Shattered

These past three days have been the hardest days of my life. It's unbelievable that I have tears left.

On Monday, March 14th, I went for my 10 week check up at the doctor's office. I told the doctor that I had been having a little bit of spotting for a few days. He didn't like the sound of that. So he asked me how I had been feeling besides that. I told him I hadn't felt nauseous at all for over a week. Like an idiot, I thought this meant I was very lucky. He did not. He said we needed to do an ultrasound. So I was excited because during the ultrasound, I would get to hear little Fri Frí's heartbeat. The same nice lady who did my ultrasound in week 6 did this ultrasound. She looked really sad as she looked at the screen. I looked up at the screen and my heart just stopped. The baby looked like it was just floating. I saw her measure it, and it only measured 7 weeks and 6 days. It was supposed to measure 10 weeks 2 days. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know how wrong until she said, "I can't find a heartbeat." I thought, well just turn the volume up! I didn't want to believe it. She looked at me and said, "I'm sorry. It's not your fault." I was like, what? That's it? So I asked, "Is this for sure?" And she said yes. So I started to bawl uncontrollably. She told me to go to the bathroom to calm down and that I would see the doctor in a few minutes. So I tried to calm down, and she gave me my last picture of the baby. I went out into the hall to wait to see the doctor and all the nurses stopped me and said they were sorry and that it was not my fault. One lady said, "If it makes you feel any better, I had a miscarriage with my first one, and now I have six children." Miscarriage. I hate that word.

The doctor sat down to talk to me to give me my options. He said my first option was to go home and wait it out and let me body take care of it. He said I would have severe cramps and bleed a lot and that it would happen. He said my second option was to take a pill that would speed up the process and make my body take care of it naturally in a minimum of two days. My third option was to go in to the hospital and have what they call a Suction Dialation and Evacuation. I would be put to sleep for about 45 minutes and they would take care of it for me. I knew immediately what my decision would be. I could never in a million years flush my own baby down the toilet. I said, "I do not want to do this at home, alone. There is just no way. That would be way too traumatizing and I don't need to do that to myself." So I decided to go to the hospital. He scheduled me for the next day, and after what felt like half an hour, he let me leave. I got into my car and bawled hysterically. I called Marcelo and gave him the shock of his life. All along he had been saying, "Sweetie don't worry about the spotting. You're fine. You're going to have a healthy baby." So I felt horrible calling him while he was on his way to school to tell him the news. He picked up his phone and said, "Babe, calm down, what's wrong?" Through tears and sobs I said, "I lost the baby." He said, "You lost the baby?" And then didn't say anything for a long time while I just cried. Very quietly he said, "Sweetie, it's okay. It's okay. It's going to be okay. Calm down. Do you want me to send someone to pick you up?" I told him I could calm down enough to drive to my mom's house. He said he'd turn in his work for his class and turn around and drive home. Later, I found out that during his hour and a half drive home, he made phone calls to him family to tell them the news. The crappy, unfair news. He said that when his mom started crying, it hit him and he cried too.

Anyway, I went to my mom's house and sat on the couch crying until my mom came home. I could barely get the words out when she walked into the house and said, "Que pasó? Estás bien? Que pasó?" I said the words again: I lost the baby. And she sat on the couch and started crying with me. She said, "Pero porqué? Te pudieron decir porqué?" I told her what they told me: Something was wrong with the baby. It was probably going to have a genetic disorder and wasn't developing correctly. So my body knew it and didn't let the pregnancy continue. Despite all the nurses and the doctor telling me it wasn't my fault, I broke down and cried, telling my mom, "I just wish I could have done something differently. Maybe if I had eaten better, or hadn't been so stressed out...maybe things would have been different." She repeated what everyone else repeated and said that I couldn't blame myself. When my dad got home he hugged me and tried to comfort me. I said, "Well, now I'm not pregnant, I'm hungry, and I can't eat anything after midnight because I'm having my surgery, so I want sushi. Lots and lots of raw sushi." So my dad went out to get some while we waited for Marcelo to come. My mom and I sat on the couch and talked about other things to get my mind off of things. I was pretty calm and hadn't cried much for like an hour. And then Marcelo walked in with a huge teddy bear. I jumped up and hugged him and started crying all over again. I told my mom we would need a minute, and the two of us went to my old bedroom. We sat on the bed just hugging and crying. Through tears I asked him how he was. Through tears he said he was shocked. He said, "I just keep thinking about how I used to talk to your belly, and now I can't." Then he tried to calm me down and said, with his unbelievable faith, "It'll happen again. We'll get pregnant again. As soon as they tell you it's okay to start trying, we'll try again." I wasn't as optimistic. I don't know how long it will take me to be ready to try again. I'm not as strong and faithful as he is. I'm scared. I'm scared that I'll have another miscarriage. I HATE THAT WORD. I used to listen to women tell me they had had miscarriages and I felt so deeply sorry for them. I would be like, wow, that must have been so hard. And I thought that it would never happen to me. I'm healthy. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I eat right. And now, I'm one of those women. I hate it.

