185/365 Ten Years Ago

And the moral of this story
Is I guess it's easier said than done
To look at what you've been through
And to see what you've become

Ten years ago this week, give or take a few days, I miscarried my first pregnancy. I was due February 11, a date which lives in infamy in my family: Mike's grandmother and my grandfather both died on February 11, 2004. But that was later.

I never grieved for anything or anyone like I did for that pregnancy. I remember the blood tests and the "we'll see" looks from the doctor, and then the rambling apologetic message when I got home--she'd done the test already and it was bad news.

I called the woman who would eventually be Maeve's godmother, Liz, to cancel tutoring that afternoon. Funny how I took care of small bits of business first. Liz, of course, was devastated to hear my news and she came over later in the summer and sat at my kitchen counter when other people were done talking to me.

I called my aunt Gracemarie, who had miscarried several times herself. And standing far removed from my present in her own future, she took the long view. It didn't help me at the moment but it helped later.

And then I lay on my bed and cried. I have never been more angry with God. I had often bargained and cajoled and pretended, but never been so angry. As I spent the entire month of July miscarrying, I went through several classic stages of grief, but that anger didn't subside. It didn't subside when I didn't get pregnant in September. It didn't subside when it seemed that everyone around me was having babies. It didn't subside. I went on the women's retreat that fall and flaky Missy reclined on a couch telling me how wonderful it was to be pregnant, to really know she was part of God's plan of creation, and I wanted to stab her. I remember later when she wound up with an awful case of post-partum depression, and by that time I was healthy and pregnant with Sophia, I thought, good, it wasn't all you wanted after all. I was so angry and bitter and sad.

In the end, the miscarriage was pretty routine from a medical standpoint--I wound up with anemia and the doctor had to do a procedure and an ultrasound at one point, but I didn't have a D&C because I wanted to get pregnant as soon as I could (D&Cs take longer to recover from). And I had confirmation of a heartbeat two weeks before Christmas. All was well.

Except not all was well. It took me a long time to let go of that anger. It took a long time to let go of grudges I had against people who said this or that to me--I won't repeat some of the stupid things people said. And I never connected to Sophia's pregnancy. It was like I was waiting for it to go wrong. And this disconnection is part of, although a small part of, why her birth was so awful. And her awful birth is a large part of why I'm the parent I am today. I can look back and reflect on how I came to be who I am and where I am, and there is the root. I miscarried in July 2000 and everything else sort of tumbled out of that spilled cup.

I like who I am, I like my kids, I like my life. It's no longer on the front porch of my life--it only struck me that it was 10 years ago when I read something on another mom's blog about miscarriage. But even though it's not in my daily thoughts, it has colored things along the way. I think this loss softened some edges that never would have been ground down by anything else. I try to tread gently with other women, other mothers. I think before I glow about motherhood or bitch about motherhood. And I don't take these things for granted.