Tuesday, October 25, 2011

72 hours before recovery...



Number 4, I should have known that it would take more than thirty six hours to recover from this last loss.

I can't explain what miscarriage feels like to other women because I am sure there is an individual context that doesn't always embody each person's experience. I can tell you what the fourth one in a row feels like, to me.

There's a sense of isolation that doesn't linger for too long, but long enough to knock a person off their normal stride.

It's ugly and it's messy and embarrassing and private.

It's not a secret but it's not something I want other people discussing with me without my being prepared for it. It's a vulnerability that I just don't want to share with everyone, even though, here I am writing about it.

It's shocking and jarring, leaving me feeling emotionally raw, as if the wound in my core is outwardly manifested throughout my whole being. In the early hours and days, it sneaks up on me, manifested through fatigue, or that odd feeling I don't immediately recognize as a hormonal shift, and even if I do...even if I can rationalize it, there's still no convincing the irrational, emotional, painful side of the feeling of defeat when I just can't control my body.

Like other shocking acute diagnoses, there's really no knowing how the other people in the family are affected by the loss of a hope or a possibility.

In this house, the husband doesn't know how to react or vocalize, and it seems like for him nothing happened aside from a minor disappointment.

While I am trying to cope with the physical, hormonal, emotional response my body will not let me avoid, I wonder if he feels anything other than a mild disappointment because he isn't talking about it. Going to the doctor and having to discuss it, endure the humility of a physical exam and having to examine the miscarriage from the inside out feels like I am a case study or a newscast of a disaster -- my body is the house lifted and disheveled by the earthquake and everyone else is the sympathetic observer, not knowing what to do or say.

In the meantime, I have a sensitive child who survived the hostile environment within my womb who is set to save the world, starting with doling out hugs and big empathetic eyes when I have decided the day has been long enough and I have endured enough.

When I am done stumbling over myself and my emotions into my loved ones; the husband (who seems fine) suffering collateral damage from the aftershocks of what continues to be a waiting game-- I realize that I have to be stronger than I want to be, because I don't want my child to carry my burdens.

I want the partner who helped try and create this life that didn't quite make it to be there, to share and to feel.




I want to be angry with him, but he's just as much at a loss as anyone else.


There's something that momentarily turns me emotionally inside out, that is less shocking than the first miscarriage, but it still doesn't prepare me for the raw emotion that I can't always wall up immediately, and it seeps through the cracks.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know how painful this can be HG...it happened to me 12 years ago and sometimes it still feels like yesterday. Love you bunches - hugs.

Ronda

Squarer Pegs, Rounder Holes said...

I feel your inner struggle....although I've only struggled with it twice before. And I love you so much and am hugging you hard from here.

And no matter how much they feel it, the spouse will never feel the invasiveness of it all because they just can't. I'm here if you need me.