I’ll be honest: things aren’t going well at all. I was actually feeling better a week ago, and I’m not sure why. My mom said it’s hormones and my body going back to “normal” when it doesn’t want to be “normal” (a.k.a. not pregnant). Maybe that’s true. All I know is that in the past couple of days, my eyes have been welling up way more often than usual.
Here’s a list of things that have made me cry in the past week:
1. My pregnant sister-in-law needed the stockpile of maternity clothes that I’ve been hoarding (they’re not even mine, they belong to a bunch of formerly pregnant friends and family members). Remember, I still had them closed up in a room (the not-nursery). Well, she’s getting to the point of needing them, so she texted me about it. I don’t fault her for needing them or for asking me for them. Really, I should have given them back already. But it still freaking sucked to face those damn clothes and pack them back into boxes. So, I cried.
2. An article in Reader’s Digest about a premature baby who had a 0% chance of survival and lived.
3. At a town craft fair on Saturday, I saw a young-ish dad walking around with twin girls. I thought of how Eric doesn’t get to do that. I cried.
4. The movie The Odd Life of Timothy Green. OK, the movie was pretty weird and I actually got bored enough that I stopped watching it halfway through. But the premise and the beginning was quite brutal. It’s about an infertile couple who gives up on treatments and decides to live child-free. They get drunk one night and write out lists of what their kid would have been like, then go out back and bury the lists in the garden. That night a freak rainstorm causes this child, their child, to grow in the garden like a flower. He arrives in their house muddy, ten years old and exactly as they had described, even calling them mom and dad. Yeah, it’s freaking weird. But still… I cried.
5. Jennifer Garner is the mom in the aforementioned movie. I know she has cute kids and that in the movie she’s just pretending to suffer from infertility. Yes, that made me cry.
6. Facebook. Everything about Facebook.
7. Sex (nothing sexier than crying, right?)
8. Re-purposing the non-nursery. We live in a 3 bedroom house – one is the master bedroom, one is the office and one has been a sort of catch-all room. That’s where all the maternity clothes and miscellaneous baby items have lived for the last two years. It’s so obviously meant to be a nursery (right next to the master, perfect little bump out architectural feature where the crib would go). But then Eric got on a cleaning kick this weekend. He totally scoured and reorganized the office. Next he tackled this weird empty room and set it up as a guest room with a single bed that’s been stored in the attic. It makes sense to have it as a guest room – when we have overnight guests, they have to sleep on the couch, which is stupid because we have an extra room and bed and everything. Still, I don’t want to be logical and set it up as a guest room. I probably drove Eric nuts with the amount of times that I said, “But eventually it will be a nursery, right? Like, soon it will be? Very soon?” and he had to repeatedly assure me, “Yes, eventually it will. When the time comes.” And then… I cried.
9. Thinking and over-thinking, then thinking some more
10. Watching our wedding video
11. The realization that I stopped bleeding and that this miscarriage is officially over
12. Stress over what’s next. If I wait, will the trial still do another embryo transfer without charging me? Even if I don’t wait, will it be considered part of the trial, or not? Dr. L said it would, but she also said she was 100% sure Braverman would be covered by insurance, so I don’t have total confidence in the things she tells me. I could ask the question… but then there’s a chance I could get a “no.” I think I’m going to try to sneak in and just call on CD1 when I’m ready to cycle again. But when will that be? Which cycle will I choose? (Stress. Anxiety. Cue more tears).
13. That anxiety attack I mentioned in my last post and the continuing drama surrounding it spurred a hell of a lot of crying (I promise to tell this story eventually, but it’s getting its own post).
I know I must be missing some, because I cried more than thirteen times (scary, but true). There were plenty of times where I cried for no discernible reason at all. I know it’s OK to be sad and to just let it out. I’m also handling it… like, you don’t need to call anyone or anything. I’m not depressed, really; I’m just unbelievably sad. I’m worried (dammit, anti-anxiety pills, work better!) and nervous, and tired and sad.
Once again I’m looking forward to a week long beach trip, this time with my husband and my whole family. And again, it couldn’t come at a more perfect time. I plan to get back to eating better (literally ate an entire tray of brownies and drank a huge bottle of wine over the course of this past week), exercising, exploring acupuncture and starting yoga beginning the Monday I get back, which is the beginning of August. I keep picturing August as my month of healing, and maybe September, too. I haven’t even counted out when I can expect my next period or anything. I’m intentionally avoiding focusing on dates and numbers.
But for now, I just need to stop crying so much.