Monday, February 8, 2010

Letting go...

This week would have marked the 13th week of pregnancy for us. In some ways it feels like a lot of time has passed but in others it feels like it happened only yesterday. I keep thinking about what stage of development the baby would be at. This was meant to be an exciting time. We probably would have been telling people about the pregnancy now and sharing our excitement. Instead I sit here with no baby in my tummy. I feel empty. The hardest thing now is dealing with other people who don't think to ask how you're getting on. It's almost like they think 'oh, the miscarriage was ages ago now she'll be over it by now'. You just don't get 'over' this sort of thing quickly. I want to shout at them: 'This baby was here. This baby was real.' I always want to honour this baby's memory. I guess it's hard for people who haven't had miscarriages to understand and I would have been one of those people just a few months ago. If there's one thing this baby has taught me, it's compassion and empathy.

I guess it's been even harder to let go because I have been bleeding almost continuously since the miscarriage happened. We now believe that this was just one baby I lost, and the bleeding and rising HCG levels were all related to a miscarriage that wasn't totally complete. So that's made it all hard to let go of, I wasn't able to heal physically so I couldn't heal emotionally or mentally either. Anyway, our family holiday recently was the start of my healing journey. It was lovely to spend time with just us and no distractions from all the usual stuff! While Chris was on holidays I took the opportunity to see a cranio sacral osteopath who helped to remove any 'blockages' I had. I also started yoga classes which I will continue to do to help ground me. And I went to see an acupunturist as well who did some cupping and some acupuncture. He told me that this miscarriage hadn't completely carried through and gave me some herbs to take over two weeks. As soon as I started to take the herbs, I started bleeding quite heavily and this continued for the first few days. Now the bleeding has slowed and I feel like I can begin the journey to healing. I strongly believe that the combination of therapies has really helped me let things go.

Today was a challenging day but I think this indicated that I am finally starting to heal. A good friend told me she was 11 weeks pregnant. I was a bit taken aback when she said this but luckily there was a group of us there so I didn't have to react straightaway. I felt so sad when she said that but afterwards I went up to her and told her how happy I was for her. And I meant it. I cried when I said it to her (how sad am I?!) but luckily her and my other friend who were there understood and could just give me a hug! I guess I'm a pretty private person and to acknowledge that grief in front of other people was a huge thing for me. I guess all this is teaching me to trust my friends and to be more open and honest with them too, huh? Anyway, I came home and just cried and cried. But when I stopped I felt ok about everything.

I'm definately not there yet, but I can finally see how one day I will be able to let this go and know that it all happened for a reason...

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