Eight years

On November 16, 2002 I married My Beloved.
In October 2003 we lost our first child to miscarriage.
In March 2004 we lost our second child to miscarriage.
In March 2005 our beautiful boy was born and died 20 hours later.
In June 2006 we started fertility treatments.
In August 2007 we lost our twins to miscarriage.
In 2009 we decided to close this chapter of our lives and stop trying.

On November 16, 2010 we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the afternoon. We had a delicious lunch, and then window shopped our way up and down the town's main street until the rain got too heavy for proper strolling. We bought Christmas lights and an ornament for Thomas' wreath. We did a bit of Christmas shopping and bought some Irish tea (which we figured we'd need later once we were home and dry - and we did). We held hands. We laughed. We tried on hats. We marveled at the vast selection of jams Niagara-on-the-lake seems to produce - and bought some of that too. We talked. We drove home in the pouring rain to our quiet little house.

And then I took this:

And when I looked at it, I realized that no matter what has happened - no matter what unfathomable heartbreaks we've faced since we said "I do" eight years ago - I still always look happiest when I'm with my Sandy.

Some things never change.

oxox

My elf

You never forget your first.

A week after the miscarriage in October 2003, I sat slumped on the love seat in the family room watching the clock. It was a dull, foggy Saturday morning. November 1st. My Beloved was busying himself in the kitchen. Clinking dishes, washing pots, moving, moving, moving.

While I sat.

I remember feeling like I'd never be able to move again, so deep was my sorrow. My little baby, so wanted and already so adored, was gone forever.

I watched My Beloved shuffle dishes from sink to cupboard. I watched my arms lying still on the couch cushions at my sides. I watched the clock count down the useless seconds that now meant nothing. My baby wasn't growing anymore.

"Go out", My Beloved urged me gently.

I'd been planning to go to a Christmas Craft show at a nearby high school. Before. But instead I was helplessly glued to the couch listening to time slip away in each tick of the old wind-up clock I'd rescued from my Grandparent's cottage before it was sold years earlier.

I don't remember my arguments against moving off the couch, but I'm relatively sure they weren't valid ones. I was healing well from the D&C and physically felt just fine.

Which is, of course, the worst part of dealing with the loss of a child through miscarriage. You look just fine. There's no way for people to know the pain you're in. There are no scars to show the battle you've just fought and lost.

You become the invisible walking wounded.

And that's exactly how I felt. Broken with grief, but whole to the rest of the world.

Eventually his pleadings won me over. I got dressed and drove through the fog to the Christmas Craft show.

I aimlessly wandered past booths of knitted potholders, summer jams, walnut mice, Christmas wreathes and other assorted festive paraphernalia until I spotted a booth crowded with exquisite handmade dolls.

They drew me in. Lit a tiny spark in my burned out soul.

I stood transfixed, staring at the whimsical faces the artist had so painstakingly created. Dozens of dolls, their gray hair curled in clouds around their wizened faces, smiled back at me.

I couldn't tear myself away, and eventually I came home with an octogenarian elf tucked up carefully in miles of tissue paper.

It was the sweetest possible retail therapy.

And when I look at that elf (which I still can't bear to put away with the other Christmas decorations - she sits in the curio cabinet all year long) I remember the little one I lost, the wisdom of My Beloved, and the strength I somehow found to drive through the fog in search of the light.

A journey of a thousand miles

Five years ago today we lost our first baby. For 10 weeks and 6 days I carried what we thought was a healthy baby until a long, painful night in the ER revealed that our child never really started growing at all.

"Products of conception" and "blighted ovum" were the words they used to describe the baby we so desperately wanted. I became a statistic instead of a mother that night, and My Beloved began his studies in how to survive being a bystander; desperate to help, but completely unable to do a single thing to fix what was going so catastrophically wrong.

I remember the pain, the blood, the fear and the numbness. The miserable, condescending nurse and the kind one that glowed like an angel. The unsure young doctor and the terse veteran. The reassuring anesthesiologist and the brusque OB. The D&C, the recovery, and the chest wracked with sobs.

