When Eggs Go Bad...

A Confederacy of Bloggers

Since starting on all this blogging business, I have come across literally hundreds of funny, sweet, intelligent, and occasionally rant-tastic blogs. I just love how there is this kick-ass community of like-minded people who, regardless of what their particular circumstances are, or what life-event brought out the bloggityness in them, can see the funny side and want to share it with total strangers. I continue to be amazed by the honesty, humour and dignity with which they tackle what I like to call life's little obstacles.

But the other great thing about blogs are the comments. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. On the highly trafficked blogs that I read daily (check out my Blogroll on the right for a few of them), there are always dozens, sometimes hundreds, of comments after a post. And with a few fairly rare exceptions, they are overwhelmingly positive, loving and humorous in their own turn. Think about that for a second! In a blogosphere with millions of users, there is a noticeable absence of fuckwit comments. People, that's a miracle.

Of course, I know that there are fuckwits out there. Nasty little asshats (and not the good acupuncture kind) who aren't content simply to disagree with a veiewpoint but want to abuse and destroy you for it. Sad, sorry little pricks who have no other way of dealing with their insecurities than by attempting to exploit your own. Scary, psycho types who are probably capable of a lot worse than flaming your inbox. (Incidentally, my ex-husband falls into all these categories.) I've lost count of the number of times I've wanted to link to an old post by Grrl, but she has removed her archives (and even her e-mail address) because of some fuckwittage or other her blog has attracted. Yes, the fuckwits are out there, but by God we're holding our own against them.

My blog is really, really new. Squeaky clean, virgin new. Google and Yahoo haven't found me, and no one has linked to me. And still a few people have managed to find it and have taken the time to write lovely things, to wish me luck, to make me laugh and to tell me that I made them laugh. How cool is that? With all the gazillions of fuckwits out there (led, I am now fairly certain, by my ex-husband, Fuckity McFuckwit), my fledgling little blogette has already attracted a small fraction of the warmth and kindness that I have seen on a massive scale out there in Blogopolis.

If you want to see an excellent example of this community spiritedness, check out Danae's Hardscrabble post from the other day, and then read the comments (which, by the way, contains the most fabulous collection of obscenities I have yet to discover anywhere in the blgosphere. 'Fuck on a Cracker'...that is classic). These are people who have never met Danae, who may or may not know for themselves the rollercoaster of fertility treatment, who will in all likelihood have jobs, families and lives that demand their attention. And yet they took the time to say, "Hey, we're here for you."

For a while, before Miscarriage II, I went to church fairly regularly. I even volunteered to do the church newsletter and liaise with the local paper to get church events advertised. In doing this, I encountered several rude old biddies and a few younger mums who for some reason seemed threatened by me. Not once in my time there did I come across anyone who showed the kind of Christ-like charity and acceptance that shows up again and again and again in comments. (I don't go to church anymore, but I am still doing the newsletter because I am a pushover. I may see if I can sneak the word fuckwit into it in really small type...)

Anyway, you people need to know that you are AWESOME! And I am thrilled to be the recipient of even a few of your rallying words.

Wobbly Bits

Ha! I've had my first real comment on one of my posts (not counting the one left by Best Friend). I knew using the word 'ass' would do the trick. This is an exciting day for me.

It's actually really good that I have something good to focus on today, because the weather reports say it's going to be around 28 degrees Centigrade in London today (that's 82 degrees in real money). And that, my friends, is a double-edged sword. Sure it's great because it's Friday, it's warm, and all the pubs near the office have outdoor tables. But there's a downside: bare arms.

I have possibly the world's worst upper arms. Whereas below the elbow my arms are slim, nay delicate, travel Northwards and you enter a carnival funhouse of freakishness. They wibble, they wobble, they sway in the breeze. When I wave, they create atmospheric disturbances that I suspect contribute to hurricane season.

And not content to be generally doughlike and pudgy, they are also covered in tiny red spots, interspersed with a smattering of tinier white bumps that beg to be squeezed. (They really do; I can hear them calling even now. They have an Antonio Banderas Puss-in-Boots kind of voice.) But when you DO give in and pop those suckers out, they leave a sodding great welt that taunts and teases for the remainder of the day ("Ha! Squeeze us, will you? You cannot win. We are Spots-on-Arms!").

