Getting on with it...

So, after a week of being self-indulgent and not doing anything in particular, life goes on. Work continues, job applications need to be written, essays and journals have been submitted, graduation applied for. (Note for thesis - do not write in passive voice.)

I still feel strange, though. I had three weeks of looking forward to being a mother - three weeks of thinking of us as a "family" - now we are a couple again. There is less pressure, but also less focus. For a while I was highly oriented to the future and the long-term, now it all seems less important.

Interestingly, the process of telling people has raised the name of God on lots of lips where I never expected it. Everyone suddenly seems privy to "God's will" and is telling me all about it. Odd, because I never thought most of them even acknowledged His existance - unless they are just doing lip service to my belief, which is also possible.

God and I are on speaking terms again, though I don't have much to say. I find the prayers of Julian of Norwich comforting again - all shall be well. I don't know how, or when, but I know God is in control. I just have to wait - not that I have much choice anyway! There is something relaxing about the world being in God's hands - ultimately, all will be well and I don't have to struggle, don't have to understand, just leave it in His hands.

Obviously I am in a "simplicity" phase at the moment, or I would be struggling anyway! Funny, I would have thought an event like this would tip me straight into complexity and questioning and speculating about ultimate truth, but right now, against all expectation, I'm content to rest and trust in His plan.

Writing from the heart

I have started creative writing again - it is like a safety valve for the thoughts which fill my head and heart. I just have too much "stuff" in there, and I wanted to get some of it out where I can look at it in black and white. So I wrote a play in which all the characters have something to say which comes from my heart, and they can argue and yell and say all the things which I am too polite and inhibited to say. They can cry and scream and be rude to one another, and sometimes they can hold one another and make it all better.

Strangely, I tried to write a happy ending, and it just didn't work. I have tried several different endings and none of them work. I am afraid that the only possible ending is a sad one, in which people go their separate ways because they are unable to find reconciliation. I don't know if this is just a failure of imagination on my part, but when I wrote the happy endings (two versions so far) Dean just said it was obviously fantasy and totally implausible. I'm sorry that a happy ending can't be found. Maybe it's a bit like the speculation about the universe - we live not in the best of worlds or the worst of worlds, but the only possible world.

Open or Closed?

Olivia said something about being open to people, open to love, open to possibilities also means being open to being hurt. Being closed to the possibility of pain necessarily means being closed to others and closed to relationships. I wonder if this is why many religions have a celibate clergy? Insulated from the cuts and pains of family life and the pulls and pushes of relationships they are free to love God and love everyone equally. Free from partiality they can give generously to everyone who comes with needs and demands to their doors, and give absolution, advice and scripture quotes, then close the door at the end of the day. I wonder if this is why the Catholic nun's advice which I sought in University seemed so flavourless? She gave me her time generously, but never really seemed to engage with me, engage with my issues or understand my struggles, or even why they were important. Barb's blog had a quoted poem on a similar theme:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feeling is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd, is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But the risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom.
Only a person who risks – is free.

Maybe this is why I think we should have married clergy, female clergy, part-time clergy who also work in the "real" world. Only then can they know how God seems to us, and can teach us how to see God in the everyday world we inhabit. Then maybe we will all be "ministers of the Word" together.

Monday - a new week

A new week starts today. This week I have to cancel my doctor's appointment to discuss plans for delivery, cancel my OB appointment, cancel the nursery tour we booked (our first appointment as "parents") and make an appointment to have my hair done. No concerns about the effects of hair dye anymore, but it doesn't seem to balance up. All the little things I used to take joy in - pretty nails, sparkly earrings, really hot hot chocolate - these are no compensation. The lifestyle of a carefree professional couple with no children that I worried so much about losing, now seems to stretch out in front of me. How can anyone be a paediatrician and work all day with other women's children (or worse, babies) and not have any herself? Surely, fate would not be so cruel.

Yesterday at church was better than I had feared. Everyone was kind, but not too personal. I checked the rest of my emails, and this seems to be more common than I had realized. Also, many other people have it much worse than I do - losing babies at 20 weeks would be much worse, being on IVF and doing this every month would be much, much worse.

Only the two mothers seem to be saying the kinds of things I had feared everyone would say. My mum called on Saturday (the day after I called her) and asked if I was over it yet? Marion said all the things I had heard from everyone else about how it could be worse and I should count my blessings, and it wasn't really too bad at all and I should just pull myself together and get on with it.

I have realized again the importance of letting people discover for themselves that things could be worse. The gentle tide of reminiscences from other women about their own difficult times lifts me up and makes me realize that I am truly blessed in so many ways, with husband, friends and church. Being told to count your blessings and that worse things happen every day to more deserving people just doesn't have the same effect.