And so began our journey.

Sending kisses to heaven with assurances that you are not forgotten, wee one.

Thanksgiving weekend musings

You know you're completely domesticated when you have somehow memorized the expiration date of at least three perishables in your fridge.
__________

It seems very, very wrong to have the air conditioning running on Thanksgiving weekend. And yet we do. When it's 30C with the humidex I don't care WHAT day of the year it is, the a/c goes on.
__________

At least 5 friends, both real and "virtual" have given birth in the last month. The biggest baby booms always seem to hit when I'm struggling the most to keep my bereaved, barren head above water.
__________

I held a newborn baby this week. It was just the third time since Thomas died. She was small and sweet and felt so warm and soft as she fell asleep in my arms. It was love at first sight. I only wish it didn't bring back such vivid memories of holding Thomas, so still and quiet. But it did. I'm sure it always will. And that just has to be okay with all of us.
__________

This weekend I am thankful despite everything.
__________

It looks like the Mass of Remembrance at my church is a go! I'm nailing down a speaker for after Mass (from a local bereaved parents "ministry" organized by a church in a neighbouring city) and once I do everything else should fall neatly into place. My priest, who is both kind and unbelievably compassionate, agreed to virtually everything I proposed. Kind of makes me wonder why his boss doesn't seem to want to listen to me. Clearly my ideas aren't ALL bad...
__________

I can't wait for turkey. And then turkey again with the in-laws. And then turkey sandwiches. Me and my tummy are pretty easy to please.
__________

If I was shorter and had a good mask, it's entirely possible that I'd still go trick-or-treating.
__________

Every Halloween while I'm sitting in the darkened front room waiting for My Beloved to come home from work to join me in the door-answering extravaganza, I quietly tell Thomas what costume I'd have gotten for him, and how he'd have been the cutest little trick-or-treater on the street.
__________

The last few weeks has been difficult for me. The strange high I was on after the miscarriage has disappeared, as I suspected it would, and in its place is a bit of a delayed grief reaction. I was so happy to have survived the complications from the D&C (and so worried about my own health in the days following) that I think I blocked the whole horrible reality of the situation out of my head. And it has found its way back in. Fantastic.
__________

If I slept for a year it wouldn't seem like enough rest for my battered body and my ravaged mind. And that's grief in a nutshell.

Easy for him to say...

I blocked the whole idea of going back to the clinic to talk to my OB about what the hell happened and where to go from here out of my head, until I couldn't make the little voice inside my head stop screaming at me to just get it over with.

"Go in", it told me, "find out exactly how broken you are and how ridiculous it is to even consider thinking about trying again, let alone actually doing it."

So in we went.

But first, two weeks of stress dreams and nightmares that had my jaw in a permanent state of clench.

Thank God for an OB with compassion - or at least the good sense to fake it. He was very good to us, two weary travelers with worry lines etched into our tired faces and a lot more gray hair than we had when we started this process a thousand years ago.

One of the first thing he said was how horrendous these past few years must have been for us.

"You must have had some very dark days", he said softly.

"No kidding", I wanted to reply, but didn't.

Then we asked a million questions while he looked pained and admitted he didn't know - and couldn't know - the answer to most of them (you know, ones like "what are the odds of my dying if we try this again - and fail?").

He doesn't know why I bled. He doesn't believe he perforated my uterus during the D&C so his only explanation is that one or both of the placentas were very deeply embedded and the bleeding originated from the site where they came away from the uterine wall during the procedure.

He doesn't know if this could happen again, although he suspects it was a fluke (kind of like that pesky fluke-y abruption that killed Thomas and nearly me) and most likely won't happen again.

He doesn't think I have a luteal phase defect (and was reluctant to subject me to testing because the results tend to be somewhat inconclusive) but will treat me as though I do if I ever get pregnant again, just in case.

He doesn't think I have a clotting disorder, but ordered a ton of blood work just in case.