So on Tuesday, March 15th, exactly one month after Marcelo and I went to the doctor and heard the baby's heartbeat, we went to the hospital at 7:30 in the morning. Marcelo, my mom, and Marcelo's parents all came with me. As the nurses took my blood and got me prepped for surgery, I did all I could to hold back the tears. Marcelo helped me put on my hospital gown and I got in the hospital bed. When we pulled the curtain open and my mom and his parents saw me, I said, "Have you ever seen someone look cuter in a hospital gown?" I tried to be strong. But after awhile, with the IV in my arm, and the surgery getting nearer, I couldn't take it anymore and broke down crying. It seems that my mom and Marcelo's mom had been doing the same, because as soon as they saw me crying, they reached for the tissues. Everyone talked to me and told me that God had a plan for me and that he would send me another baby. I joked and said, "He better send me two to make up for this one." The nurse I had was awesome. Her name was Manon, pronounced, "Manó." She was French Canadian. She said she was also 10 weeks pregnant when she had her first miscarriage. She said, "I know what everyone is telling you. I know they are saying that it's okay and that you will get pregnant again and that you will have another baby. And I know that you want them all to shut up because all you can feel right now is the pain and all you want to do is cry. And I know the doctor told you to wait at least 3 months before you try again. But let me tell you something. Exactly one month after my first miscarriage, I was pregnant again, and the doctor wanted to slap me. But my daughter is three years old now. And my second is three months old." That gave me a tiny spark of hope, but I don't think I'll be that lucky, and I won't even risk it. They say the less time I wait, the more chances I have of having another miscarriage, and this is definitely not an experience I'd like to repeat. Anyway, after awhile, my doctor came in. He talked to me a little and then I gave everyone kisses and got wheeled off to surgery. I barely remember anything. I remember being put to sleep, and then being woken up in the recovery room. The nurse said, "We're done." And tried to get me to wake up. It hit me what had just happened, so I started to cry. She said, "Are you okay, are you in pain?" And I said, "No, I'm just emotional." I got wheeled out to the car, and Marcelo drove me to my mom's house. I felt fine for the whole day. I had a little bit of cramps, but nothing serious. Marcelo picked up my prescriptions for me, but we didn't think I'd need the painkillers because I was doing fine. I talked to my mom for a long time, and finally went home around 7 at night. She said she'd come over the next day around 2. I was worried because I didn't want to have to be alone all morning. I knew that if I was, I'd just cry all day. But nature took care of that. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I had the most severe cramps I've ever had in my life. They came in waves, every few minutes, until I realized what I was having was contractions. I asked Marcelo for the pain killers, and he called work to say he'd be late because I was in pain. They called back and told him to take the whole day off to be with me. I had cramps for hours. I thought I'd pass out after awhile, but my stupid body wouldn't give me that pleasure. When I thought I was still pregnant, I would talk to people about having a natural childbirth without any drugs. I thought if my mom could do it, I could do it, and I thought I could be tough. But after these severe cramps and contractions, I'm like, screw it, when I do get pregnant again, I want an epidural.

All day long, the phone rang off the hook. I refused to talk to anyone though, because why would I want to talk about it? I was angry. I felt like, if you're not my mom or my husband, and if you haven't had a miscarriage yourself, I don't want to talk to you because you have no idea how I feel.

Today I'm by myself for the first time. I'm not going back to work until next week. One of my coworkers is having a baby shower at work tomorrow. A baby shower I helped plan. But I'm just not ready to deal with that. I don't want to leave the room crying and make her feel bad during her shower. So I'll stay home. I'm trying to be less mad at my body. I was watching Oprah with my mom yesterday, and there was this lady who said she had two miscarriages before she had her daughter and that she felt like a failure. I started crying because that's exactly how I feel. I feel like my body betrayed me. I feel like my body completely sucks. I still feel a little like this whole thing is my fault. I feel scared out of my mind that I'm going to have to wait like 10 years to have kids, or worse, not be able to have them at all. I'm trying to stop thinking like this, but it's really hard right now. I'm angry and I'm sad, and I don't know what to do with myself. Everything changed in a split second.

This has been therapeutic. But now I'm done. I don't want to cry anymore.