Olivia rose to the occasion once again, and brought some perspective by reminding me that God suffers with us in this broken world with so much illness, death and loss. The whole of Creation groans, and God also longs for the renewing of the New Heavens and the New Earth. I wonder what it would be like to be involved in the joyful creation of life with no fear of loss or death? Another email I received had a quote from the Psalms (ever my favourite!):

Great is the love of the Lord, and His faithfulness endures for ever. (117:2)

Doesn't sound especially comforting on the surface of it, but there is something solid and foundational about a love which can be depended on, rested on, have a life built on it. Even better than a mother's love, is the love of the Lord!

It's over.

Yesterday the repeat bHCG test came back negative. It was a miscarriage. The bleeding and pain I'm having now is not much more than a normal period, but I feel terrible. Every time the abdominal pain starts again it is a reminder of what I have lost.

I suppose it is a bit self-centred to think about it as "my" loss and "my" baby - it wasn't real to me as a separate person yet, so it is not really like losing a child. It is Dean's loss too, and the rest of the family's, not just mine. It feels like mine. There is something very personal about what happens within your own body, which makes it different from reading about it or knowing intellectually that this can happen. The bleeding is all very biological, messy and personal.

Last night I couldn't talk about it - I called my mum and had to hand the phone to Dean. After that I let him call the rest of the family. I don't know how to tell everyone else - I wish everyone would just forget about it. If they talk to me about it I know I'll just fall apart.

We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to take anything for the pain - it seems appropriate to have pain. I woke up early this morning and decided to come and set out my thoughts about all this. Sooner or later I will have to face the world, but for now I can just think and type and cry.

One silver lining in all this - my mum said "This was what God wanted", which took me by surprise on several levels. She never talks about God (doesn't believe in Him as far as I know) and has always been very antagonistic about my faith generally - I deserve it, I was very untactful (!) early in my conversion. I don't know if this is what God wanted (if it was, can I still like Him? Does He still deserve the capital "H"?) but if it leads my mother to faith how can I object? I am at His service, and every day I have been praying "Father, please do whatever it takes..." did I mean it?

If it really was God's will that I get pregnant and lose the baby in order to bring my family to know Him - am I OK with that? Is this the God I am owned by? Is this the God I signed up with? I suppose it is. The Julian of Norwich prayer doesn't sound so good now: All will be well, indeed!

I should get dressed and start looking at houses. Do the shopping, do the washing. Life goes on, I should go on. Can I mourn a baby I never really met, never really knew? Nothing is interesting anymore. I opened my eBay account - my last lot of books never arrived, but I can't really care about them. There's nothing I want here. I don't want to go to church and tell people, and have them tell me it will all be all right or that it was God's plan. Maybe it was, but we can't really know. We can't really know God at all. He blesses us or not according to His own designs and we can never know what those are.

Not pregnant anymore

In the afternoon I had a lot of abdominal pain, and suddenly passed a large amount of fresh blood. That was frightening, but I pulled myself together and went in search of the O&G Reg. Leah was on, and was very good about it all. I'm afraid I rather fell apart on her, and by then the pain and bleeding was getting beyond anything that could be passed off as "spotting" and I was starting to worry seriously about ectopics - I was at about the right stage by dates.

She took me into a side room and did an ultrasound on the spot - one of the perks of the business. I think I made her late for theatre, but she was very thorough. She didn't see any sac in the uterus at all - either I'm having a miscarriage or an ectopic, and either way I'm not having a baby. She offered to refer me to one of the big clinics in the city which specializes in this sort of ultrasound, but we both know even the experts can't find what isn't there.

We discussed a plan (especially considering that I can't leave until we get the cover thing sorted out) and decided that I should get another bHCG test. If it is still high then I drop everything and go to the best ultrasound and O&G place for surgery for presumed ectopic pregnancy. If it is low, then it is a miscarriage and there is nothing to be done, and I guess I can just go home. I should have asked her if there is anything else I need to do, but I can't talk about it.

I guess I just go back to work until the results are through, and try not to think about it. I can't believe it is only the middle of the afternoon - surely it must be nearly midnight by now? I still have an LP to do and a family meeting to run. Leah thinks I should leave, and I suppose no-one is indispensible. On the other hand, Dean is in surgery, so he can't drop everything and come home, and being at work with things to do and decisions to make at least keeps my mind busy. I think I would go crazy at home alone with nothing to do but think.

