When Eggs Go Bad...

Oh, and By the Way...

So, I was actually scared to log check my blog this morning, because figured I would have umpteen comments excoriating me for having the temerity to put out, like, negative vibes to pregnant women and their baybees. But instead, there were comments form people who actually seemed not only get what I was saying but to have actually felt that way themselves at one time or another.

Yet another reason to love the internet.

And not to push my luck or anything, but I did want to make a brief observation about the flip-side of the topic I posted about yesterday: the runaway mommy.

You know what I mean, right. It's the pregnant mommy who literally runs away at the first possibility fo any actual eye contact with you because your HABITUAL ABORTER mojo might hurt the baybee.

Er, sweetie-pie? C'mere. No, closer...OK. Word to the wise. I am not an idiot. I see it when you accidentally make eye contact with me and acquire the deer-in-a-headlights look and them swiftly look somewhere more pleasant (like the wino in the gutter, a Modern Art installation, or a screening of Ocean's 12) while scurrying away as fast as your little cankles will take you. That's right. I see it. You're not invisible; it is actually quite noticeable.

By all means steer the hell clear of me if you think I'm a vicious bitch who doesn't deserve to be a mommee. And definitely stay the hell away from me if all you want is for me to gaze adoringly at your bump and tell you how lucky you are. But for Christ's sake I'm not contagious, OK?

Warning: This Dog Bites

***This is a big old motherf*&^%ing rant, and if you are currently pregnant, it will, without a shadow of a doubt, piss you off, so I suggest you don't read it. Seriously.***

OK, why is it that every fucking pregnant woman just automatically assumes that I am going to be overcome with joy at their situation? (OK, not every one. Three of my pregnant friends get it.) Even women that have experienced a loss and know what heart-rending, gut-clenching grief that causes... They get knocked up and suddenly I'm supposed to be able to transcend the pain of my lost babies and be their little infertile cheerleader, jumping up and down and squealing about how wonderful and fabulous it is that they have a little life thumping away within them.

Um, excuse me, Lola. You are so selfish! You just need to stop being suicidal and, like, come over here and bask in my newly pregnant glow!

Well here's a newsflash for you, ladies. I am NOT happy for you. I don't wish you harm, but I am hurt and jealous beyond belief that for some reason you are allowed to have a baby grow inside you but mine die. My pain and grief are far too new and raw for me to be able to rise above them and make endless fuss over how often you've vomited or whether your little 'bean' waved at you on your umpteenth ultrasound. If that makes me a bad person, then so be it.

Personally, I reckon that after three miscarriages and four dead babies, I am allowed just a little bit of time focusing on myself and Mr Badeggs. And, quite frankly, we do not give a shit if Junior has laid wall to wall womb carpet or is doing origami with his umbilical cord. We're just a little tied up at the moment trying to find a way to live with the devastation of losing our children and the utter alienation we feel from God, our family and the rest of the stinking world (and did I mention God?).

So, yes, I may have stopped writing or e-mailing or posting comments or telephoning. It's because seeing you developing a bump that should have been mine, passing milestones that should have been mine, watching you pat your tummy, browse nursery catalogues and look eagerly towards the day you can hold your precious bundle in your arms is JUST TOO PAINFUL.

Jesus Christ....you've been given a gift. You're pregnant. Your baby is growing within you (and yes, I most certainly am aware that anything can happen, especially in the early days--BTDT-- but you're OK right at this moment). Do you really need my approbation to keep you going? Will subverting my grief and pain really help? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I stay away because I don't want my pain to intrude on your happiness?!

You are pregnant. I am not. And whether or not you think I'm an evil bitch for not being strong enough to rise above that, the fact is you have something that I don't have and may never have again. And until I come to terms with that, I may just be a teeny bit distracted from your preggopalooza.

Deal with it.

Is There Anything Else On?

In about an hour we'll leave for our appointment with a specialist who will, hopefully help us to get to the bottom of our problems having a full term baby. I'm glad it's finally here, but I'm feeling pretty apprehensive, too.

