As you know we are baseball crazy in this house, and Annie is on her way to being the craziest of us all. Not only does she love going to “baseball town,” but she also loves to play. At the beginning of last week, Heather bought Annie a little tee and bat set, and I’ve been taking her outside to play with it a lot lately so Heather can rest. This pleases Annie to no end, and she never wants to go inside. She just wants to hit, hit, and hit!

Please note that Annie keeps talking about her favorite player, Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, and not Matt Kemp or any of the other Dodgers. Heh.

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I love her, so much.

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For the last 24 hours, my physical recovery has been brutal. I pushed it on Monday and Tuesday, and my body made me pay with nausea, chills, bleeding, and dizziness. It sucked. That is an understatement.

At one point, I was finally in a position on the couch that didn’t make me feel like I was going to die, but Annabel would. not. leave. me. alone. I put the periods there to really draw out the annoyance I felt. It was epic. I snapped at her. I snapped at Mike. I was instantly sorry but I couldn’t say it. I just wanted to be mad. I wanted to feel something.

Eventually I went in our office and laid on the ground next to the couch. I looked under the door into the hallway. I watched Rigby scratch at the door. I watched Annie’s feet bring her to the door. She tried the locked handle. “Hello, Mama? Hello?” I watched her and Rigby walk away. I waited for them to come back. If they came back, I’d open the door. They never came back.

I laid on the ground for a while, but all I felt was the carpet.

When I tucked Annie in for bed, I told her I loved her. She rolled over and said nothing. She was mad at me. I didn’t blame her. I wanted to tell her tomorrow will be better.

Tomorrow has to be better.

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Now that it’s been a little more than a week since we found out about the baby, we’ve come to accept what happened and started to look toward the future. We want to try again, but for us it isn’t as simple as just trying again. As Dr. Hirisk told us, “Heather’s medical history is significant,” and that means there’s no guarantee things will work out next time. Thankfully, a game plan is coming into place that will give us the best chance possible.

The first thing we have to do is wait out a couple of Heather’s cycles. Dr. Hirisk said Heather’s uterine lining needs time to build up again – if it is weak when she becomes pregnant, other problems can arise. Obviously, as Dr. Hirisk pointed out, we don’t want to get pregnant and then run into trouble for a reason totally separate from our already existing issues.

Once we’re able to start trying to conceive, Dr. Hirisk wants Heather to take baby aspirin every day. This will help thin Heather’s blood and hopefully minimize the possibility that Heather’s blood clotting disorder (Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome) will rear its ugly head.

In addition to having Heather take baby aspirin while trying to get pregnant, Dr. Hirisk wants Heather to start injecting Lovenox as soon as she gets a positive pregnancy test. This is a change from her last two pregnancies, when Heather only started to inject herself with Lovenox after we saw the heartbeat for the first time. Dr. Hirisk hesitates to prescribe Lovenox so early in a pregnancy because it is a very serious medication (one which can lead to dangerous complications if you get cut or injured), but considering the problems Heather’s had he thinks being aggressive next time is best.

Long before we get to that point though we will have our appointment with our obstetrician to discuss the results of the chromosome testing. We will either learn the pregnancy failed because of chromosomal abnormalities (the cause of most miscarriages), or for other reasons (most likely related to Heather’s clotting disorder). Knowing which of these is responsible for the miscarriage will help guide our doctors’ decisions in our next pregnancy.

None of this is going to stop us from being very nervous when Heather does get pregnant again (and we’ll likely stay that way throughout the entirety of the pregnancy), but it does give us a little comfort to know there’s a plan and that Dr. Hirisk will soon get more information about our situation. It’s not much, but it’s something, and right now I’m going to cling to any positives I can get.

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Dada, please move my umbrella to give me more shade! And bring me a milk, please!

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My physical recovery from the D&C has been alright. I feel like I’ve been in a wrestling match or a fist fight, just sore all over. The fluctuating hormones have given me bad headaches, and my lungs have only just recovered from the anesthesia. The bruises and puncture wounds from my Lovenox shots are taking forever to fade, so I really do look like I’m in a Fight Club. Not that I would ever talk about that if it were true.

My arms are the worst. As Mike mentioned, I blew out two IVs before one of the nurses finally got one to take. The first one was on the side of my left wrist, and left a small precise bruise that blends in with my freckles. The second IV was on the back of my right wrist, and holy crap. It blew out spectacularly. The build up of fluid and blood made a hematoma so massive it literally looked like a thumb was growing out of my wrist. Even the nurses were a little grossed out. That spot is dark brownish-red, and wow is it sore.

Then there’s the spot on my left forearm, where my IV finally worked after lots of…digging.

My arm was so swollen in this picture that for a minute I thought I was looking at my leg. Ouch.