No, my upper arms are not for the faint-hearted, and yet, on a day like today, when wearing a cardigan is out of the question, I have no choice but to inflict them upon my fellow citizens.

Still, after a few glasses of wine at the pub, I won't care anymore. And the upside? If it gets too hot, all I have to do is wave.

I'm Sorry, You Haven't a Clue

Things not to say to a recurrent miscarrier:

It's nature's way of weeding out the abnormal embryos
This has got to be one of the cruellest things a miscarrier can hear, and yet I've heard it several times from people who wouldn't deliberately hurt me for the world. The easiest answer to this is, "Well, nature just sucks, then". But the more deeply felt response is: "This was my child. He or she may have been imperfect, but like any mother, I loved him/her unconditionally". If a young child died of a genetic disease, would you say to his parents, Oh that's just nature's way of making sure he didn't reproduce? No, of course not.

It would have been so hard looking after a child who needed constant care and attention; you should be grateful
This is one of a whole family of "You should be grateful" type remarks, and all of them stink. Yes, it would have been terribly difficult being a full time carer to a child with disabilities. But that doesn't mean that I am thankful that the child never lived. It's still a life and its passing is still sad. Again, would you say to the parents of a diabled child who died, "Phew, I bet you're glad that weight's off your shoulders"? That would be cruel, right? Well, same goes for saying it to me.

The baby might only have lived a little while or have been in terrible pain if had been born
Another in the "be grateful" family, though a gentler one. Of course no one would want to see a child in pain. It's anathema to us to see a baby suffer. A new life should be free from the ravages of a weak, sick body. Nevertheless, it's still my child. My loss is real. And as for the possibility of a foreshoretend life...What I wouldn't give to have been able to hold my lost babies just once.

You can always try again
Yes, that's true. And that is supposed to relieve my grief because....? Another child would be a different child, not the ones I lost. And although I would be infinitely thankful for that child and love him or her to pieces, it would not replace my lost children.

Well, at least you have one child already
See above.

It wasn't really a baby, more just a clump of cells
Um, no. Wrong. From the minute I knew about my babies, I loved each and every one of them as whole babies. Physically they may have been mere embryos, but to me they were my sons or daughters. I am grieving as much for the loss of what might have been as I am for the babies themselves.

I'm sure it will be fine next time
I know you mean well, but there is no way you can know this. Miscarriage is incredibly common, and the risk goes up once a woman hits 35, and rises further after multiple miscarriages. So, you don't know that everything will be fine. No one does. This may happen again and I will be right back where I am now.

I know it's difficult to know what to say. I know that right now I am feeling ultrasensitive to everything. I know that it's better to have people saying something, anything, to me than avoiding me. But these statements hurt. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Needle Junkie: Do you smell burning, or is it just me?

I think I'm in danger of developing an addiction (OK, another addiction if you count the whole shoes thing...), and it involves needles. But don't panic, Gentle Reader, it's not heroin or crack. It's not even Botox. No, it's acupuncture.

It started about a month ago. I had read a few articles about how treatment can help with fertility issues, including miscarriage. And at that point it was important to me to be able to wrest back some control of my situation. I was mired in grief and heartsick wondering, why me. With acupuncture, I reasoned, I could focus on maximising the potential of my body, instead of focusing on the whys of my losses.

I ended up getting more than I bargained for. Having tried six numbers from a website listing qualified acupuncturists in my area, and getting not one answer, not even voicemail, I switched tacks and tried a local directory. Mrs H answered immediately, and the words tumbled forth as I told her about my miscarriages and my grief and asked tentatively whether acupuncture might help. She didn't hesitate. "Oh!" she excalimed, in a honeyed, Australian accented voice, "I need to see you!"

Turns out Mrs H does more than acupuncture. She is a fully qualified practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Japanese Medicine, as well as being thoroughly trained in the uses of flower remedies, magnet therapy, and a nifty little Russian contraption that is like acupuncture with electricity (no, really, it's very soothing!). But more than this, she had spent more than a decade learning about how these therapies affect fertility, pregnancy and childbirth. She modestly mentioned that she had had some successes with women trying to get and stay pregnant. But more persuasive than any of this was that her words, her voice, everything that I could glean from our conversation, reflected the fact that she really cares about her patients. She even cared about me and we'd never met, had exchanged no more than a few hundred words. She cared about my pain, and that was enough for me.

