The first week was the hardest. Andrew and I talked about it a lot, I cried, and we tried to distract ourselves. We watched a lot of movies, tv shows, and played a lot of Super Mario Brothers for the Wii. It was nice getting to spend so much time with my wonderful husband, even though the reason why was very sad. Distraction worked well, but only for so long. Any time I wasn't distracted I would think about it; one day I was brushing my teeth before bed and broke down. I cried myself to sleep almost every night that first week and a few times the second. I went through different phases of "it's not fair" to "what-if?" The what-ifs and hypothetical situations where the worst. I kept replaying the weekend before the miscarriage in my mind. What if I had gone to the doctors that Friday that I started bleeding instead of waiting until Sunday? Would those two days have made a difference or had it always been the beginning of an irreversible miscarriage? What if I hadn't cleaned the day before the surgery? Had it been too strenuous? Would the cerclage have even helped? What if I can never have a successful pregnancy?
The Saturday after the miscarriage I noticed my breasts felt pretty hard and tender. On Sunday they were rock hard and painful. My milk had come in. In the grief handbook the hospital gave us it said that this would happen within 72 hours but was most likely to occur after 20 weeks. This was happening to me at 14 and a half weeks. I had done what the handbook said to prevent it- wear a supportive bra and avoid stimulation. Apparently it didn't help. That night in the shower I squeezed them a little, a tip the handbook said may help, and got a couple of drops out. It was true, even just one or two drops made a bit of difference. Unfortunately after that my right breast leaked for 4 days or so. Not too much, I guess, but I would have to wash my sports bras (the tightest ones I have) every day. I was very upset at my body for this. I kept thinking "don't you know my baby is dead? You shouldn't be doing this!"
I had my first follow-up appointment with my regular physician that Monday. When I was there it was hard to not cry. I would do ok if I didn't talk about it, but when people would say I'm sorry or I would talk about it, even with Andrew, I would usually cry. We talked about my milk coming in, my cramps and bleeding (all normal), and how it was affecting me, but we mostly talked about what had happened and a little bit about what will be different in the future (more monitoring). I made an appointment to see her again next Thursday.
During that first week my emotions were up and down. I really was a wreck. One day Andrew and I went grocery shopping and passed several carts with children and babies in them. Where I used to get an "aw, how cute" feeling, I now felt my heart ache and warm tears filled my eyes. Simple things were bitter-sweet, like my first beer. I felt so bad for ever complaining how it was disappointing to be pregnant in October when my favorite beer, pumpkin beer, was in season. Obviously I was so excited to be pregnant and the beer was insignificant but I felt such guilt for ever complaining. I felt guilt about a lot of complaining I had done, like about morning sickness, which contributed to my emotions. No morning sickness was bitter-sweet too; on the one hand it's like "yay, I don't feel like throwing up today and I can actually eat a good breakfast," but I would also be thinking "I would rather be pregnant and throw-up everyday than not be pregnant right now." One especially depressing evening I was laying in bed watching tv when a commercial came on; it was the Kay's commercial where the mom is downstairs holding her baby and the dad comes down to light up the Christmas tree and says something along the lines of it being their first Christmas as a family. I lost it. That was the night I told my best friend. It was such a good feeling to talk to someone that cared so much and was so impacted by the news, other than family that is. Something like that really shows you who your true friends are.
That first week also had Thanksgiving in it. Thanksgiving marked exactly one week. It had its good and bad parts. We were supposed to have Thanksgiving with Andrew's family but decided against it. It was still hard to be around people and family and we knew they were all going to be telling us how sorry they were and hugging us, which would have caused both of us to lose it. We decided on a quiet Thanksgiving at home, just the two of us. We cooked turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. It was delicious. We enjoyed some wine with our feast and watched some Office. Perfect. It wasn't until later that I got emotional. After Andrew asked if he minded if he played one of his video games I got really upset. I told him I felt like he was done greiving and just wanted to have to day to himself to play video games when I wanted to spend the day with him. He got upset because that was not true and then felt bad for how emotional I was. We talked more, he held me, I talked about how hard it still was for me, and we ended up salvaging the day. It's so strange how different men and woman grieve.
The second week I think I was doing better. I didn't cry every single day. Crying wasn't constantly triggered by children and babies on tv or commercials, even though seeing the little boys was the hardest. They made me wonder "what would our son have looked like?" There were actually days where I would laugh, mostly because of Andrew, and I felt happy some of the time. My breasts were going down a lot which was such a relief. It had been a pretty good week but I was still very anxious about going back to work, which would end up setting me back on the progress I had made.
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