As My Body Resets

The sun can shine even when you feel very dark inside.

Spending time in garden has been very therapeutic. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been as cooperative as I would have hoped for the summer in Kamloops, yet another thing in my life that I can't control (Grrrrr!!!!!).

One of the few suitable (read sunny) gardening days.

Sunday was also a good day for a walk.

About four to six weeks after a miscarriage, it is typical for a woman to get her period again. It took me just under four weeks to get mine. While it's a relief that my body has reset and is working like it should be again and I can go on vacation knowing that I'm definitely not pregnant again and therefore insurable and safe to travel (and I can fill day 1 into my basal body temperature calendar again, so I know where I am again, instead of being in a strange no man's land, even if it means losing even more blood), the pain from the miscarriage is still very fresh.

It's a great irritation to hear questions from people including the fertility clinic, family member, and my own husband about when I'm going to book my IVF cycle. I'm not ready. I don't know when I'll be ready, but it certainly isn't now (I just can't help but think every time I'm asked, how could you ask about that as if nothing has happened, as if I didn't just lose my first fetus ever, like it's no big deal?).

I cried myself to sleep again last night (better than before my trip up here, where I had gone from hysterical to completely numb and incapable of crying- I feel like I'm processing my grief now), thinking about the miscarriage and that baby that I'll never get to meet, hold, or name. It's been a very traumatic event for me, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. I know that my husband is sad and disappointed, but he's not in a weakened physical state from blood loss and exhaustion and rapid hormone changes and he didn't feel what I felt. I know he felt a lot, but it wasn't the same (for instance the physical changes I experienced and the hormone changes).

My husband and I spent today texting, emailing, and calling back and forth with each other and with the cruise company and airlines. We now have our Western Mediterranean cruise booked (7 nights), as well as our flights from Victoria to Amsterdam to Barcelona and then home again. We'll be gone about three weeks, exploring Amsterdam and various cities and islands in Spain and Italy. You can read about our journey through Europe on our travel blog Two Restless Wanderers (www.tworestlesswanderers.blogspot.ca).

Can't believe we're going to try this cruise thing again, but hey, we had a credit.

Hope we'll be smiling at the end of this next cruise. We certainly weren't at the end of our last one (see blog).

I then spent a few minutes sketching this afternoon with Conte crayons and pens on my new sketching paper.

Sketching and drawing with Conte Crayons and pens on Daler Rowney paper.

What advice would my cat give me? I think he'd just tell me to take it easy and nap.

Well, maybe Lamont actually sleeps more than 18 hours a day. Some cats sleep as much as 20 hours.

And I have been sleeping as much as I can, in addition to getting exercise, gardening, writing, editing my work, planning our trip, and dabbling in a bit of sketching and drawing. But it's definitely a process. I'm crabby and irritable from day one of my cycle and have been the last couple of days (a good sign to me that it was on its way).

There's many more Lamont asleep photos where this came from.

Communing with nature is very therapeutic. My walks have been a source of wonder and comfort.

I still feel pretty hopeless. Yes, I have a trip to Europe to look forward to and I'm having a pre-vacation in Kamloops to rest up (with my loving parents in law, which has been bracing), but I'm having trouble not dwelling on the past and catastrophizing. Here are some of the many questions that are occupying my mind at all hours of the day and night:

• Why me? 
• Why could we not have that baby that I was pregnant with?
• Why did the miscarriage happen to us when we wanted that baby so badly and tried for that baby for years?
• What if I never get pregnant again?
• What if I get pregnant and then I have another miscarriage?
• Could I psychologically survive another miscarriage?
• What if the IVF doesn't work for us?
• What if I can't withstand all the hormones and changes they make to me mentally and end up hospitalized again for my mood disorder?
• What if we spend all of our money on IVF and still can't have children?
• What if we never have any children? 
• Who will I become? 
• Will I be able to live if I can't have children when I've wanted children my whole life and have defined a large part of my future life with that goal? 
• How would I redefine myself as someone who never will have children? 
• Would I be able to redefine myself? 
• How long will it be before we have a child, if we can have one? 
• Will we be able to give that miracle child, if we have one, a sibling like my husband and I both enjoyed having (our siblings are our best friends besides each other)? 
• If that baby doesn't have a sibling, will they be lonely, resentful, or selfish?
•  If we do manage to have a child or two, will I be able to be a competent parent or even a good one or will I fail at this? 
• Should I even be having children? 
• Is this a sign that we shouldn't have children? 
• Why us?
• Why me (again)? 

And so on, in a cycle of pain, guilt, fear, anxiety, anger, bitterness, existential angst, etc.  . . .

I suspect I'll be wrestling with these philosophical questions (and others- in case you can't tell, I ruminate) for quite some time, as I have been for a long time now. In the mean time, I'll be trying to rest and recuperate more. I'm hoping that yet another major change of scenery will help to restore some of my severely shaken confidence (if I thought I was depressed before, the miscarriage has taken me to a whole new basement of dark feelings), so that I can prepare for and schedule the IVF cycle that I was supposed to have before things went sideways (oh, you're pregnant, you don't actually need IVF, oh, the baby is dead, oh, you do need IVF). Stay tuned.

The sun setting over Kamloops.