In place of concrete answers and assurances, there were a lot of "I don't knows" and "just in cases" - which is exactly what we were expecting.

People like to think that doctors have all the answers - that they can and should be able to stop babies from dying and miscarriages from happening. But the truth is they can't. Not all the time. And in my case, never.

We knew there would be a lot of shoulder shrugging and unanswered questions. We're used to that. Too used to that.

But still, it was good. It was good to talk to someone who cared, who understood our concerns, who sympathized with the fear and frustration we're feeling, who tried so hard to tell us everything we needed to hear, and who seems to want us to have a take-home baby almost as much as we do.

And in the end, even though we haven't made any decisions one way or another, it was good to hear that even though he's not sure why our little tigers didn't make it or why I bled like a stuck pig during the D&C, he doesn't think there's any reason for us not to consider trying again.

Easy for him to say.

Retraction

Clearly I need an editor.

It didn't occur to me that it might have sounded like I was scolding hundreds of people yesterday when I said I was sad that some friends and family have simply faded away. I wasn't - honestly. There are just 4 or 5 "in real life" people that I'm surprised I haven't heard a word from since I miscarried the twins, that's all.

I understand it might be difficult for them to reach out to me. My God, what DO you say to someone who only breeds tragedy? But at the same time, I'm kind of tired of having to cut people slack. I have enough to do (what with the grieving and healing and figuring out where the hell to go from here), and I just don't have the energy to add trying to worm my way into the minds of the silent few to the list.

I think this is just what happens sometimes. There are people who simply can't deal with tragedy and prefer to fade away. Unfortunately I don't have the energy to reel them back in this time. I just don't.

But luckily we have many incredibly supportive friends and family members that can deal and do give My Beloved and I unending support in all its varied forms.

For that - and for those brave souls - I am eternally grateful.

Where did I go?

I've had so many thoughts running through my head during the last two weeks, and none of them even remotely coherent. But one thing that that seems to keep rearing its ugly head is how much it bothers me that all of this has taken the me from me. Starting with the first miscarriage nearly four years ago.

I know life experiences change you, even the happy ones. I'm a different girl than I was before I met My Beloved - but I like the way that changed me. That's the difference.

Four years of trying and failing and mourning has made me someone who struggles too much and has missed too much.

It's hard to explain.

The last couple of months have been mentally exhausting to say the least, so I didn't have the energy to do what I would otherwise have done. I didn't visit my mom and dad as often as I should have or wanted to. Days passed while I sat in seclusion waiting to miscarry or waiting to hear good news or absorbing bad news or having ultrasounds or making appointments. That's all I could deal with. It's all I could think about. And when I did venture out it took so much effort. I had to put on a good face, answer questions, reassure others, pretend the sky wasn't falling. Pretend to be the me I used to be before hell broke loose.

I haven't supported friends who needed it because it was all I could do to support myself. I missed virtually the entire summer that my sister was off. We had great plans and hardly did any, and when we did it was to distract me. It was always about me.

And I hate that.

I've been on autopilot for what feels like forever.

Somebody asked how I was doing a week or so ago, and I said it's like I'm not quite part of this earth. I can see the beauty in a sunny day, for example, and I can want to be part of it, but I'm outside that bubble of pleasure and joy. I can recognize that it exists but I can't partake in it. I can long for it but I can't have it. Not yet. And not because that's the way I want it, but because that's the way it is.

Multiply this by four separate losses, and this has been my life for the last four years. Obviously losing Thomas took the greatest toll - and still does. And obviously the out-of-body kind of sorrow that is most intense right after a loss hasn't plagued me relentlessly all this time, but enough for me to have intense regrets about what I've missed. About what I should have done. About the time that has slipped away while I've been mourning and healing and mourning again.

