Grief

The following is a excerpt from one of my favorite books "The Book of Qualities" by Ruth Gendler. In this book, it personifies many different emotions and virtues. I stumbled across the book today and was flipping through it, looking for a little nugget of script that I might paint on my daughter's wall like "Truth is not willing to live without Love". Instead tonight I found myself drawn to reading this:

Grief

Before she came to this town Grief was a woman named Eliea. She was a potter, and she glazed her big-bellied pots with earth colors until they shone like dull bronze. She had four children. The daughters live inland now in the distant foothills, and the oldest son left the family as soon as he could get away. It was the young boy with the golden curls and the laughing eyes who gave her great joy. He loved the ocean. He was barely walking when he learned to swim and not much older when he started to sail. One day about two years ago the sailors brought his boat home empty.

Never have I heard such sounds of weeping as when Grief found out her son had drowned. She screamed and howled. She stamped her feet and smashed her pots and bowls. She ate with all her fingers. She tore at her hair, and it grew wild and matted. She wandered from place to place with no sense of where she was or how she came there.

One day at the edge of the forest Grief heard another woman crying out. She spoke with her. She listened to her story. Grief was surprised. She had never met anyone else who had suffered as she had. Together the women sat in the clearing and mourned their children. Through the long afternoon, through the twilight, through the night, they wept and wept and wept and wept. In the morning Grief was washed clean of her tears. She came to our town and started to do her real work.




Thank you to everyone who has shared and mourned and wept. I feel like it is time to come out of the forest and once again begin my real work.

Adding Insult to Injury

As an added bonus for my return to work today - a co-worker found out that she was pregnant! By mistake! With an IUD in place!

Here

* pregnancy loss and child mentioned*

I'm slowly coming back out of my shell. Going back to work was brutal. Being around a unit full of new moms and babes is not exactly therapeutic for me. I had to leave early the first two shifts, but actually did make it through a full 12 hours last Monday. Since then I have been off on "vacation". We did not go anywhere, but this was planned time off from many months ago.

My daughter turned 4 this week, and this has been a non-stop celebration with family coming and going throughout the week. It has been a good distraction, but as tomorrow grows near, I am becoming more tense about going back to work. This time of year is always emotionally charged for me because not only is it my daughter's birthday (we started ttc when she was 18 months old), but in a few days it will be the anniversary of the death of my dear friend. She passed away 12 days after the birth of my daughter.

As far as work goes, I ended up sending out an email to the people that I work with on day shift. I have not been myself, people have seen me crying in the corner when a co-worker is asking how I'm doing. I sent the email partly to squelch rumors, but also to gain a little slack when it comes to assignments (I don't think that I could handle doing a 2nd trimester termination for genetic anomalies right now). I told them in the email that I have experienced a pregnancy loss and I am trying to figure out how to cope in an environment filled with babies. My hands were literally shaking as I pushed the "send" button. It is terrifying exposing myself to co-workers that I don't know very well. However, I have to say that the response has been overwhelmingly supportive.

Going back a week or so.....the D&C was awful. I was given 5 mg of valium and 2 percocet to take 45 minutes before the procedure (which was to be done in the office). I was so loopy by the time we got to the clinic, that C had to get a wheelchair for me just to get me from the car to the office. The RE went through instructions and a brief description of the procedure, all which were very fuzzy to me. The D&C itself was profoundly painful, and I do remember crying during the procedure. (I have made a not so subtle mental note that if there is a next time, this will be done in the OR and I will be COMPLETELY anesthetized!!!). Afterwards I started throwing up, I think it was from the percocet. No one seemed too concerned about the vomiting, and C had to go find someone to make sure it was okay that we just walked out. I slept most of the way home, then threw up some more once we got back to our house. The rest of the day I hung out in bed, sleeping intermittently. It took me exactly one week to stop bleeding. Now I just wait until AF, then I suppose we start over again. I have not heard from the RE's office, other than a letter regarding the pathology from the D&C. It was one of those template letters..."[insert name] hope you are recovering well from your procedure...." blah blah blah. And by the way you don't have cancer. WTF?! I guess I didn't realize that is what they were looking for when they were doing the pathology. Is it too much to expect my IVF nurse call after a pregnancy loss just to say "are you okay?" I've checked the stats on my clinic and although it is a large teaching hospital, they do not do large numbers of IVF....I guess I thought I would get a little more personalized attention....silly me.

C and I are dealing with things quite differently. I am trying to figure out how to get by day to day, and sometimes hour to hour. A dear friend sent some books on coping with a pregnancy loss, I've tried to read it, but every time I start, I begin to crying and can't see. C is very supportive, but he is looking to the future. I once said that if IVF did not work for us, I would concentrate on getting my master's. So he has brought up me going back to school, as well as trying multiple IVFs. Our insurance will pay for 5 more fresh cycles.....still don't think we would take it that far, 40 is looming and I don't want to keep doing this for another year. But for now, we wait. Waiting again for AF. I do want to jump right into another cycle, I'm just hoping that it won't take AF 12 weeks to show up.

Did I mention that another cousin's wife is pregnant.....with twins.....through IVF? *sigh*