Thursday, February 19, 2015

Pregnancy after stillbirth: 5 weeks and 3 days

I keep thinking I should write something this week.  That I should log what I'm feeling in my body and my emotional state, but as I sit down to write this I've got Jurassic Park on the telly and I'm not sure what to put in here.  I'm alone in the house, which suits me fine, I like time to myself and I could quite easily just forget about all the bad stuff I've been feeling, and there's a lot of that.

I told another friend today, she's been there for me a lot this summer.  She got teary.  She said something really good too, that she was happy but it felt bittersweet.  That felt right.

I went to the hospital today for some cryotherapy for a toe wart.  I'm going there next week for an early 6 week scan.  It felt horrible walking around the hospital today, knowing that I'll be going next week to the maternity department, waiting to see if the fetus has a heartbeat, or if it's too early to tell, in which case we'll be going back the week after for another scan.

I'm kind of hoping we have twins, but I know that if the scan reveals we have twins there's a 30/40% chance one will die before 12 weeks.  In which case they get asorbed by the remaining twin.
It's not easy being pregnant after loss.  I'm a mix of subdued (very subdued) happy and absolute blind terror, which I try to bury at every possible moment.

Physically, I have been getting a few more twinges, but no full on cramps yet.  I woke up with a headache this morning, similar to the ones I had last time.  I think they started around this time when I had C.  I'm tired but that could be emotional stuff.  I'm not starving hungry yet.  It won't feel real until I see the fetus on the screen.

I'm fretting about telling people. I don't know when to tell, or who to tell, or how long I should hide it for.  I don't entirely trust people to react the way I want or to be supportive.  What does supportive even mean?  I can't really explain. It's too painful.  What isn't supportive is expecting us to celebrate Christmas.  I'm quite tempted to just stay in bed all day on the accursed 25th December.

I'm doing this as a diary as a record for myself and as a record for this baby, to prove that they exist and they are not just in my imagination.  I'm quite happy to accept that I'm pregnant (or will be in a few weeks) but I cannot fully accept that this baby will come out living and breathing and crying.  So I need this record to prove that it's true.

1 comment:

SallyP said...

First off, congratulations. I know you have been through some absolutely heart-wrenching times lately, and I do so hope that everything will be okay...because you deserve it.