Entry for March 29, 2008

Sorry, no witty phrase today.

The Pumpkin Princess will not be a big sister yet. I've had a miscarriage.

The medical term for my situation is "missed abortion." The embryo's heart has stopped beating, but it hasn't come out on its own. I've been scheduled to have a D&C on Wednesday.

I'm sad, but not insanely so. A part of me wonders if it's a bit cold of me to not be sadder. But I keep thinking, it could be so very, very much worse. For example,

1. If it were later on in the pregnancy. I would have been a little less than 10 weeks today. The embryo is about the size of a bean. I would have to wonder if there weren't things that could have been done to keep the baby alive.

2. Having had to choose to have an abortion. The end of this pregnancy was not a choice I made, but the course of nature. I cannot begin to imagine what a woman would have to go through to make the choice not to carry her child. I don't mean to say that their choice is wrong. Far from it. What I mean is that every such choice is made by extreme circumstances that no sane person would ever actually want to go through.

3. Not having a Pumpkin Princess. She has been a happy, smiling, cheerful, talkative, cuddly Pumpkin Princess. Having a miscarriage is probably harder if you have never given birth to a healthy baby. You probably end up wondering if you ever will, if there is something wrong with you. I had a healthy baby once, I know I can do it again. If I can get pregnant again before my age catches up to me, that is.

The Pumpkin Daddy is taking it a lot harder than I am ("Was it because I wasn't as excited and happy as I was for the Pumpkin Princess?" "Was it because I kept making you upset?" "Should I have helped with the housework more?" Um, no and no for the first two, but who am I to argue if you are intrested in the last part?) I told him that statistically, most miscarriages this early in the pregnancy are because the embryo has a lethal defect of some sort, and he started on about how that wasn't a nice thing to say because the baby had done its best. I guess I am trying to rationalize what happened and make it something less important, and he isn't.

I might feel differently after the surgery. I don't know. Keep in touch?