I would describe my cramps as a cross between a really bad period and post-c-section gas pain. It’s alternately uncomfortable uterine pressure mixed with sharp, stabbing pains. My stomach is still poochy and bloated. Pregnancy is so rough on me, but with all three of mine as soon as I got the positive pregnancy tests a switch flipped in me, and I loved every part of my body. I had all the body confidence I’d always wanted. Now I look at that small bump in my midsection with disgust. Not because of its appearance, but because of its emptiness…its failure. Ugh, I guess that switch flipped back pretty fast.

Mostly, I’m tired. I overdid it the last couple of days, so I just have to take a step back and let myself relax. Annie is very concerned by my bruises and offers me band-aids for the “boo-boo in my belly” whenever she gets the chance.

She makes all my boo-boos feel better.

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“Mama, I’m gonna sing you a song!”

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I’ve had friends (too many friends) have miscarriages. I was just a wreck for them. So sad, so devastated. I hate thinking about them being heartbroken. I’ve cried for them and their families and their babies.

But now that it’s happened to me, I have…no emotion. No crying, no sorrow. Just emptiness.

Everyone has been so friendly, looking at me with sadness and sympathy, and I just want to shut my eyes to it all. I don’t want any more of these looks. I don’t want to be the one everyone feels sorry for…again. I was going over my medical history with a pre-op nurse, and when I told her I’d had two previous c-sections, she asked me how old my children where. I replied, “My daughter is two,” and then said nothing else. She asked about my other child, so I told her about Maddie. She looked at me with a sad clown face and said, “It’s too much.”

And I know it’s too much. I know it is. I would say the same, if I were talking about someone else. But I don’t feel it. Maybe it’s because I won’t let myself. I don’t want to go down this path again. Maybe I’m keeping it at arm’s length, the poisonous bite of pain and pity.

Or maybe it’s because I can’t. My grief for Madeline is so huge and consuming…maybe too consuming…there’s nothing left. I want there to be something. There should be something…right? I hope I’m just in shock, but I’m afraid I’m broken inside. Afraid I can’t grieve anymore. Just…afraid.

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When word got out about the miscarriage a lot of people sent me some very nice messages. Most were concerned mainly with how Heather was doing, which I understood. She was the one who had to learn the baby inside of her body no longer had a heartbeat, she was the one who had to undergo the D&C, and she was the one who had to be sore and uncomfortable afterward. Despite this, a good number of people also inquired about how I was doing, and I really appreciated that. While the Mom has to endure the hardest part, a miscarriage is still very hard on the Dad.

As hard as this all was, however, it could have been a lot harder. After getting the news I found myself thinking in a very gallows’ humor sort of way, “If there’s one thing that prepares you for a miscarriage, it’s losing a child.” Yep. Losing Maddie definitely put this into perspective. But it still stinks. Especially when Heather and I spent so much time preparing for what our life would have been like after the baby arrived.

One of the ways we did this was by discussing potential baby names. We debated them (“What about Eleanor?” “Really? Eleanor Spohr?”), made lists of our favorites, then pared down our top picks to our absolute favorites for a boy and girl. Sadly, I’m not sure what will happen to those names now. Even if we do get pregnant again, there’s something about giving a future child a name originally meant for another that doesn’t sit right.

We also spent a lot of time wondering about the sex of the baby. We knew that this baby would have made us either the parents of three girls or finally given us a boy. Those are two very different kinds of families, and we talked late into the night discussing each:

Me: “I think a family of girls would be cute.”

Heather: “You think never getting to use the bathroom again would be cute?”

Me: “It wouldn’t be that bad.”

Heather: “Yeah, it would. I’m a girl. I know. You know what would be cute though? A boy.”

Me: “You wouldn’t think that if you knew what boys do in the bathroom.”

Heather: “Ew. Maybe just girls is best.”

I eventually got a strong feeling this baby was going to be a boy, and started to get excited about the prospect of having a son. Of course we’ll never know now if I was right, but part of me will always wonder. Was this pregnancy the son I was supposed to have? Or was it to be another beautiful girl?

The hardest part of this though just might be what it will do to any future pregnancy we may have. It’s sad/funny… when Heather told me she was pregnant I gave her a little speech about how she needed to enjoy this pregnancy. It would be her last, and since her previous pregnancies were so stressful, she needed to savor and enjoy the experience as much as possible.

And then this happened.

There will be no savoring or enjoying any future pregnancy. There will only be white knuckle fear the whole nine months. I’ve met some blissfully naive people who say stuff like, “I love ultrasounds! They’re so fun! You get to see the baby! How cool is that?” and I’m glad things have gone so smoothly for them. But ever since our first ultrasound with Maddie we’ve never been anything but scared out of our minds during an ultrasound, and that will never change.

I’m hanging in there, though. I’m doing my best to move forward and hoping that, with any luck, our hardest days are behind us.

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The look of concentration on her face while she plays her alphabet game makes me smile.

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