Today was my first doctor's appointment since the loss of our son. I had worked myself up into quite the frenzy, wondering and worrying about the tests they would do to confirm or rule out possible causes for my miscarriage. I stored water like a camel in hopes that my veins would bulge from my skin...that I would be able to provide all of the blood they needed to give me all of the answers that I needed. I came equipped with a list of possible causes (which, when read, sounded more like a list of things that I felt I should have done differently...a list of things that I could have done to save our son) and printed emails from a family friend who was also an OBGYN. I wanted to be sure that I was prepared with questions so that I could sleep more soundly tonight with whatever answers I was given. I was not prepared for the answer of "we don't know yet...and may never know." My doctor didn't do a pelvic exam, she didn't even touch me. She asked me questions about my post-partum recovery (which reads as "ante partum" on the check-out form. This is basically latin for before birth which I find infuriating and misleading. I wanted to scream at the nurse "I am POST...I am not ANTE...POST! POST! POST!" But I didn't. I just counted to 10 and thought about going back to bed). They didn't take any blood from me, just made another appointment for 6 weeks from now for me to come back and do the blood work. We can't determine anything yet. It's too soon, she said. How can that be? It's been an eternity. It's like that line in The Jerk: I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days..and so on. That's how I feel. And somehow sometimes it feels like yesterday.
This evening I gave myself permission to laugh, to not block the sadness but not dwell on it, either. It was my belated birthday event, an evening with the girls I've known since high school (and some that I've known since I was 5 years old) and my husband to a pottery place in town. We painted mugs with polka-dots and paisley piggy banks. We made art of light switches and splashed color on Christmas ornaments. We wondered where one could safely pop the cork on a bottle of champagne in a pottery store, finally deciding that the lobby would be best. We ate a cookie cake with our fingers and shared stories from the past few weeks. I laughed when we thought Steph had sent her chair crashing into a bookshelf of clay chargers, knowing how we were all sort of like bulls in a china shop. We had dinner at Harry's and I listened to the intermingled easy conversation of some of my best girl friends and the man I love most in the world. I smiled at how this could have easily been a different scenario - what if my girlfriends didn't like my husband? What if my husband had estranged me from my girl friends in some sort of struggle for power and control? What if I had neither? I am blessed, I thought again and for the 1000th time this week. I am being challenged, but I am also being given the tools and people to meet the challenge head on and rise above it. The Lord is taking care of me in ways that I am not even aware. Be not afraid and somehow...I am not.
((hugs))
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