At the first couple of appointments, I got zapped with the Russian doohickey. My kidney chi was all out of whack (go figure), my digestion needed a bit of coaxing, and, apparently, I was both wet and hot at the same time (mind you, my husband could have told her that). But at no point did I feel weird or worried about what Mrs H had to say. On the contrary, all of the symptomatic signs of these 'conditions' were presenting loud and clear in my life, so as foreign as these concepts were to me, I was more than willing to listen. I took a few herbs, then a few flower essences, and went away each time feeling, well, good! And that was enough for me.

But today, boys and girls, today I graduated to actual acupuncture. As Mrs H will tell you, she doesn't 'do to' her patients; rather, her patients' bodies tell her what they need. And today, my body was apparently saying, "Yo, Mrs H! Hows about you stick some little skinny needles in me, and see how we get on?" As someone with a lifelong ambivalence towards sharp things, I was surprised to find that I was totally up for it.

Well, okay, I was up for it but also so nervous that even the soles of my feet were sweating. To my great relief, though, the needles didn't hurt a bit. And afterward, I felt better and more energetic than I had in weeks. Even an afternoon meeting with a not-very-nice colleague that resulted in a mile-long action list for me didn't really dent my overall Little Richard outlook (Huh! I feel good, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah....). Maybe it's psychological, or a placebo effect, but I don't think so. The thing is, when those little needles go in, you feel a tingle in all sorts of places. So something seems to be working.

The best part of the treatment, for me, was when I was on my front and Mrs H was preparing to access the points on my back dealing with gynaecological whatnots. See, this involves a bottom site, and, having ascertained that I am most always in possession of a rather cold bum, Mrs H decided to add a little something warming to the ass needle. Cue a smouldering cone, kind of like incense, balanced on the end of the needle. I was suddenly visited by a crystal clear mental image of my quivering rear adorned with a lone needle and its burning crown. A human incense holder, an altar to the wonders of Far Eastern medicine, a symbol of hope for butts everywhere.

I would have giggled, but that might have given the term "hot piece of tail" a whole new meaning.

Hmmm....wonder what I'll get next week!

Coming to Term

I'd love to take the credit for the title of this post. It captures so eloquently the bittersweet aftermath of miscarriage, whether it be trying again and risking or experiencing more loss, accepting the inability to carry a baby, or actually having a live birth following one or more losses. Alas, it's not mine to claim, but I've used it because I sincerely hope it will manage to attract folks to this post. Because this title is also the title of an incredible book by Jon Cohen. This book really can bring hope after miscarriage, single or multiple. (If that link ever goes dead, LET ME KNOW!)

Written by a journalist whose wife experienced four miscarriages in between having their first and second child, it is extremely well-researched presented in a thoroughly readable manner. Cohen wanted to write the kind of book that he and his wife needed but couldn't find when they were going through their losses. So he used his own background as a biomedical journalist to delve into what is known--and not known--about human reproduction, fetal development and miscarriage. "Much of what I learned," he said in an article in the Washington Post flatly contradicted the 'facts' given by the experts who had advised us."

Anyone who has experienced pregnancy loss will identify with the desperate, sometimes overwhelming need to know why. Often there isn't an answer, but for those whose defense mechanism includes getting all the facts regardless, Cohen's book goes a long way towards bringing together the research, and explaining it in context. Personally, I found answers that I had been seeking for months but hadn't found in hours spent on the Internet and reading book after book written by doctors and midwives.

I spent yesterday evening sobbing in my husband's arms after a Really Bad Day. I had been doing pretty well for a couple of weeks, but for some reason yesterday was a stinker. Then, this morning, while reading Cohen's book I came across some beautiful words...words that I hadn't seen anywhere else: "When...veterans of three or more miscarriages in a row become pregnant again, they will, with no treatment, carry to term nearly 70% of the time." This statistic is from the St Mary's Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic in London (though they seem to have revised that statistic to 60%)

So, there it is...my little ray of hope.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Lola.

