and there was no more heartbeat. Somewhere along the way it slowed, stopped. Ended. Very missed. 

Months later we got pregnant again. Is it weird to think that the two ultrasounds I had were some of the most terrifying times I can remember. Shivering, laying on the table, waiting to read the actions and words of the ultrasound lady. My knees were literally knocking together, the trembling was so strong. (Of course not wearing any pants didn’t help matters.)  So it was almost with relief when I heard after u/s 2 the heartbeat was too slow and it was too small. Cause the worst thing that could happen, what I was dreading the most had actually happened. Perverse, right?   

Despite the infertility troubles, we seemed to have conquered the whole getting pregnant step with relative medically- assisted ease. Who cares when you still can’t make it past the first trimester? Really, who the fuck cares? 

So right here, right now, I write because I am not sure what else to try to help myself. I write because the words of other women similar to me have made me cry, know that I am not crazy, nod my head in recognition and even laugh. Even if not a single, barren soul reads these words, I hope pulling these thoughts out of my head and onto a screen will flick some kind of channel in my brain and give me some peace.