If he can't find any underlying problem, we'll be left to get on with it a try again, knowing that we probably only have a 50-60% chance of having a successful pregnancy. On the other hand, if there is an underlying cause to be found, it could reduce our odds even further, possibly even to zero. And some of the conditions that contribute to recurrent loss may be associated with health risks in later life. Hmmm...it's not a great story no matter how you look at it (kind of like Ocean's 12...).

This was so not in my life plan. The idea was get married, live happily ever after, have 3 kids, big house, nice life. One divorce, three miscarriages and an itty bitty little British house (which is, scarily, comparatively large when set against many other British houses), and I find my teenage dreams incredibly naive. That said, I did manage one child, and I have a fantastic marriage now, and I'm really happy about pretty much everything except my reproductive woes and lack of closet space. Maybe the purpose behind the losses, if indeed there is one, is to show me just what a lunatic pursuit it is to HAVE a life plan.

So am I nuts to be placing so much hope in the fact that I am finally up for some testing and, maybe, treatment? Is this just another example of planning that is going to end up with me blinking into the bright light and saying, "What the hell just happened?" I have to say, I'm fairly skeptical about this whole positive thinking thing. In my experience, (a) it doesn't work and (b) you end up feeling slightly abashed at having been conned by life. If I have hope, life becomes a Living TV true life story starring Marky Post. But if I have no hope whatsoever, it's just going to make this process really long and boring, like the fly fishing channel.

Perhaps I'll start practising the hope equivalent of 'quiet confidence' or 'hoping for the best, expecting the worst'. I'll create my own new emotion, called skeptihope or hopticism, where I just spend my time thinking 'ah, a medical test....iiiiiiinteresting', and 'results are neither good nor bad, they're just results'.

Because I'm just not sure I can handle much more drama in my life. And believe me, that was never in the plan, either.

I Feel Bereaved All Over Again

Grrl, she of the divine Chez Miscarriage blog, is going on maternity leave. It's time to take a break, she says, and concentrate on her new baby boy. It just goes to show what a complete asshole I am that her announcement makes me sad.

Grrl and her husband have been through a hair-raising journey the last few years, starting with multiple pregnancy losses and ending, most wonderfully, with the birth of her first child through a gestational surrogate. I found her blog only early this year. At that time she still had her archives posted, and I read her story from start to finish, alternately laughing and crying like a lunatic fishwife. Thereafter, I followed her progress every single day without fail. I can tell you, if anyone deserves to take a break it's Grrl, and is there any better reason than to focus all your attention on your bundle of joy that also happens to be a sho'nuff miracle?

But it does make me sad, because, idiotically, I feel like I'm losing a friend. Grrl may well come back, but it won't be the same. As she herself says, "By definition, the blog can't continue to be what it once was - a journal of my trip through recurrent pregnancy loss. It has to become something new, and I don't know what that new thing is yet."

So when Grrl once again graces us with her wry humour and keen observation, it will be a different animal. I have no doubt it will be just as pithy, witty and wise as Chez Miscarriage, but it won't be the same.

In a year of so much loss, I feel this one keenly, too, even though I take immense pleasure in her well-earned joy. Maybe it seems strange that I would be feeling that way, but it was through Grrl and her blog that I discovered the huge virtual world of men and women doing batttle with infertility and pregnancy loss and realised that I wasn't alone.

So, Grrl? Here's to you and Mr Grrl and Sara and most of all to Gefilte. Thank you so much for rasing my awareness, my eyebrows and my spirit. Go well.

At This Point I'll Even Take a Comma

Where oh where oh WHERE is my period? It's been almost 8 weeks now and it's just getting silly.

And, no, before you ask, I'm not knocked up. Oh I know there was that incident back in June, but this time I have peed on a number of white sticks (note: if you're blind, it's in your best interests not to come to my house for dinner) and they all stay resolutely negative. And that's a good thing. Right now my life's algrebraic equation is pregnancy = heartbreak + distress, and I don't want any part of it until I've had the tests that my new Silver Cervix status (i.e. being a member of the Habitual Aborters Association) has afforded me.