So, I've been thinking a lot about God lately. I mean really thinking. In that, my-head-might-explode kind of earnest way that we mere mortals can get when we contemplate the Divine. Because, let's face it folks, there's nothing like a good miscarriage to make you question the existence, power, love and/or motivation of the Big Guy.

I mean, think about it. Think about all the ways the death of a child (be it miscarriage, still birth, infant death or the loss of an older child) violates everything we think we know or believe about God in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

If bad things befall those who somehow deserve it, what the crap did my 6- and 9-week old fetuses do that riled God so much that he needed to smite them right there in the womb? Were they little bandits or tiny terrorists? If it was a punishment due to me, then why not just strike me down?

Or perhaps it's not a punishment; maybe it's God's Will. It's part of God's intricate plan. Humans can't see the beautiful pattern because we're underneath the weaving, looking at the tangled knots of thread, but really we're part of some really wonderful divine plan. Right...so, basically, God fucks with us just to make himself a pretty decoration? Surely not.

So maybe I just didn't pray right. Somewhere in the New Testament it says if I pray to God in Jesus' name I can have anything... anything ... I ask for. Well, I asked. I begged. I was on my knees. I must have got the answerphone.

If God is all powerful, why didn't he just stop it from happening. If God is all-loving, why did he bring Husband and me two miscarriages in a row? Why does he visit upon millions of women and their partners the utter heartbreak and despair of even one lost child, let alone more? Why, when we were at the depths of despair, was our grief further compounded by the revelation that a friend was pregnant and due at the same time I would have been, followed almost immediately by a birth announcement from other friends? Surely God could have waylaid that news until both of us were stronger. Why, if he loves us, wouldn't he help us?

I don't know the answer to these questions, and it hurts. Until my second miscarriage, I had a solid, if somewhat ill-defined faith. I believed that God was all-powerful. That he was like a loving parent to us. That he cared about me personally and because of that I was never, ever alone. I believed that my life, which had seen its share of hard times (a failed marriage, lost friendships, a going-nowhere relationship), was still bearable because God was watching out for me and wouldn't give me anything I couldn't handle. Then I lost three babies in four months and my faith evaporated.

Now I think to myself, OK: either God is all-powerful and can intervene in our lives but he only does so according to some arbitrary set of criteria, or he can't intervene at all, which means prayer is futile, and which calls into question the very nature of the God I was taught to believe in.

I spoke to a friend about it. She is a strong Catholic and recently went through the hell of having her husband in Iraq while she stayed behind with their baby daughter. She said that while her husband was gone, she simply prayed that God would give her strength. She said that through prayer she placed her life into God's hands and trusted that he would not give her anything she couldn't handle.

Her husband came back. But would she have retained her faith had he joined the ranks of the war dead?

Sometimes I start to wonder...maybe, there isn't a God at all. Maybe this is all there is. No creator, no compassionate father, no loving arms to receive us in the afterlife. Maybe my babies are gone forever, there is no heaven where I will see them and have the chance to hold them.

But then I stop myself. I give myself a good talking to. Of course there is a God. There has to be.

Because I need someone to blame.

Embrace the Suck

There are days when everything irritates me and I get a good case of the blue means. E-mails from work colleagues sound snotty and workshy. Other drivers seem deliberately to be setting out to wind me up. The radio stations are all playing depressing songs, and even the weather is conspiring against me. And when I stop to try to figure out why I'm so fed up, I suddenly realise it's because it's a Bad Day.

It's been 3 weeks now since the ERPC that officially ended my already-buggered pregnancy, so hormones are no doubt at least partly to blame for my blues. But it's also the result of what I call Suck Moments, those instances where some sensation, some word, some image makes me remember: "I'm not pregnant anymore."

For 10 weeks, my body did all the things pregnant bodies are supposed to do. And now, I have these moments of awareness of those things not happening. My boobs aren't sore anymore. I don't feel sick anymore. And most gut-wrenching of all, I don't have that all-over "I have a secret" glow anymore.

For those early months, pregnancy belongs to the mother. The father may know, and he may be thrilled or scared or something else altogether. But to the mother, the pregnancy suffuses her entire being. It did me, anyway. I thought constantly about the adventure of the next 7 or 8 months. I reveled in what my body could do. I imagined what my baby would be like, how it would grow up. I happily looked forward to decorating the nursery and buying tiny little onesies and socks and hats. With Husband, I made plans, chose names. For 9 wonderful weeks.

