Over Before It Ever Began

The last two days have been an emotional rollercoaster.

It all started Friday afternoon. I came home early from work, feeling sick with a cold. Knowing that my period was 7 days late, I stopped at Walgreen's to pick up a pregnancy test. I didn't think my usual cold remedy of Contac washed down with a glass of wine would be a good idea if I happened to be pregnant. So my responsible self peed on a stick, waited three minutes and then got the shock of my life. The little digital screen said "pregnant." We had literally just started trying to conceive; I never thought it could happen so quickly, especially since I get closer to reaching "advanced maternal age" with each passing month. As the shock and resulting shakiness wore off during the next few hours, I started poking around all sorts of baby websites: maternity clothes, nursery decor, due date predictors, etc. I even made a little bandana for Jack to wear, announcing that he was going to be a big brother, as my way of telling Eddie. Yeah, I'm a ridiculous, over-the-top dog owner. Eddie came home, found out the news and started looking around our spare room, figuring out how to turn it into a nursery.

The next morning, still in a little bit of disbelief I tested again. And the screen came up with a "not pregnant." Since there was one more test in the box, I had a big cup of tea and tested again. Another "not pregnant." By that point I had been poking around the internet enough to know that things were not looking good. Sometimes Google is not your friend. I called Kaiser's nurse advice line. The nurse agreed with me that the conflicting results were "perplexing" (no shit Sherlock), but that I could come in for a blood draw over the weekend if I wanted to be sure. If not, I should just keep an eye out for any sharp pains, heavy bleeding or difficulty breathing. While I was getting ready to head out to the hospital, I realized there wasn't much point anymore. There were clear signs of what looked like the start of a period.

Miscarriage is such a rough sounding word. A chemical pregnancy sounds more benign, but is really just a very early version of the same thing.

So I was pretty sad yesterday. I'm still feeling a little sad today. Although the stats say that this happens quite often and that there are numerous causes, I still can't help but feel some guilt, as if I did something wrong. Maybe it was because I drank way more than usual last weekend on a girls' weekend? Or took advil a couple times during the week? Or because I'm fat? Or because of this nasty cold I came down with? Or maybe it was a karmic bitchslap for getting too happy, too quickly.

I also feel guilty about feeling sad. There are so many women who have faced far greater struggles on their journey to parenthood and who have had to endure far worse losses. I poked around a messageboard dealing with loss yesterday and felt silly & selfish. My situation seems so much more trivial by comparison.

So now I am trying to find some positivity out of this whole thing. We can build up our savings some more. I can keep eating sushi, rare meat & soft cheeses. I can get hardcore about dieting & exercise. I can take that trip to Portland in mid-November. And Christmas will always be much saner (the due date would have been 12/22).

The part that really gets me is that if I hadn't wanted to take cold medicine on Friday, I wouldn't have even thought of testing until this morning. Which would have been unnecessary; I just would have assumed that my period was late this month. I never would have known that I was pregnant, even if it was just for a minute.

This is one of those times that ignorance would have been bliss.