I'm not working well. I have the urge to start crying at odd intervals - thank God I have a cold! I can pass off the need for tissues and no-one is commenting on my "conjunctivitis". They don't know I am/was pregnant anyway, so I don't want to tell them just for their sympathy. I don't want to tell anyone - how can I talk about this?

I'm going though all the usual stages - Was it something I ate? Did I work too hard? Did I expose myself to some infectious agent? Was I too happy? Was I not discreet enough? Is God punishing me for something? Was it because I told too many people? Did I not want the baby enough? I know it has nothing to do with any of that, but I can't help feeling vaguely guilty - it must be something wrong with me - maybe I'm just not "maternal" enough in some way.

Leah keeps sending me little paged messages about how I should go home, how she is there if I want to talk. I don't want to talk. I don't want to tell anyone - how can I tell everyone? What will they all say? Will they blame me? Will they say I should just move on and have another one? Will they be so kind that I just melt down completely? I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want today to be over so I can go home and cry. I'm alone in my body again, just me, no baby, no family. The last thing I want to do is to run a family meeting, but Rachel is gone and Ania hasn't called back. Physically I feel OK apart from the ongoing abdominal pain, and heart pain doesn't seem like sufficient reason to leave work. I guess I just keep going and try not to think about it.

Not feeling well

Friday morning - Rachel is here, but planning to leave early. I know I should offer to cover but I really don't feel up to it. I have some low-level abdominal pain, nothing much, but I don't feel generally well. Anyway, why should I justify not offering - they should be glad I worked Wednesday! My resident has gone for the afternoon, and the nursery is crazy-busy, so I'll be lucky if I can get it all sorted out by 1700, so I won't be getting my afternoon off anyway.

My cover resident is from the obstetrics team - I wonder if I should ask her about this abdominal pain? It's getting a bit worse and a bit left-sided. I can't help thinking about ectopics, but I think that's just being over-dramatic, besides, she doesn't even know I'm pregnant.

I finally caved in and offered to work tonight. Since it looks like I'm going to be here until late anyway, a few extra hours can hardly matter, and the other only other cover they have found is a resident. I don't want to leave him here alone with two inductions going on in delivery suite. He has done nights alone, but the evenings can be much busier, and unless the consultant agrees to back him up and come in it's not going to be fair to him. Fortunately, Ania is on, and as soon as her mobile is switched on we can tell her - she might even agree to come in!

Working and pregnancy

Rachel is still away, though Kim is loaded to the gills with analgesics and at work. (I don't really think it is a good idea to take that many tablets.) My URTI is annoying but no more, though now I understand why everyone says "can this hurt my baby?" and I worry a little, even though I know it can't. I hope Rachel comes tomorrow, otherwise I will stuck covering another evening. Still, no point worrying about what I can't help.

I love the Julian of Norwich prayer, and have been using it about ten times a day!

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

It's a reassurance, and prayer and expression of trust all in one. It helps me hand it all over to God, and He hears me and reassures my fears. I'm trying not to think too much about the delivery - it's almost worse knowing what can go wrong. I think fear of the unknown is overrated - fear of the known is pretty bad as well. Knowing about incontinence, tears, blood loss and death, who would choose to get pregnant? No - I'm not going to think about that. I'm sure Jill's recommended OB would be good, and she said she would be happy to be delivered by her personally. I wonder why Jill never had children? I think it would be hard to be a neonatologist and play with babies all day and never have your own.

Pregancy preparation

I should have had my hair colours done before I got pregnant - I don't know if I can do it now. Is hair dye bad for baby? I've been to the optometrist, and made an appointment with the doctor. I asked Jill at work for a recommendation for an obstetrician and made an appointment there. When I called the Mercy, they offered a spot in their "parents education" program - wow! Our first appointment as "parents"!

I tried to get an extension on my ethics journal, but they said no. Fortunately, I feel really well at the moment, and the slight nausea is already abating so I hope I can just push on through the study, though I suppose it won't be my best work.

It is very lucky I am feeling so well, since Kim is sick and Rachel, so I am holding the fort tonight. The price we pay for not having an official "on-call" roster is that if anyone is sick, we are called at the last minute to cover. I don't really mind - gives me a chance to catch up on emails and this blog!

Seems strange to be sorry about feeling well, but I sort of miss the nausea. The whole thing seems a bit unreal, and I feel so normal that I'm almost wondering if it was a mistake, and it is really someone else who is pregnant - after all, there are no patient details on that slip of paper! My urge to eat healthy has faded, though I am doing so anyway, and avoiding the things I shouldn't have - don't know if I can face another eight months without Camembert!