The following post was written in two sittings, one on Dec.25, Christmas morning, and the other on Dec. 28:
December 25:
I’m sitting here in the blue LazyBoy, wrapped up in a blanket, with a warm (slowly cooling) cup of coffee next to me. It’s early—7:40 am. Too early to be up on a Friday morning. All I can think of is that my body is programmed to wake up early on Christmas. What? No presents under the tree. What? No tree, even?? Well, no, but I’m ok with that. I mean, I AM Jewish, and it IS Israel. But I still would have liked to sleep in; that would have been a nice present.
It’s been a rough two weeks. In fact, as we lay in bed last night, and snuggled under the warm covers, Nadav labeled it “The worst two weeks of my life.” I’m not sure. Granting it a title such as that will require me to think a bit harder and longer. But I can say, it was a damn hard two weeks.
I feel that up until now, I’ve been in this whirlwind of activity and only now, as the week draws to a close am I able to sit down, drink something warm, breathe and decompress a bit.
It began last week, when we “lost a friend.” I realized the irony, or just ridiculousness, of euphemisms, when I said that to a friend, whose native language is not English: “We lost a friend this week,” I told her. “What do you mean?” she asked me, forcing me to be more specific. “A friend ours,” I continued, deciding in my mind how to phrase it, “A friend of ours committed suicide.” But in my head, I still think of us as “losing him.” It’s no coincidence that in Hebrew “to commit suicide” and “to lose” or “lost” are from the same root. I only realized the connection—and depth—of this fact this week. We truly lost him. To his own depression, to his internal suffering, to his fear, to something. I’ve figured out the only way I can really cope and move on is to pretend to myself that he was killed by some outside force. Accepting that someone could go against a human being’s most basic instinct—to survive—is too much for a normative person to fathom. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps our most basic instinct is to preserve ourselves—not only in the physical manner—and his choice (the way I see it, forced upon him by something I cannot understand) allowed him to reach that goal.
Though I knew it would take some time to deal with this loss, I thought at least we’d be able to see it in the perspective of our lives—overall, a positive, loving, supportive environment that Nadav and I have created together for our mutual benefit.
The fact that we were still able, despite the shock and the pain and the sometimes turbulent emotions we had expressed only moments before, to lay down together at night and hug one another and even laugh impressed upon me that I am truly the luckiest person in the world.
December 28:
However, as it tends to do, life surprised us yet again. The following week, we arrived at the women’s health center to have an ultrasound. Yes, the young couple (“ha-zug ha-tari”) is expecting a baby. Though I had planned to go in myself, for some reason I asked Nadav to come with me. I even said to him, “When we hear the heartbeat, I’ll want you there. And G-d forbid, we don’t, I’ll need you there.” Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter. I was 9 weeks, 1 day pregnant. The fetus had stopped developing at 8 weeks and 3 days and there was no heartbeat. We were crushed. Yet, when I realize what the alternatives are: finding out, by accident, that I’d miscarried, or worse, losing the developing baby later in pregnancy, I am grateful that it happened this way.
“In times like these, it is always good to remember, there have always been times like these.” I didn’t think this at the time, but now it pops up in my head, and I think that thoughts like this—understanding that so many women experience this—helped me cope. The statistics vary, but I’ve found online that between 15-25% pregnancies end in miscarriage. Why do we not know this? Well, if you have a miscarriage you will. Because when women find out, they begin to open up and share their stories.
I decided that this “silence,” on such a (common) physically and emotionally traumatic occurrence, is the reason I wanted to share my experience. I’m not sure of exactly all the emotions that I’m experiencing right now, but when I think about it, the emotions I have possibly experienced, and those that have been shared with me since I have spoken with others in the past week include:
• Bewilderment – But why did it happen? What did I do/not do? What could I have done differently?
This bewilderment, of course, is accompanied by:
• Feelings of guilt – Imagining, even though you’ll never know the reason, that you may have pinpointed what happened and then blaming yourself for it.
Not to mention:
• Fear for the future – Which I have luckily managed to avoid feeling, since I have been blessed to hear the stories of other mothers with miscarriage/s in their past.
For the purpose of illustration, in my case, the week our friend died, a week before we found out about the miscarriage, I experienced severe lower back pain (before we found about our friend). Since I wanted to avoid taking medicine during this early stage of pregnancy, I tried using a bit of heat (not too much) and a bit of massage. Additionally, I visited a reflexologist. Here, already, in the span of two sentences, I have three possible “culprits” for the miscarriage:
1. Maybe I used too much heat, something that is known to be bad for the developing fetus?
2. Maybe we massaged the wrong part of the back, inducing a miscarriage?
3. Maybe the reflexologist—despite being trained to treat pregnant women—did something wrong?
Or, more likely, maybe the back pain—which since going through the miscarriage has disappeared—was an indication of problems with the pregnancy and rather than serving as a cause of the miscarriage was a sign of it.
Here, I will mention, that when discovering that a pregnancy has ended, and the miscarriage has not yet fully happened, there are several options (from what I know):
1. Waiting for the miscarriage to naturally occur
2. D & C – a surgery to remove the fetus, placenta, etc.
3. Medication to induce the cleansing of the womb
The specialist I was referred to suggested option 3, which taking my traumatic appendectomy experience into account, seemed a good option to avoid surgery and not have the miscarriage take me by surprise.
What is interesting is that you’ll find plenty of articles, especially on pregnancy websites, about “dealing with the loss,” coping with the emotional side of the miscarriage. This should, of course, be applauded—that there is an awareness of the gut-wrenching, soul-searching experience miscarriage constitutes for expecting women and their families. Yet there is strikingly less (publicly available) literature about the physical experience of miscarriage.
It is not overly shocking, when we think about the taboo placed upon menstruating women and the “impurities” traditionally associated with “womanly processes.” Most of what you’ll find are descriptions of a “heavy periods.” My dear readers, I do not wish to shock or offend your senses, but I will tell you that some women—including myself—experience much more than a heavy period. There is very strong pain—“cramping” does not do it justice, it is more similar to contractions.
In my case, I experienced two heavy rounds of this—one about 8 hours after taking the medication to induce the miscarriage and another 4 days after. I had already begun feeling a bit better, and I was (thank G-d) on my way to the doctor, when I began to feel severe cramps. I arrived in tears and doubled over in pain, and thanks to quick and competent care by my doctor and several compassionate nurses, I passed what I hope is the last chapter in this story.
Yet here it is only right for me to mention why my I granted my post a double title: The worst two weeks, or My renewed faith in humanity. Despite the rollercoaster of emotions we’ve felt in the past two weeks, despite the loss and the pain, both emotional and physical, despite the fear and the desire to never again experience either of the two experiences we’ve dealt with, despite all of this—I have witnessed and been the recipient of true compassion, in both words and actions. I have seen the true suffering of people I thought were one-dimensional, showing me that everyone has “another side.” I have heard the stories of those who have experienced what I have and conquered their doubts and gone on to have happy, healthy children. I have been called “sweetie” by an entire medical staff and received the treatment a child receives from her mother—from people who just met me. In short, I can say now that when it happens—one day, when have our child—I will be happy to bring it into this world. There are people and experiences here that make life worth living.