And then there are the people who have quietly slipped away while I've been dealing with my losses. Some family, some friends, all quiet as church mice and nowhere in sight. Not a word since I lost the twins - not a word since I knew I was going to lose them. Is it because they can't deal with this much repeated sorrow and drama? Is it because I haven't done enough to keep them part of my life? Is it because out of sight, out of mind is much more comfortable when someone appears to be as cursed as I do? Is it easier for them to wait for the storm to pass? Is it because this has become so routine for me they think I don't need them anymore - that I'm used to it all by now?

Is it because I really am as different as I think I am, and this is what happens when you change so much?

I don't know. Add it to the list of things I just don't know anymore.

So I'm trying to focus on taking back some control. I'm starting Weight Watchers again today, for one. I've gained back 14 pounds since the lap in March and I need to nip this upward trend in the bud. I need to regain control over the body that so stubbornly refuses to be a safe haven for our children. I can make it do this, at least.

And I'm trying to formulate a vague plan for the rest of me. I have some freelance work that should be starting up soon, with any luck, and once those projects are established I'll figure out what else I can fit into my work schedule. And look for more.

As for trying to have more children, I just don't know. I don't know if my heart can take any more loss, and I don't know if my body can take any more trauma. I've been lucky enough to survive two surgeries with frightening complications. Is it tempting fate to risk it one more time? I don't know. We don't know. Not yet. It's too soon to know that yet.

For now it's still about healing and trying to find myself in all this. One more time.

Passing time

It's amazing what a little trauma can do to a girl. I've spent the last 8 days panicked that I'm going to start bleeding heavily again - simply because no one adequately reassured me that I wouldn't. Not the OB, not the discharge nurse, not the nurse who called on Monday to do a cursory check-in (and I do mean cursory - I could tell she was barely listening to my frenzied requests for reassurance).

I'm sure that I'm fine. I'm sure the light bleeding/spotting that's still going on is totally normal (I bled/spotted for a total of 18 days after my first miscarriage and D&C) and won't turn into anything more than this. Not at this point.

But the thing is, I've hemorrhaged twice since that first D&C four years ago. I'm no longer blissfully ignorant. About anything at all.

I suppose the good part of all of this is that I've been far too preoccupied with my uterus and what's coming out of it to think too much about what I've lost.

It comes in waves. But I push the waves back with my persistent preoccupation with my own health. I can't think about the babies that are no longer inside me because I have me to worry about now. I don't have to wonder and worry about them anymore. I know where they are. And I know where they aren't. It's me I'm not so sure about.

Friday was a bad day. I zombied my way through the morning and crashed spectacularly in a heap of sobs around noon. I cried like I haven't cried since Thomas died. Maybe even before that. I have 5 babies to mourn for now, and that kind of sorrow requires a flood of tears I was shocked by. I didn't know I could cry like that and still survive.

I don't know how we do it, we parents who have lost children. I could have kept crying until I died, so intense was the sorrow and rage. But I didn't. I cried until I felt I could stop, then I did. I ate lunch, showered and carried on with my day.

Since then I've managed to keep the focus on me. I'm sure it's a defense mechanism. I'm not stupid. I know I'm just fooling myself with this pathological preoccupation with spot watching.

But this is just the way it is right now. Grief is a weird and messy thing, and the one thing I've learned is that you just have to let it play out the way it wants to. Putting parameters on it and trying to make it something other than what it is never works.

So I'm spot watching until my heart can bear to think about our two little tigers again.

It's just me again

Last night when I lay down across the bed on my tummy to rest for a second after climbing upstairs, I felt the difference. That unmistakable hardness is gone.

They're gone.

And I felt alone in that way only someone who has carried and lost a child can possibly understand.

Because God forbid anything should be easy

The simple "dust and clean", as the ever-so-amusing nurse called it, turned out to be a little more dramatic than that. Because it's me. And if something's going to go wrong, it will.

I hemorrhaged during the surgery (apparently the likes of which the good doctor hadn't seen before in a simple D&C) and my uterus wouldn't contract. I ended up staying the night in the hospital with a balloon catheter in my uterus and a steady supply of Oxytocin in my arm. It was lovely. Just lovely.

