Horror shows-

Some memories are more like nightmares, and I wish I could banish them as easily. My anniversary of the second miscarriage is fast approaching, yet the wound in my heart still feels like it just happened yesterday. An entire month from start to finish, bedrest to loss. I wish it were as easy as the simple word used to define it, but things seldom are. When did I lose it... when it stopped growing, when I passed it at last? So quickly things turned from joy to sorrow.

Saturday is two years since I passed the second miscarriage. I honestly can't believe it's been that long. When I remember it, it's hazy, surreal. I try not to remember the physical pain, and thankfully all the vicodin I was on makes it a cloudy memory. Like I can remember, but I can't. It was intense, it was undaunting, I was on fire. I was screaming. It hurt like nothing I've ever felt before, but the edge is dulled in my memory.

When I started down this road, I never imagined I'd know what a gestational sac looked like outside the womb. Intact, so perfect, seeing the tiny little spot where it had implanted on my lining and held it for weeks after it stopped thriving. Or how much pain I'd be in from losing it. I'm not just talking emotional, I mean tangible physical pain. Howling through the night as contractions tore through me. pain like I've never known before.

I still relive it. All the time. Like a broken record just going round and round warped points in my mind:

Here I wake up in the middle of the night, and find myself covered in blood. I calmly shower, wake my husband, then fall apart on the living room couch.

There I clutch the ultrasound photo. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. At that point, still on track. At that point, future uncertain. Still, there was hope.

Then, another ultrasound. Things not on schedule. The doctor saying, "I feel confident in calling this another miscarriage."

Later, howling. Wondering why it wouldn't stop. Howling to god for the pain to stop. Six hours of contractions; because of the medication I took to finally induce it, because for weeks I'd been walking around knowing my baby was dead inside me. Weeks waiting. And I couldn't take it anymore. I needed it to end. Never did I expect what I got instead.

The next morning, raw and bruised. Laying in bed, feeling like I was half dead. My husband brought me doughnuts, a breakfast sandwich, and iced coffee. I remember it so clearly, every detail. I ate it, and I cried. And then I called off work. And then I cried myself to exhaustion.



Sometimes I'll be in the bathroom, and I'll remember that awful night. And it feels like I'm remembering a bad dream, the worst nightmare I've ever had. Except it's real.



How did two years go by? I feel like time keeps slipping by, and I'm losing ground. Further and further away. That means it's almost been three years since the first. I can't believe that. Where did all that time go?


March 12th is 2 since we lost the 2nd one.
April is 4 years since we started trying.
May 4th is 3 years since we lost the 1st.
And the week of Thanksgiving is 2 years since we lost the last one.

And still the nightmares continue.

Except they aren't nightmares.




It's amazing that through everything we've been through, people still seem to be under the impression we're doing fine. It's not that we're putting up a good show, (because those that truly know me know better), but rather because most of them don't really want to know. Sure they'll ask, and I tell them exactly how things are... but they never seem to listen. Like, they listen to the words but refuse to accept the meaning. I can tell them and tell them that things aren't easy, that it'll be years before we become parents- if we become parents- and I'll tell them in great detail all the hurdles we'll have to cross, and yet their standard reply is, "Well, it will happen someday." Which is no support at all, and no help. Because there is no guarantee it will happen someday. The statement is used to pacify, to end the conversation, to say, "I don't know what to say, so I'm going to say nothing." And they never bring it up, never ask questions, never even to ask how we are... and then we can never bring it up again because they seem disengaged the entire time. And it's easy enough for someone to say that it'll happen when they aren't the ones putting themselves through hell time and time again, they aren't the ones coughing up every spare penny they have, it isn't their lives that have been altered forever. It's ours. All ours. Sometimes the weight of that is deafening.

I know someone might say how our situation affects our parents, and such. That the weight isn't solely on our shoulders. But when each of your parents has 5 kids, and already have a multitude of grandchildren... trust me, ours barely notice us. Sure sometimes they say nice things to us, but mostly we've just been cut out and snipped away. They focus on the grandchildren, and the parents of them who sometimes struggle. What struggles could we have when the norm for them is people have kids, then they struggle. Our world is not their world. I get that. But this wasn't our world originally either. They assume that we're doing fine because we both have steady jobs, we don't have kids, we have a car that's paid off (even if it's a clunker), we've been living in the same place for 4 years with no issues, and we keep to ourselves. Next to some of the siblings who have children and are frequently unemployed, we look like we have it all together. Except for the part where we probably spend more money on medical bills than all of our siblings combined. Which, as much as we tell them so, they never seem to hear. Because, we have everything. Don't we?

I'm sure that it doesn't help that we can't actively participate in conversations much these days. The question, "What's new with you guys?" Stings. Our standard response is, "Nothing." And the horrible truth about that, it that is is the truth. Nothing changes here. We have the same car, the same house, the same jobs, the same routine. Nothing ever changes here. Thanks to infertility; we still can't afford to move; we still can't afford to replace our car or get a second one; we still can't risk switching our jobs; we still can't have children. We spend our days working- me cleaning the house, my husband writing programming code. The evenings, we try to find ways to pass the time. We play games, read, work on projects, surf the internet, play with the animals, listen to music. Sometimes the night feels like it just keeps going and going, and I have nothing left to do or say.

Some days I'm good. Some days, not so much. I often come on here on bad days, so please don't assume I'm struggling 24/7. But I do struggle, and I do have my moments. And all these things that I've been through in these 4 years weighs heavier all the time. I don't know where I'm going, or where the wind beneath my sails has gone. Right now, I feel like I'm adrift on an endless sea. And I have no idea which way the wind is going to spring from, but I will gladly go with it. Because if there's one thing I've learned in all this time, it's that no matter how much I try to sway the cards in my favor... in the end, it's always come down to the luck of the draw.



I'm jumbled up, and I know it. I had a bad weekend recently and the hits kept coming. And then today, I just remembered with clarity what date it is. I thought of it often all through February, I remembered how differently that February was from this. But it didn't hit me with the force that it did today. Because Saturday... Saturday is the 2 year anniversary of when I finally passed it. When it finally ended. Ended, but it's never over. An endless loop in my soul, playing again and again. My other miscarriages, I think about from time to time and I miss so much. But this one alone haunts me.

And I can't talk about it to anyone. It's a topic that most people don't want to breach. And I honestly didn't tell most people what really happened that night, I didn't even post it all on here. A majority of people just know I lost it, so few know the details. And I've only just recently told my close friends what happened. It's hard to talk about. I feel like screaming it from the rooftops, howling the pain out again, saying, "Look what happened to me!" The term miscarriage is so decieving. Such a tiny little word, so easy to say, yet so heavy. Some people hear it and brush it off because, well they happen. To which I howl and screetch that they don't understand. It is so much more than that. Before I had one, I knew they were painful and it was sad. I didn't realize how much heavier it was than that. The emotional heartbreak, the physical pain, the blood, the agony, the waiting, the way your soul howls in saddness and in rage, in pain and in grief. And when it happens again and again, how much more loaded it gets with each experience.

Yeah, I'm totally random right now. That's grief for you.
Just a lot of things processing.