upward, the jury is still out on….
So, this bellybean is now 11w3d old. It’s been hard to get an appointment with the dr. I want, as she’s in Mexico right now. The runner up, I saw today, as a quick impromptu visit. It was unplanned. I was there to sign some papers, and expressed to the secretary that I was feeling pretty anxious, and wondering if this bean even had a heartbeat, as all we’d had for confirmation so far is some preg tests… (I left out the part about getting my hcg done twice, off the record, by dh who works in a lab). So she managed to squeeze me in with my runner up choice, who happened to be in the clinic that day. He is “highly recommended”… I wonder if it’s because he’s so good looking, because he didn’t have the greatest bedside manner I’ve ever encountered. I do expect a lot from my doctor, not just the physical health, but I am pretty needy in terms of my emotional health too. I try not to be, but in this instance, dealing with neo-natal death, I wasn’t willing to compromise. He did not acknowledge Isla’s death. He did not tell us he was sorry to hear about it. He rehashed what happened, clinically, without any emotion. I was nervous, shaking, vulnerable and all the other crazy attributes that bereaved parents are, and I got very little from him that would have made the appt. meaningful. He did try to do an ultrasound, because I’m nearly 12 weeks, and my next appt isn’t until the 21st. I had an empty bladder. He couldn’t see anything. 
I don’t know what to think… part of me can attribute it to excess adipose tissue (yay, fat!), empty bladder, early dating, ‘portable’ us machine, not as high tech as the normal one.. all of these are possible. And, it’s also possible there is no baby. I’ve encountered plenty of women who have said something along these lines: “I found out at 11 weeks that the baby had stopped growing at 7″… so I can completely envision this happening to me. I feel a little numb, a little ambivalent, a little disbelief. I do still have quite a few symptoms, all day nausea, dizziness, my pants are tight, I feel my uterus hardening, especially when I lie on my tummy. So, I wouldn’t say I’m ‘worried’, per se, but I guess I feel kind of silly for telling Evan, for actually trying to visualize our family with another baby in it, for looking at baby stuff, no matter how secretively. I feel angry for hoping and for letting my guard down. And yet, nothing’s even been confirmed yet. So, yes, one thing’s for sure. I’m certifiable.
My grief the last few weeks has nosedived. I was doing ‘well’, so to speak, until then. I felt appropriately sad, hopeful and like I was basically doing as well as I probably should be. But now, something has happened, and I am deep in the pit. Things seem so much more intense, feelings from the first few weeks have come rushing back. The despair, the disbelief, the trauma of it all feels very close to me again. It’s scary. I think I must have been doing well before I got pregnant because I felt like I had some control (realizing, of course, that anything can happen at any time). Now that I’m expecting again, I feel a total lack of control. I have to face doctors, nurses, scales, judgement, scorn, fear, vulnerability and feeble hope all over again (the feeble part is new, used to be just innocent, run of the mill ‘everything will be fine’ hope). I have been reliving Isla’s birth in my mind, revisiting all the turning points from the awful frantic kicking, to the words from the neonatologist ‘there is no hope’.. it’s all so painful to revisit, and I’ve done pretty well at packing that away for special occasions and pretending I’m normal. This is hard. I really want to be happy, hopeful and excited, yet everything is so clouded by sadness, grief and fear.
Another ultrasound, a dating one, has been ordered for me. I imagine I will get the call soon. I don’t know what to expect in terms of the tech, but I know at some point, I’m going to have to step up and stop being a wimp about all of this. I can’t expect everyone to jump on the grief train with me, and know exactly what to say, and when to say it. I will just have to accept that everyone is in their own place in the world, and their reactions to my situations are not my responsibility or problem. I just hope I can convince my heart.
