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.