Back at Work

I made it through the weekend, and I’m back at work. On Friday and Saturday, I didn’t leave my house, and I didn’t even shower. I’m not sure what I did those days – I don’t really remember. I had someone from work bring a bunch of checks that I needed to sign at around 11 on Friday, and I did that for about 30 minutes while she waited. I waited until she left to take vicodin – figured I shouldn’t be signing away the company’s money while high on painkillers… As soon as she left, I took some vicodin, and I don’t really remember the rest of the day. I started bleeding for real on Friday afternoon. Oh, it was painful, and a mess. I bled bad all day on Saturday as well. Yesterday it tapered off, and today there really isn’t much. Hopefully that part is over. I’m still in a little pain, but I haven’t taken any vicodin since Saturday night at midnight. I’m on a lot of Advil, but I can function with that stuff at least – I would be a terrible drug addict – couldn’t function at all on the hard drugs!

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got up, and decided I needed to move. I have never been a skinny girl, but it has gotten out of hand. Granted I had started gaining some pregnancy weight, but still. I realized this weekend that I’ve gained about 20 pounds in the last year. I’m horrified to admit that, but the first step is admitting you have a problem, right? So in order to take control of something in my life, I will now be working on exercising and eating healthy. No real plan yet, just going to walk my dogs every morning, and watch what I eat a little. If I can do that for a week or two, it will be a huge first step. It finally occurred to me that I don’t have to walk both dogs at the same time – they weigh about 120 pounds each, so I have a hard time controlling both of them. So I’m alternating walking them – I walked Jackson yesterday and Kodiak today. It’s not very long, but it’s much more than I was doing. And it hurts – my body feels broken. I’m angry at my body, so I’m trying to make up with it by making it healthy. It feels kind of good for my body to hurt in other ways, other than emotionally and physically from the D&C.

So I’m back at work. I have a lot to catch up on, and I’m really hoping I don’t have to explain to my boss why I was gone last week. I’m really hoping the topic just doesn’t come up – will I be that lucky? We can only hope.

Emotionally, I’m ok. I still can’t believe this happened. The hardest part for me is I don’t understand. I have had difficulty with every single part of getting pregnant. I haven’t ever been able to get pregnant naturally – yes, both IUI’s with injections worked, but none of the many months without medication and IUI’s worked. Then I got pregnant earlier this year, but it was ectopic. And for this one, everything was fine – it was in the right place, I saw a heartbeat a few times, I even got to hear it, but my baby died. If there was a trend in something going wrong, maybe we could treat it. Maybe we could figure out what was going wrong, and fix that. But everything is going wrong – I don’t think there’s anything to treat. Maybe it’s me – maybe I shouldn’t be a mother. I’ve always wondered that, thought that in the back of my mind. I don’t feel like I deserve to be a mother, because I won’t be a good one. I scoff when people say I’ll be a good mother – I honestly don’t believe it.

So for now, we’re getting off this TTC train for awhile. I don’t know how long, but we need a break. The Hubs and I are not talking very well right now – we’re actually fine, but he won’t talk about the baby, or losing the baby. He’s dealing with it by withdrawing, and I’m just going to have to be ok with that. I talk to others, I have some very supportive friends, and I have a great therapist. So we’re working on being ok, and that’s all we can do right now. I did manage to talk to the Hubs briefly yesterday about taking a break – we’re both on board with not trying for awhile. We go to Europe in September, and we’ll talk about trying after that. For now, we’re healing. We went to sushi last night (yes, I wanted some again) and with my glass of wine, I toasted “To a summer of healing.” The Hubs rolled his eyes, and changed the subject, but I liked it.

This morning I woke up, and I hate to admit it, but I felt relief. I don't have anything to worry about. I'm not worried about fertility treatments, I'm not worried about whether I could be pregnant, and I'm not worried about my baby. I have spent the last year, and more, worried. The last few months have been so hard. I was so thankful and happy to be pregnant, but every day, I worried. There was not a single day that I didn't worry about losing the baby, even if I was excited and happy. I guess this is motherhood - every mother worries about their child. Maybe I'm not cut out for it. Because today, I felt relief that I don't have anything to worry about - I know where my baby is.