Never in my LIFE has I been so ready to bleed. I know, I know, that really is too much information, but dammit, I'm cranky.

Anyone have access to an old wife who can spew forth some sort of herbal or traditional remedy? Mr Badeggs has had about enough of the permanent PMS...

A more reasoned and interesting post tomorrow...I promise.

Must be Something in the Water (in which she rambles fairly incoherently)

A friend of mine came over for brunch on Sunday. (Yes, it was very posh, thankyouverymuch. It involved muffins in a cute little gingham lined basket, a pitcher of orange juice, fresh coffee and a vase of flowers from our garden among other things.) Anyway, I learned that she has another friend who has also lost three consecutive pregnancies this year. This affliction is only supposed to affect 1% of women of childbearing age, but she knows two of us. I'm really not sure they have that statistic right.

One of the most amazing thing that has come out of having repeated miscarriages is how people come out of the woodwork who tell you it happened to them/their friend/their mother/grandmother/Aunt Bessie/dermatologist's cousin/etc. Anf often these are stories of consecutive losses, My hairdresser had two. One of Mr Badeggs' colleagues recently told him that his wife had three. (In fact several people at Mr Badeggs' place of employment have suffered at least one loss.)

And if, like me, you spend a lot of time on miscarriage-related discussion fora like PAM, you can really start to get the feeling that this miscarriage thing is a LOT more widespread than they'd have you believe. I'm not sure who 'they' are or why they'd want to keep it under their hats, but honestly, it's enough to scare a girl senseless.

With the first investigative doctor appointment coming up, along with the prospects of umpteen blood tests, ultrasound scans, and possibly other, more invasive, tests, I find myself more and more worried that I am caught in this place of habitual spontaneous abortion and I will never escape. I'm not ready yet to be finished having babies, yet my chromosomes or immune system or uterus might stop me. I may be 'that woman who can't have any more babies and isn't it sad'.

I don't know...maybe it's post holiday blues, but I just haven't felt like myself the past week. I feel so sad and lost. ALl the pain that had subsuded into a tolerable ache has come back, but I can't find a way to express it, even to Mr Badeggs. And worse that that, I'm struggling to find things to write about and you can just forget about me being humorous. It's true! I've lost my mojo!

Maybe the doctor will be able to do a Mojo titre to find out if my levels are dangerously low or doa Mojosound scan. Maybe there's a drug that can artificially induce Mojo or I could have a Mojo transplant. Or maybe I'm fucked. Who knows.

I do know that I am going slowly crazy just sitting around waiting and not doing anything, so maybe I'll be full of fire after the appointment. Ready to take Recurrent Miscarriage by the balls (or, you know, whatever) and show it who's boss. Maybe I'll suddenly come up with a dozen fairly amusing turns of phrase and a new stock of stories to tell.

And then maybe...just maybe...by the end of the year I'll have some good news.

Jeez, but it's a long wait.

I Think I found My New Look

I'm thinking about making this my new look...

http://www.cafepress.com/notsosuburban.24132740

D'ya think he'll like it?!

I Second That

One of my PAM ladies has a nifty little secret. Well, I don't actually think it's a secret so much as it's something about her that I failed to notice before, since I never bothered to click that little www button under her name. (I won't put the link here, since I don't know if she'd want me to.)

This particular lady is a favourite of mine on the board. Her posts are honest and open, sweet and kind, and so incredibly strong. She has recently suffered her third loss and the grace and generosity of spirit that she was able to show absolutely humbled me. All of us share the most intimate details of our reproductive lives with each other, so I know her whole history, the results of her chromosome tests, the details of the miscarriages. But what I didn't know is that this lady is one hell of a singer/songwriter.

The website in question, which one of our more astute friends pointed out to the rest of us, has several samples of original songs--that's songs written and sung by her--that had me bopping way at my computer and wishing I could hear the whole thing. Turns out she's a professional musician, and a damn good one, too.

