The Aftershock(s)

Sometimes, the subconscious human mind really surprises me (or at least mine does).

I really was doing pretty good after the miscarriage as I said in my last post on the subject. We had our appointment with my OB and he didn’t say anything we weren’t prepared for. We did bring up the subject of a blood disorder that I have been tested for after our first three miscarriages. It is called MTHFR (I always think this looks like an abbreviation for something not nice) which is a long 5 word description that means I’m more prone to blood clotting than other people who do not have this. With Hannah, I took low dose aspirin along with my prenatals. The theory being that it reduces the chance to have a small clot between the baby and the placenta. There is not enough statistical proof in the world of medicine to say whether this actually helped us keep her past 12 weeks, but maybe as a placebo it helped us be less stressed about trying again. We didn’t do this with Benjamin. My OB needed to see my old records and I’ve been waiting on a call from him about whether we should do that again if we decide to try again.

I’ve also been reading a couple of books a friend sent me on miscarriage. I’ve had some good healthy cleansing tears. Nate listened to a book on CD about a little boy who had a heaven experience where he met his unborn sister (who he had no way of knowing about) and then told his parents about her. I’ve been feeling healthy and even playing volleyball on our adult league and hitting/serving against the girls at practice. The only thing that has been slightly annoying is that I’ve had a bad case of not being able to fall asleep. I will lay in bed for hours and my body is tired, but I can’t fall asleep. I’m not even really thinking about much of anything.

Well, fast forward to my first period, which came right on time just to mock me. I think I had a little bit of Post Traumatic Stress (I’m not going to give myself the Disorder yet unless this happens again next month). Seeing the blood gave me some flashbacks and I kinda freaked out. I’m usually fairly in control of my emotions, even during period time, but I felt way off balance and out of it. I feel like I was really operating in that lower level of ‘fight or flight’ but there was no one to fight and no where to run. I wasn’t even really having any complete thoughts, just crying or trying to do something and not being able to collect myself enough to finish the task. After I got myself past that stage which took about a day, came the spiritual attack. He really is the enemy, he knows when we are weak and the areas where we are weakest are where he will attack, no mercy. I had the most horrible week of fighting off moment after moment of failure accusations. From you are a bad mom, to you are a bad coach, to you aren’t in control of your body or your emotions, to God doesn’t love you, this isn’t fair, and so many other topics. This is really not me, I have high self esteem and am comfortable with who God calls me to be and how he made me. I’m happy to say I survived and I don’t think I took anybody out along the way, but it wasn’t fun or easy. I was not expecting that shock, the way I reacted to it, and the resulting week.

I guess the main reason I’m sharing this is because a lot of people who know about what happened have come up to me and said, “I don’t really know what to say.” And a lot of other people have said a lot of other things. Nothing anyone has said to me has made it any easier, even other women who have gone through similar experiences. That’s probably more my personality type because then I feel empathy for them even though I’m in the middle of hurting and then its more like double hurt. My best suggestion is to offer prayers and hugs (if the person is a hugger). Just validate the pain and let the person know you care about them, but don’t try to fix it because you can’t. And now, my new knowledge leads me to also recommend a follow up, about 30 days after. Although, you might need to be prepared for a snappy/unhealthy/out of character response. 😉 She’ll thank you for it later.