The heavy bleeding had stopped by the time they transferred me to the hospital I slept at (the hospital I had the surgery in was a day facility only, so I had a bumpy ambulance ride with a chatty medic who told me his whole life story without taking a breath while my stomach churned and my tummy cramped), so other than a slightly disturbing near fainting spell when I finally got up to go to the bathroom at around 10:00pm, and a night punctuated by code blue alerts, the beeping of my IV machine and vital checks every few hours, the hospital stay itself wasn't too terrible.

But the rest of it, yeah. That was unnecessarily cruel if you ask me. And I have no idea what the hell the gods are thinking anymore. It was bad enough that I was there to miscarry our babies. That it ended up a much more frightening experience than it should have been is just plain mean. But, I suppose, par for the course.

Just our shitty luck.

I'm feeling much better. The cramping eased off around 2:00am last night, and only briefly returned when the doctor took out the balloon catheter this morning. So now I'm just very, very tired. Drained, sad and a little weak. And I look like hell.

I just can't wait to see what happens next.

Instead of thinking...

I could talk about the nightmares I've been having the last few days, or the anxiety attacks I've been having for the last few weeks, or how afraid I am that this might be the last time I'll ever be pregnant, or how much I'm dreading the surgery, or how scared I am of what happens next - but instead I think I'll just post some pictures from my garden.

Since I found out I was pregnant on July 11th, I've sorely neglected my poor angel garden. It got tangled and overgrown, and fell victim to Japanese beetles and bunny rabbits.

Yesterday I went to a peaceful little nursery out in the country and came home with a box full of lilies and phlox. This morning, before it rained, I spent an hour and a half weeding, pruning and culling the bedraggled plants that just needed to go.

And in their place:







There are two lilies and a phlox not yet in bloom that didn't have their pictures taken. They're quietly waiting for their respective close-ups. The promise of blooms in the coming days and a garden that has had order restored is very soothing right now. Digging in the dirt I managed to find a few precious moments of peace.

And if I try hard enough, I can almost pretend this was just a normal day.

Sweet revenge

I'm so tired, and my eyes are stinging and dry from the unexpected crying jag that attacked me while I was watching a puppy video on You Tube earlier this afternoon.

I had words with God, stormed out of the house and bought sugar to make fudge.

It occurred to me today that I'm only partly to blame for the slightly ill-fitting clothing issue I've been having lately. At 11 weeks, 1 day - with two little sacs in there and a hard, growing tummy to go along with it - some of this just isn't my fault. I would have been wearing maternity clothes soon. Much sooner than I did with Thomas, by the look and feel of things.

So screw the currently ill-fitting clothes. I'm making fudge. I'll worry about the damage later.

God, I'm so sad.

Sometimes they should stop at "I'm sorry"

I love my OB. He's a good guy and probably as kind and compassionate a doctor as you'll ever get. He wasn't involved in any of the horrendous dealings we've had with the clinic in the last few weeks, and he actually apologized for the way we were treated - and with sincerity. He even had the decency to hang his head and avoid eye contact, he was so horrified on our behalf.

But as good a guy as he is, he still doesn't totally get it. We got the, "It was meant to be - better this than giving birth to a deformed baby" speech.

Oh, well okay then.

See, the thing is, I just don't know that that's true anymore. We all say we want a healthy, happy baby, but I've just added two dead ones to my list of five, and so I'm no longer sure I actually do need a perfect child. I'd take one that wasn't so perfect if I could just bring it home.

And aside from that, after what we've been through over the last four years, I simply don't need the "it was meant to be" speech. I'm way past needing that. I don't need to be told that the babies are in a better place, I don't need to be told that I have angels looking out for me, I don't need to be told that it was God's will, and I don't need to be told that that they weren't going to survive and this was simply nature's way of taking care of it.

I know all that. I know it. I learned it all the first time I sat hunched in agony in the ER waiting to miscarry our first child.

