Coping

I don't know how I coped those first few days and weeks after the miscarriage. I was mostly in a fog. Traumatized by my treatment at the ER, and just sad and missing my baby that never got to be. To be honest I don't think I did cope. Basically I shut down. I didn't get out of bed much. I didn't cook or do homework (I was taking online courses). I was pretty much a massive ball of tears. My husband did what he could and I am still so grateful to him for it. He cooked, cleaned, cuddled with me. He tried to get me to be happy, and sometimes it worked.

Sometimes he just held me while I cried, and once, though he would never admit it, he cried with me too. I knew he was hurting as much as I was, but he was strong for me. It still makes my heart ache when I think about how much he is still hurting from our loss, even now. We both wanted that baby so badly, and to lose it was devastating.

Eventually things started to go back to normal. My family was a great support. His family after the initial condolences all but forgot it seemed.

Christmas was hard. I should have been 20 weeks pregnant, but wasn't. And then the rumours started about my husbands cousins. 'Oh, Cousin A is soooo pregnant, did you notice she's not drinking this year? She always drinks! She must be pregnant.' Right in front of me. I had to go to the bathroom and cry. And no, she wasn't pregnant.

Then in late december my husbands other cousin got pregnant by accident with her new boyfriend. For weeks we heard about it every time we visited. Eventually my husband told his family the reason we were leaving all of their get togethers early was that I couldn't be around the talk about pregnancies. Especially an unwanted one when I had wanted mine so badly. They all thought I should be over it already, but basically the talk stopped. It probably also helped that we stopped going there because I couldn't deal with it. I was still so desperately missing my angel baby.

Most days I was okay, but the smallest things reduced me to tears. Even so, we had started trying to conceive again after a full cycle had passed. The end of november marked the first cycle we started trying, so getting my period on December 23 really didn't help with all the Christmas stuff, and trying to put on a happy face and act normal.