Today I'm not 12 weeks. 12 weeks, the last week of the first trimester, the time when most people start sharing the news. I'd be scheduling my nuchal screen.
I'll stop this self-pitying countdown eventually, I'm sure. I'll just forget one day, and not remember until Thursday or Friday or something. I'm not trying to be mopey about it. It's just Wednesdays are hard not to count.
My body is apparently remembering by offering a fresh bright red bleed. I guess it's good? I mean, action is good, right? And maybe it'll help my beta come down, in case there's a wee clump of trophoblastic tissue somewhere generating hCG. My pee sticks aren't notably lighter, which makes me grumpy. Last Friday my beta was 467; recheck in two weeks.
Here is my riddle: how is a BFN different than a chemical pregnancy different from a 6 week miscarriage different from an 8 week miscarriage? After all, they all end up in the same place: unpregnant.
I am not sentimental about embryos. With eyes focused on the bottom line (i.e. chances of success) I have always pushed for the production and cryopreservation of as many embryos as possible. If we have any left over, I will cheerfully donate them to Science. If I am not sentimental about embryos suspended in cryoprotectant, then why be sentimental about embryos in my uterus, or no longer in my uterus?
There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between missing a bus by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. How hard my heart was pounding, how much I thought I'd make it, how ferociously I clench my fists and dig my nails in frustration.
A BFN is missing the bus by weeks, I think. A pre-heartbeat loss is missing it by days, and a post-heartbeat loss is missing it by hours. I can only pray with all my heathen heart that I never experience missing this particular bus by minutes or seconds.
I don't think it's self-pity. You're grieving--there's a difference. You were pregnant and now you're not, and that loss is real, and you have the right to mourn it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe? I can't decide. I think I have given myself permission to grieve, but also permission not to grieve -- I don't have to be devastated down to the depths of my soul -- and mostly I'm not -- although sometimes I flirt with it. Although sometimes I also flirt with devastation regarding the state of global warming, or Syria, or BPA. I've decided that my fixation with the Dylan Thomas poem may be no more or less than an interest in the title; I am grappling with the extent to which mourning can be a conscious choice, for good or ill. I'm meta-mourning? Overthinking? Me? No, never.
DeleteThank you for hearing me, as always. <3
Thinking of you. And hoping you catch the bus one day real soon.
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