Thank You

I'm still here, and for the most part I'm doing surprisingly well.

The outpouring of support from all of you has helped tremendously, and for that I am very grateful. THANK YOU.

R and I were talking the other night about our reactions to this loss. He hasn't shed a tear or really shown much emotion about it at all. It's not that he doesn't care, because I know he does. But he was so much more emotional when we lost our first baby more than three years ago, so I was getting concerned about him.

He said this whole process has become unreal to him - that seeing all the babies (or lack thereof) on the ultrasound machine's video screen has become like watching a movie someone has made about something unrelated to you. And the injections that he helps me with don't make it any more real, because when you're first thinking about getting pregnant, you think of a romantic night in bed with your spouse, not jamming them with needles day after day.

I can understand his point of view. Obviously it's a little different for me, because I was feeling the nausea and uterine stretching pains and all that stuff. That made it a little more real to me.

But I think I'm getting so much practice at dealing with losses that I'm learning to cope better. For the most part, anyway.

Friday was a bad day. I was in a professional development class all day, and it was a monitored class - in order to get credit, we couldn't leave the room while class was in session. That shouldn't have been a problem, because we were given two breaks in the morning and afternoon, along with an hour for lunch. But as we came back from the second break, I glanced at my phone and saw that it was 10:15 a.m.

Without warning, a thought struck me: "A week ago at this time, I was in my final hour of pregnancy. We were on our way to the surgery center." My eyes filled, my throat closed up, and right there in a class of 100 people, I began to cry. I tried to be as quiet as possible, and I think only a few people around me noticed, but it was still awful. I wanted to jump up , run out of there and hide in the bathroom, but somehow I managed to will myself to stay in my seat. I didn't even have any tissues with me, so I had to just keep wiping at the tears with the back of my hands and try to sniffle quietly.

When I got home, I crawled into bed. R stopped and picked up dinner for us, which I ate while laying in bed, and then I fell asleep. An early night was definitely what I needed. And it's been better since then. I know I'll have more bad days - and more good days - in the future. That's just how grief goes. It's a messy process.

But all of you make it easier. So, again, thank you.