On April Fool’s Day 2020, I had my first miscarriage. Exactly a year later, on April 1, 2021, I have a fourth.
It used to be one of my favorite vacations, and my humorous (and mischievous) side would like to say, maybe it’s the karma of all the mess I’ve unleashed over the years (like I sent a mission bunny to deliver underwear to Charlie) office, or cover our apartment with fake money). It could also be generational, since my mom told my dad that construction workers accidentally knocked down our living room, or when we teamed up to call Charlie and tell him Just Salad chose him for customer loyalty photos ( personal favorite photo).
Just remembering these moments is trying to make a now very miserable day fun again. Maybe when I regain the feeling of torturing my relatives, I will really return to myself. But not this year.
Contrary to what you might think, I rarely share stuff here in real time (I’m a Scorpio after all). One of the best pieces of wisdom I’ve gleaned from Brene Brown over the years is not to talk about something openly until you’ve fully dealt with it. It’s hard for me to talk about these things privately, which is why some of the people closest to me are reading this for the first time.
Recently, I was able to talk about our loss without tears. So I think it’s about time. But even telling Charlie I wanted to write about it felt like picking up a scar. Not the fun part! When you realize the consequences, oops, I’m bleeding again.
It doesn’t seem easy to put some pain on virtual paper. But every time a member of a bad birth club speaks up, it helps me a lot. More importantly, when some of you contact me with a sixth sense, that’s what makes the past two years so hard behind the scenes for me.
The infertility label never really felt right to me because my eggs are DTP (down to fertility), but my body is hyper-autoimmune and not interested in foreign bodies growing in it. I get a lot of “well, at least you can get pregnant…that’s great!” from well-meaning friends who obviously never joined the club. (I didn’t beat them, especially now, and it feels like a small victory.)
But, of course, what I did identify was the accumulation of medical trauma. I was pregnant (7 months total) or postpartum during the first year of the pandemic. Some of the medication I was given as a medical intervention, coupled with the hormonal roller coaster, brought some of the darkest thoughts I’ve ever experienced. Then there’s the ultrasound tech with no bedside attitude, the predatory dentist who performed two unnecessary anaesthetic procedures during my pregnancy (just before miscarriages #1 and #2), many injections, not to mention my big body massacred.
Oh, and the pandemic! Pregnancy anxiety turned into COVID anxiety and vice versa until I wasn’t sure where one started and the other ended.
After April Fool’s Day last year, I knew I had reached my loss limit. But having a baby in someone else’s body means another year filled with multiple rounds of IVF, seeing an endometriosis specialist, and, of course, mourning the coming-of-age ritual. Trying to get rid of the stigma of not being fit to grow up as a human being. Been wondering if I quit too soon, if another random change or treatment would be the panacea (not to mention, couldn’t get over the professional sense of failure in this fight). Slowly, trying to accept that my body is still a beautiful vessel for many other things, even if it never seems to work with my dreams.
Then balance all those emotions and be so grateful to the practitioners and friends who got me through. For those of you who make me laugh or smile without knowing how much I need distraction. Because it is financially possible to pursue plans B, C, and D. For being born in an era where other plans originally existed. For my own expertise and advocacy, and for the work that brought me here. Because knowing the right people to talk to, speaking for myself, because knowing what I’m willing to try and when I need to stop. For the most incredibly patient partner.
For the 15 soaked used tissues sitting next to me! And hundreds of wet soldiers appeared before them.
And, of course, for you guys. Every year I try to post my “Looking back on a healthy year“There I went through all the details of the latest challenge. Because somehow each. Single. Years. There was one.
The themes for 2020 are obviously infertility and dental malpractice, and the two storylines fit together very well. But until the end of 2021, they don’t have any sense of closure or resolution.
Every time I try to sit down and document the past two years, I just can’t. Eventually I will. This is the first step.And one that I really want to shoot, because Just lost so much. for each one.
I hear from you every day who are struggling with one diagnosis or another. I have a lot of friends who are trying to get pregnant right now, and a lot of them have had no problems with their first baby. I don’t know when the planets will be happier, but right now, We all felt it.
So thank you for your grace (please have no regrets!), and respecting my boundaries, neither sharing freely nor giving advice as generously as usual. You’ll know how mean the weekly Q&A can get…
did i also mention me launched a book Smack your tongue in the middle of it all?
To anyone who needs to hear it: You have the power to do incredibly hard things. This power doesn’t necessarily have any glory, but it’s a fact.
Even this scarred heart is able to offer incredible love to all of your pandemic babies and more.
Happy April Fools’ Day. I hope by next year, I’ll be back to mischief while mourning.
With health and hedonism,
Phoebe