I'm not angry when I hear it all again. It's not that it bothers me per say, it's just that it's a waste of air. It's a waste of words, of time, of energy. And at the end of it all I have no choice but to nod in agreement and say thank you, even though what I really want to do is sigh, roll my eyes and tell the well-meaning person that now isn't the time to look for the silver lining.

But I'm saying this standing in my shoes looking out from my eyes. It's easy to know what to say and do when you're the one who knows what you need said and done.

I suppose it didn't help that the doctor, again attempting to soften the blow and make us feel better while he delivered the news we didn't want to hear, described the D&C as a simple, 5-minute procedure. In and out, as it were.

But the thing is, I've had a D&C. I know the drill. And hearing that it'll just take 5 minutes to scoop out the remains of the two little tigers we thought were going to complete our family doesn't really help me at all. Not one bit.

The end

I have a D&C scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Tonight we eat cheesecake. Maybe the whole thing.

And the gods? Well, they can go screw themselves. We are strong. We've weathered every single horrendous shitstorm they've chosen to hurl at us, and we'll weather this one too.

Battered and bruised - yes, we're battered and bruised. But they can't beat us.

They will never beat us.

A nice little escape. Because how far can we really go right now anyway?

We hid out in the movie theatre this afternoon. Slouching down side by side sharing a big bag of buttered popcorn with the comforting darkness of the nearly empty room all around us was exactly what we needed today.

The only time I thought about the horrendous mess we're in was when I had to leave mid-way through the show to go to the bathroom.

Evidently even doomed pregnancies are capable of rendering your bladder mostly useless.

Which is, of course, cruel as hell.

Silence

Yesterday morning while I was in the shower thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking about the upcoming ultrasound, it occurred to me that it might make sense to throw up a prayer or two, just in case. So many other people have been praying for us and the babies, it seemed wrong of me not to too.

So I tried. I really did. I mentally fumbled around trying to order my thoughts, trying to find words that sounded sincere - trying to convince myself and God that I actually believed that those mumbled, half-hearted prayers might actually make a difference.

But I'll let you in on a little secret: I didn't believe it at all, and I'm sure God knew that right from the first stupid word that fell out of my mouth.

The thing is, I just can't muster the energy to pray for all this to end well. I can't bear to beg God for one more thing that I know he can't or won't fix.

I figure if I don't ask him to make this pregnancy magically turn into a healthy, viable one, I can't be disappointed when I inevitably miscarry. If I don't ask, I can't get hurt. Again. I can't rage against him if I didn't ask him for anything in the first place.

After Thomas died I begged - absolutely begged - God to never let me lose another child. I was very clear on that point. I said I never ever wanted to be pregnant again if I wasn't going to take that healthy, live child home with me. I thought that was a very reasonable request, and one that I think should have been easy for him to grant.

And look where it got me. I'm waiting to miscarry not one, but two more babies.

The neverending story

We're either stubborn or stupid, but we decided we couldn't live without one last ultrasound. Not with the pregnancy symptoms still lingering and absolutely no signs of a miscarriage looming on the horizon at all.

I'm hovering around 10 weeks, and after getting so much advice from blogland and reading about misdiagnosed miscarriages online, we decided we needed to wait at least that long before throwing in the towel, no matter how many doctors advised us that we were "wasting time" by coming back again and again.

Thanks for that, Dr. Bedside. Your compassion was much appreciated.

So we went.

I expected nothing, but secretly hoped for something just the same. At the very least I wanted an answer.

Instead, more ambiguity. And no one to talk to us about it. They claimed there were no doctors in the building (my ass there weren't - we passed Dr. Beside in the hall heading up to his upstairs office 5 minutes before we were told they'd all left the building) and suggested I go see my own OB instead. He's affiliated with the clinic and I really did want to have a consultation with him soon anyway, but being told to go away in the midst of this ongoing agonizing limbo kind of makes me want to beat someone about the head with a car antenna.

All I know is that sac A is still empty and sac B has an "ill-defined" yolk sac in it.