Even after the scan that told us something was very wrong, there was a week in which a tiny grain of hope remained, and around it accreted a whole new set of thoughts about what we now knew were twins.

So even now, after 3 weeks of definitely NOT being pregnant, I still somehow get surprised by that fact. It lurks behind corners and on the stairs and jumps me when I least expect it. And I find myself not only rudely reminded but affronted, too, by the goddamned waste of it all. We are emotionally ready for a baby, financially ready. My nearly teenage daughter from my first marriage is desperate for a sibling. And all around me I see women who seem to be able to have a baby as easily as lighting up their next cigarette... The unfairness of it all continues to gnaw at my gut.

I know that I am fortunate to have conceived and given birth 12 years ago (and easily, too; miscarriage never even crossed my mind). I know that I am fortunate that I can get pregnant with relative ease. And it doesn't change one iota of the grief and loss I feel for my miscarried children.

But, I embrace the Suck. I welcome the Bad Days because they are, at their core, a link to my lost twins. Every Bad Day brings me closer to a time when I'll stop being surprised and reminded, and will fully integrate the experience into my life. I will never be the same, but the parts that make up the whole of who I am now include my babies. So to turn away from that would be to turn away from them, to never have had them.

And that would be the worst loss of all.

Commuters and Other Fuckwits

Uh oh...I feel a rant coming on.

Dearly beloved, spare a moment to mourn the passing of our one-time friends, twin siblings Respect and Courtesy. For they are, alas, dead. As a doornail.

And nowhere is this more obvious than during the morning commute on the London Underground, where Respect and Courtesy were long ago pummelled into a bloody pulp and wiped onto the back of a seat.

This morning, I watched as a well-dressed business man walloped no fewer than three sets of knees with his rolling suitcase in an effort to beat the old folk, pregnant women and disabled people to the only remaining seat in the carriage. Did he apologise to any of them (the owners of the knees, that is, not the knees themseves)? No. He looked around furtively to see if anyone had actually seen him elbow the pregnant woman in the abdomen, and then rustled his paper open wide so that the people on either side of him flinched from the near eyeball contact.

Now, I fully admit that I am a woman who guards jealously her personal space. Nothing bugs me as much as being in close proximity to someone for whom the word 'boundaries' is just an abstract concept. So travelling sardine-style in a metal tube hurtling through tunnels hundreds of feet underground with no immediate means of escape is never going to be pleasant for me. But for Pete's sake, do you have to make it worse?

Yes, I'm talking to you, Backpack Man, so listen up. You take up a finite amount of space as a human. But when you put on a bloody great backpack filled to capacity with your papers, trainers, macrobiotic lunch or whatever the hell else you have in there, you are going to take up more space in back! That means that when you swing around to see which idiot businessman snagged the last seat, your extended back dimenisons are going to clobber someone. Usually me. (Oh, and another thing, put some damn clothes on. No one should have to see cycle shorts at 8.30 in the morning.)

Of course, this sort of behaviour is not confined to the trains themselves. Every evening, when I begin the long journey back home, I have to start my commute with a rousing game of Chicken. This is where I attempt to cross a long line of commuters exiting the Underground and making their way to the mainline train station, without getting trampled. They march unremittingly, three abreast and with eyes determinedly forward, carefully avoiding eye contact with the straggling group of free-thinkers trying desperately to get to the Underground entrance on the other side of this human effluvium. Has any one of them ever slowed their pace to make space for a crossing? What do you think.

Oh, boys and girls, it's a jungle out there. It's enough to make an old-fashioned, polite girl take the car instead.

Transvaginal Ultrasound and Other Probing Questions

There are, I am sure, many fun ways to discover things that can be inserted into a vagina. Laying petrified on a table in a darkened ultrasound room in a dingy NHS hospital is not one of them.

