tomorrow

Oh internet world and real life, thank you for your immense outpouring of kindness and support. I know that if love could heal all wounds, I would be whole.

After a night of hard window-pelting rain and very little sleep, I met with the doctor very early this morning for our pre-op discussion and examination. The D&C will be tomorrow afternoon. 

And I simply could not stop crying.

I am familiar with grief. I know how it moves in like heavy fog and swallows whole, and I know the teasing moments where it rests and light comes filtering in and it feels like maybe things will be ok, but they're not really ok, and in it comes again, resurgence, weight, unbelievable sadness.

And there are levels of grief here, for the pregnancy I thought was progressing (recent belly expansion and other symptoms I was told were just reactions to residual hormones), but mostly grief for the "baby", the potential person that I felt I was carrying.  And there is this other immense weight of knowing, at my age, that we may never get this far again.

 

Oh how I dread the feeling of empty that will come tomorrow after the procedure. 

I feel somehow as if as long as it is still inside me, I am still pregnant. Which I am not. And I have not been for a while. 

Through the tears of imagining LOSING the baby tomorrow, I have had to remind myself over and over and over that I already have. The baby is already lost. This little one only measured in the 6th week during yesterday's ultrasound. Meaning my miraculous ultrasound where we saw the heartbeat took place right before it stopped becoming.

But this is the horror too-  knowing I have been carrying a dead thing for more than 3 weeks, imagining it growing, healthy, alive. And I know it will be better for my body to let it go. 

So in some ways I want to just do this thing.

But I know tomorrow will just suck ass in every way- physically, emotionally, spiritually. I wish on myself a day that marches forward with quiet deliberateness, where things are orderly and get done as they need to, no drama, no surprises. 

I can say this: I know I hope to be pregnant again, for longer next time, say, a nice even 37 weeks...

but next time, I hope to revel more, to go ahead and wear those maternity pants, to go ahead and dream big, and touch my belly and wonder more and worry less because by worrying so much, and in not trusting or believing that it was truly happening, in some ways I missed it.

I am not sure it will ever happen again. But if it does, even though I may be skeptical and fearful and scared out of my wits that things will go wrong at any moment, I promise, in ways I was not able to this time, I will revel.