They lied to us the first time that yolk sac was spotted. That was the appointment (now more than two weeks ago) that a different doctor told me he was 95% sure I'd miscarry. I asked, quite pointedly, if there was anything in either sac. His answer was a definitive "NO". And yet there was, which we found out at ultrasound #5, five days later. He robbed us of five precious days of hope, the bastard.

The very, very kind and compassionate technician I had for ultrasound #5 told us there was a yolk sac in sac B during the previous ultrasound, but that she was unable to locate it.

It magically reappeared today, albeit "ill-defined".

I know none of this is good. There should be a fetal pole and cardiac activity now. And Dr. Google told me that abnormal yolk sacs are almost always a predictor of a poor pregnancy outcome.

But I just wish someone could tell me for sure.

I'm pinning all my hopes on my poor OB, who I'm seeing first thing Wednesday morning. If he isn't able to explain all this - to tell me why I still feel pregnant, why both sacs are still growing, why my tummy is hard with that familiar fullness, why I can't just seem to miscarry and be done with it - my poor addled brain may just crumble into dust and trickle out my left ear in the night.

Tomorrow it will be four weeks since I saw the blue + on that stick. A month of this. A full month.

I have no idea how I'm even remotely sane. None whatsoever.

I've cried for my poor little tigers, for the dreams we tried not to dream but did, for My Beloved who wants another child so much it makes me ache, for our families who were so excited by our news, and for me - for the mother I want to be and for the empty arms I can't seem to fill.

So tonight I had a giant bowl of chocolate pudding after dinner. The amount of weight I've gained during this agonizing month is another subject altogether, I'm afraid...

outside looking in

I know it shouldn't, but while I'm sitting here waiting to miscarry my 4th and my 5th child, this bugs the living hell out of me.

Same old same old

I'm entirely too tired and mentally spent to explain tonight, but the news at today's ultrasound was the same as Friday's. I know I'm not 10 weeks yet - the date at which point (and not before) people say you should be willing to accept that it's well and truly over - but even I have to admit that the evidence is extremely compelling. And I'm a hard nut to crack.

Our plan now is to sleep on it. Just sleep. There's no harm in waiting for the miscarriage to happen naturally, so we're not rushing into anything that will hasten that process at the moment. And yeah, it's possible I might want another ultrasound just to be extra sure, but I don't know. At this point I just don't know if I can go in for the 6th time and deal with the pitying looks from the staff at the clinic.

I get that I'm pitiful. I don't need to see it screaming out at me from every face who looks at my chart, then at me.

So for now, I sleep. No one can see me there.

Limbo

Well this is interesting, just sitting around waiting to miscarry. It's like there are two little time bombs in there and I have no idea when they're going to go off. Or if they're going to blow, as a matter of fact.

Will they quietly leave me on their own? Will I be in surgery later this week? I dunno.

Fuckity fuck, I don't know.

I'm at my worst when I'm not in control. Although I'm maintaining a calm, collected exterior and trying to function as normally as possible, I'm feeling relatively dead inside. Pardon the morbid pun.

I'm confused by the cruelty of the universe, I'm frightened about how this is all going to go down, and, worst of all, I don't know if I can do it again. Any of it.

Neither of us do.

I sat in church today (don't ask me why - it's not like God can possibly do any more to me, but I'm still too chicken not to traipse over to see him every Sunday) tormenting myself with the thought that I was the only person in that building waiting to miscarry twins. What a weird, lonely thought. And horrible. Just horrible.

Just before communion I became acutely aware of the cacophony of children's coos, cries and chatter echoing around the church, and for the first time ever it made me feel sick. Because I'm a million miles from owning those noises and I don't know if I have the stomach to keep on trying to get them.

How many times can you go through the cycle of hope and agony? How many times until it breaks you? How many times until you finally buckle and lay down at the feet of the gods crying "uncle" over and over again just to make it stop hurting? How many times until the grief twists you into something unrecognizably ugly forever?

I can't decide if not having any children is equal to the pain of losing more of them.

And fuck me, I can't believe I'm being forced to consider that equation at all.