It got me thinking about how our lives have been redefined by recurrent loss. We've gone from being singers, wives, career women, homemakers, sisters, lovers, whatever, to being HABITUAL ABORTERS. For many of us, if not most, our waking lives are consumed by thoughts of clotting disorders, autoimmune conditions, D&Cs, foetal heartbeats, ultrasounds, internal exams, white sticks, double lines, sore breasts, morning sickness, and when our next period is supposed to start. And our sleeping hours bring us bittersweet dreams about birth and empty arms.

But all of us had lives before our lives were taken over by our reproductive nightmares. We had jobs, husbands, families, friends, interests and hobbies and commitments. But many of these things got pushed farther and farther into the background while we struggled with the emotional and physical fallout of multiple miscarriages.

I used to have a terrible habit of writing the first two chapters of whatever idea for a novel had wormed its way into my head and then getting scared of continuing, and so starting a new one instead. Yet, apart from blogging and PAMming, I haven't written a word in months now. [She breaks to ask for encouragement and bullying from her loyal readers to just get on with it and write the damn novel already.]

I've been lucky enough to have a vacation that truly did take me away from all things miscarriage for a while (well, maybe not ALL things, but most of them), but with the appointment with the specialist coming up soon, miscarriage will threaten to take over again. So I'm not going to let it. I am going to remember that I am a wife, mother to a teenager, friend, career babe extraordinaire, and budding novelist first and a recurrent miscarrier second. I am a healthy, hot, divine woman first, and a reproductive fuckup second. I am lucky in love, family, friends, income, talent (well, marginally) and freedom first.

And there is no second.

On Second Thought

*Sigh*

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is pregnant but me. Well, OK, maybe not everyone... there are my friends L'Hote, mother of 3, who can't have another baby or it might kill her, and Fatima, who is still looking for Mr Right. But it's ONLY us 3 who aren't pregnant!

Well, actually, there are also all the ladies from PAM who are still reeling from recent multiple miscarriages. They're not knocked up either. But everyone ELSE is!

Oh, except for the thousands of women experiencing infertility who haven't even had the comparative joy of being pregnant for just a little while. OK, but besides them, EVERYONE is up the duff besides me...and menopausal women.

Wait, what was I bitching about?

OK, so right now I am taking personally every pregnancy that comes within wombshot of me. Why should they get to be happy and not me and Mr Badeggs? Why does the universe hate us? What is WRONG with me? But for every happily pregnant woman that I have heard about, I have probably heard of more that have lost their babies, some of whom have come to the end of their willingness or ability to try. So I know I am not alone.

I think I will be a lot happier when we have seen the specialist on the 25th of August. Then at least I will be doing something. I am not the kind of person who can sit idly by and let life happen (except when The Simpsons is on). I have to be doing something, to feel like I have some semblance of control of the situation. It's like when Mr Badeggs tries cooking anything. I hover behind him, muttering ...Why are you doing it that way? Are you going to turn down the heat? Wouldn't cumin be better than coriander?... until he is obliged to open a bottle of wine and pour me a large glass just to occupy my attention. I'm doing that with life now ...Why are you doing this? How about if I start taking aspirin? Could I just have some sign of what's wrong so that I can RESEARCH it for God's sake?!!

But, while I may need to take the crazy down a notch or two, I know that my miscarrying sisters understand my crazy and are happy to let me go with it, so long as I keep reminding myself that I'm not the only one and the universe isn't out to get me.

But I'm taking the aspirin, just in case...

Cursed. Part 2

So, yesterday I spent 45 minutes crafting a rather good post about whether or not I (and some of my recurrent miscarrying friends) am cursed, as someone on the Pregnancy After Miscarriage site suggested. Bascially, I decided that while we certainly had experienced more than our fair share of shit luck, bad eggs and sticky blood, not to mention insensitive comments, we were not, in fact, cursed. Rather, we were blessed with the opportunity to become knowledgeable about recurrent miscarriage, its causes and treatments and how to deal with the emotional fallout and to educate others about it.

Then Blogger threw craps when I tried to publish the post and I lost the whole thing.

So, yeah, apparently I AM cursed.