Three weeks ago, I found out I was pregnant. Four days ago, I lost it. It would make sense for me to leave this out of the blog, but I can't do it. It was a major experience in my life. Furthermore, I don't understand the cult of secrecy surrounding miscarriage. It's a very real, very painful experience that many people go through and no one talks about. If I had gallstones or something, of course I would write about it. It's far past time to lift the aura of shame from the experience.
I guess I'll start with the hospital. I found the staff at Hyosung Women's Hospital to be compassionate and professional. Hyosung is a little more expensive than YUMC, but the facilities are much nicer. I guess you would call it a “boutique” hospital. There were many English speakers. My friends in America who have miscarried have often gone through a “wait and see” period where they wait to miscarry naturally. If this doesn't work, they resort to drugs, and if that doesn't work, they do a D&C. My doctors seemed a little more interested in getting the whole thing over with, which I appreciate. Once the process started, I was given 12 hours to miscarry on my own or I would have a D&C (it turns out I didn't need it).
Not that expelling an embryo is a piece of cake. That's actually one thing I was not prepared for. On television, it tends to happen overnight. In reality, there were about three days of agony which has thankfully diminished. Bobby and I have been watching Battlestar Galactica at a rate of about a season a day. He has been wonderful, making dinner, taking care of the animals, and waiting on me hand and foot. Some people look at us and think Bobby got the better end of the deal. They're wrong.
I don't know how long it will take to get over it. I'm not going to push myself. I know it was nobody's fault, that sometimes life just doesn't happen. There are a lot of rules surrounding pregnant women, and it's easy to think that maybe if we want to carry a healthy child to term, we have to sit around and eat bananas all day, feel absolutely no stress, and avoid breathing too much air because it might contain toxins. One wonders how the human race survived through times of famine, war, and natural disasters.
In the words of president Roslin, “It was nobody's fault. It's bigger than that. It's life.” Here's to better days.
1 comment:
We've been through this, more than once. The first time I was still working at the University of Detroit library. They knew about the pregnancy, so I couldn't put off revealing the bad news for long. It was really touching how many women confided to me that they had been through this; it just isn't something that's usually talked about. I'm sorry for your loss.
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