Parenthood, Part Eleven

After we got home from the hospital, I can remember sitting in the bedroom with Ted, talking. I told him that I was actually a little relieved that this was all over. Even though it hadn't been very long, I was tired of the cramping and the bleeding. He was in a different place than I was. He'd had no physical symptoms of pregnancy or miscarriage. I had. Therefore, I could put some closure to it because I was no longer suffering physically. As far as suffering mentally, that was an entirely different thing.

Christmas was a dismal day for me. We were going to spend the day at an aunt and uncle's about an hour away. All I wanted to do was sleep that morning. Ted kept trying to get me up so that we could open our gifts. I didn't care. I wasn't interested. He was doing his best to make me feel better, but it just wasn't working. I felt as though I was just starting a downward spiral and there was no way out. I tried to shake myself out of it, but that wasn't working.

So, two Christmases in a row were marred by miscarriages. Would the holidays ever be the same? On New Year's Eve that year we went out to dinner with my parents. I recall that I had on a white blouse with a bow at the neck and a beautiful shade of blue boucle vest. (Before you start laughing, remember that this was the mid 80s!) During dinner I had very little to say. I just wasn't in the mood to talk. I was thinking about how I just couldn't seem to do anything right. Then I spilled a drop of food on the bow of my blouse. I went to the restroom to try to clean it and ended up in tears. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Would I ever be able to do anything right again?

After another week or two I was starting to "come back." Nothing in particular triggered it, but I was just glad that I was no longer wallowing in self-pity.

Once again I spent some time at our local library, trying to find out as much as I could about miscarriages. I was now a habitual aborter, a lovely title given to those women who suffered three or more miscarriages without a live birth. Oh what joy.

When I visited my own OB a few weeks later, he examined me and I bombarded him with questions. He sort of smiled as I asked him things. At one point he even laughed. That's when I said, "Well, we're obviously beyond you now. I want you to recommend a high risk OB for us."

He did and I went home, called that doctor's office and made an appointment. The only bad thing was that his office was in Columbus, almost 2 hours away. We would be seeing him quite often if things worked out, and that was going to involve a lot of driving back and forth. But if it worked, it was going to be worth it.

We went to the appointment. The office was in a hospital in a rather crappy part of Columbus. Of course they were running behind. There's a big shock. The doctor himself was....alright. Nothing great, but okay. He immediately started talking to us as though we couldn't get pregnant. THAT was not our problem. Our problem was STAYING pregnant. He had us watch a video about getting pregnant (a waste of our time) and then handed us a packet of information. He told us to make an appointment to come back for some testing.

We went to the desk and the woman had my head spinning with all the information. I finally told her that I was not ready for all this and would call when I was.

As we left, I told Ted, "Take a good look around, because we're not coming back." I was definitely NOT impressed. He wasn't either.

On the way home, I was reading the information he had given us. Our insurance was not going to cover any of this, so I was really scrutinizing everything. I could NOT believe that they were going to charge us $900 to see if bull sperm could impregnate the eggs that they were going to take out of me!?!?! Why on earth do we need to know if my eggs and bull sperm could work together???

That's when we decided to take a break from all the baby stuff.

We needed to just back off for a little while, relax, and enjoy each other.

There have been times in my life that I have drifted away from being a faithful church goer. Throughout the baby journey, I had been attending mass each and every week. At the time Ted was not Catholic, but he would occasionally go with me. Usually I went on Saturday evenings, but once in a while I would attend on Sunday mornings.

After the D&C, I began going to church a little earlier so that I could have my conversations with God. I can be quite a talker, and even though I was talking "in my head" while kneeling there, these were some pretty intense chats. Praying is something I have done, and still do, quite often. And although I know my prayers are heard no matter where I am, I somehow got this feeling during these challenging times, that when I prayed while in church, I had a little more of a direct line, if you know what I mean.

Ted and I were still not on the same page when it came to dealing with the miscarriages. I wanted to talk about them. He didn't. My friend Shannon still had no idea what was going on. If I couldn't tell her, I couldn't tell any other friends, so when we spent time with any friends, they had no idea what we were going through.

I wasn't sure how much more of this I could handle.

To be continued...