Having tried the bladder-full-to-bursting abdominal scan (where ice-cold goo is squirted on your belly...Do they refrigerate this stuff, or what?), the sonographer announced that I needed to go have a wee and then strip naked from the waist down. This duly done, I was instructed to prop my hips up on a wedge-shaped cushion and "relax" (oh yeah, right) while she inserted into my girly bits something that was worryingly the same size and shape as a hand-held blender. But, no frappe action was forthcoming, instead there was just a long drawn-out silence, while the sonographer moved the wand about alot and looked...well...like someone who didn't really like what she was seeing, but didn't want the hyper-strung-out woman with the blender up her hoo-ha to catch on.

But I'd been here before, and catch on I did. Yes, boys and girls, I knew what was coming.

Let me tell you: nothing, nothing , NOTHING can prepare you for the moment you hear the words: "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid your babies have died." Not even when it's the second time you've heard those words, or words like them.

There is a second where your brain thinks, "Did I just hear that?" And then it starts to hit you. I don't really recall a lot of about the moments spent getting my pants back on and being led into a sparse examination room to await the arrival of The Consultant. I think there was a lot of sobbing and shouting about wanting to go home. I only remember an ache that is like no other. My womb, that I thought was full of life, wasn't. And this wasn't the first time. How could I POSSIBLY go through this again.

Husband and I had spent the previous 7 days in a state of total limbo. Having gone to hospital for an emergency scan following a tiny bit of spotting, we had expected to be told not to be so stupid, everything was fine, lots of women bleed in early pregnancy and go on to have healthy babies. Instead, we were quizzed endlessly about my dates and when I insisted they could not be wrong, we were told that there were two babies but they were 3 to 4 weeks smaller than they should have been and neither heartbeat was visible. We were told to come back in a week to see whether anything had happened.

It didn't. All week I felt pregnant. We convinced ourselves that some crazy ovulation thing had happened and my dates were out. Or maybe I ovulated twice and one of the babies would be OK. Or maybe I had a tipped uterus that made the babies look smaller than they were. Or maybe they were just small. All week we cried, prayed, talked, thought, read anything we could find about ultrasound scans and their accuracy, and about women who had experienced the same scare and had a baby anyway. All week we waited for a miracle.

It didn't come. The truth was, our babies were dead.

While we waited for The Consultant, Husband did a lot of holding, and whispering and kissing while I lost the plot. (I should say at this point that my husband is a saint. I am pretty sure that I'm not an easy person to live with, but he actually seems to enjoy it, so kudos to him.) The Consultant came in and began long process of answering our anguished questions. She held my hand and called me sweetheart and said a few comforting words, too. (She could teach a thing or two to some of her contemporaries.) She talked us through all the statistics, all the theories, and then gave us her diagnosis.

The long and short of it? Probably shit luck. And all the probing in the world won't change that.

Blog me up, Boys

So, having no technical capability whatsoever, the typing skills of a monkey jacked up on goofballs, and, probably, very little in the way of witty observation to share with anyone, I have nevertheless started a blog.

I am not to blame for this.

No, the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of some really great bloggers out there who write so well, and so amusingly, that they make me think I can do it, too. (Take a bow Grrl, Danae, Tertia.) And they, in turn, link to other veteran bloggers who I am sure do a better job than I am likely to do.

So, have I hit rock bottom? Why the hell am I doing this? I will tell you (well, you did ask).

1. Like my blogging muses, I, too, have experienced infertility in one of its guises, namely recurrent miscarriage. And dammit, I want to talk about it. It really fucking hurts and it seems like there are a lot of women out there who can feel my pain. So maybe, just maybe, pouring out my feelings will help me or even them.
2. I'm a ranter. Get me on a topic (and it can be almost anything) and I can churn you out a full-on freight-train of a rant that generally has the effect, eventually, of making me see the funny side. Too often, my rants are internal (hey, nobody likes to be the one sitting next to the ranter on the Underground), and I feel it's time to let some of them out. At the moment, they're the only things I can give birth to. They need to fly and be free.
3. My forays into blogland with aforementioned blogging muses have introduced me to the dangerous world of lurkers, flamers and your basic jackasses just asking to be singled out and humiliated and I want me some of that action. Seriously, these women will pour their hearts out in a most eloquent and heart-wrenching manner (with correct spelling!) only to have some know-it-all, semi-literate fuckwit pass judgment. These people are morons and I am hoping to hone my ability to tell them so.

Oh, yeah. Blog me up, boys...