Validated

I started grief counseling.  It’s not something I ever thought I would actually do, even though the thought has crossed my mind many times.  I don’t have anything against counseling- I did it a couple times growing up for a few different reasons. I know it’s healthy, but I just thought I could handle it- writing my blog was my therapy.  But I started to feel buried in my pain, like I couldn’t find a way out.

Have you ever stood on your feet so long they go numb? Carried a weight so long you forgot what it felt like before it was there? What was I like as a person before I had this agony that I try to swallow every day? When 50 triggers happen daily and I choose to ignore them.  Triggers cause different kinds of pain too. Being baby hungry and not able to have a baby is different from grieving your lost ones, and different from watching others live out that dream, and different from feeling forgotten or cursed.  Different days seem to have different reasons to hurt.  I’m trying to figure out how to live with all of those feelings that come up.  Being the bigger person when people hurt you time and time again. Convincing myself I'm happy doing other things and filling my time in different ways, but knowing that's not really true. But you try to pretend it is, because you have to keep living somehow- wishing the world recognized my pain as deeply as it actually hurts.

It’s been happening more often lately.  One too many triggers at work or church and I come home and crumple on the floor in an anxiety-racked sobbing fit.  I hyperventilate and wonder "didn't God know this grief would destroy me?" I put more effort into the work world because I don't know of any other direction my life is going in.  In the middle of those panic attacks my life feels like it's drifting without a real worthwhile purpose anymore.  I'm lucky to always have my husband sitting right next to me, trying to steady me and let it pass.  It always happens when someone brings it up and discredits it somehow.  Like "at least they were early, that's not so bad." IT MATTERS TO ME.  They matter to me.  They were ours, my husband's and mine.  I've wished many times that they had died later on, so that people would at least credit their existence. The grief has lasted the same.  

Some people from the primary infertility world see me as an outsider, because I have a child, or because "at least you can get pregnant." Having an IUD placed after my 6th loss was one of the most painful things I've had to do, because of my ability to get pregnant so easily.  I have to prevent it because I know that baby will die until we have reason to believe it won't.  Waiting for that answer hurts. Waiting for a miracle hurts.  Whether it's grieving lost little ones or feeling sharp sorrow from primary infertility- looking at that negative test every month and waiting two more weeks to get your hopes up again.  It all hurts.  For three years it has racked my heart with more pain than I have known before.  I try my best to live through it, but sometimes I swear I don't even know how I could go off depression or anxiety medication to even be pregnant because it just takes one trigger and I'm a total mess. 

I try mediating, prayer, sleeping aids, whatever, but it just doesn't go away.  I'm trying to learn to live through it and believe it won't hurt like this forever.  But I'm still just waiting for something to happen.  I'm trying to make it happen, happiness.  Sometimes I have a few weeks where I do really well.  But sudden nights with a total breakdown and it all looks like an act. I just want to recognize myself again.  I want to use these experiences to make a better version of myself, not just surrender and let the ground swallow me up.  I always have this heavy guilt like if I just did better at this or that, it wouldn't be so hard.  I put it all on myself. Maybe they're right,  I'm fooling myself into thinking it was a bigger deal than it was, or I'm not faithful enough, and God must be disappointed in me.  But that's not what we learn about God.  Jesus wept with those who suffered,  why can't I just except that and use the support, and know that He feels MY pain, in all its intensity and layers and better days and the worst days.  If I would just hold on to that, I think it would get better.  I think my body is just sad, all the time, it's sad that it kept losing the new life that brought me the most happiness I've ever felt.  Do you even know the energy it takes to stay positive with a broken heart year after year?

It was so hard to make that call for help, but I want to start healing from the inside out. I feel like that grief and depression/anxiety has gotten worse as time has gone on and I'm afraid of conversion disorder where if we do get pregnant I will lose the baby because I'm so afraid to lose the baby. I'm hoping to find some help, and counseling is free through my job.

The second I got there I felt like it was a mistake. I thought, "maybe they'll think I'm attention seeking or weak or needy. I'm sure they see people much worse off and I'm not sure I belong here. I feel so embarrassed even just sitting in the waiting room."

It took a professional looking at me with sympathy and telling me "you have been through an immense amount of pain in the past three years" and just like that, my chest opened up and the pain spilled out. Pain was wrapping around my lungs and stealing my air, twisting around my heart, dropping into my stomach and it was a real, tangible, companion in that room. I ugly cried for the full hour, barely able to get the story out about what happened with each pregnancy and how my current emotional state was. I told her about the depression, and panic attacks. But it was so refreshingly cleansing to cry that hard. I don't know what was so different about sitting in a therapist’s office that took my hardened edge away, maybe just my inner soul exploding because I needed help and validation. I can't live with this front forever. It's exhausting.  I just want that bitter feeling of injustice that follows me around to go away, but I pretty much am at the worst age and living in the worst place to avoid triggering it, and once the angry feeling wears off it's replaced with a consuming sorrow, that I try to talk myself out of and count my blessings, but maybe what I needed to do was acknowledge those feelings and deal with them.

I told her I want other ways to manage that depression, anxiety, and grief because I don't just want to increase meds that I would need to titrate off of anyway to ever try again. I feel like I really need to be in a better place before we try again anyway because I would want stress and fear to harm a baby.  She wants me to write down three good things at the end of every day to make it concrete and help get out of that depression, and I want to try and focus on those areas that are hard for me. For example, good things that happened at church because that is one of the hardest places for me to be. I need to deal with those triggers. At the end of the session I apologized for crying the whole time and she told me "Don't be embarrassed, it's very normal and I'm actually impressed how well you're handling everything and how hard you're working already, and how many things you're doing to help yourself heal." I had the thought that perhaps that's what Christ would say if we could talk face to face. He wouldn't criticize me, but lovingly recognize the things I am trying, and offer me help with the rest.

Well I'm definitely not ready to try again yet.  The session made that clear to me because I felt like I just had poison pouring out of me.  I know I need to work through some of these things before I could ever survive another pregnancy.

She asked me about how I’ve memorialized the babies. I thought about jewelry I have, participating in the Wave of Light every October, and my new Christmas ornaments.  I think it all comes from this need to know that they are still mine.  I need to remember them.  How much I loved them from the very start.

 

Someone said something at work that triggered everything and was very hurtful to me. It wasn't even directed at me. I tried to brush it off, laugh it off, and just not think about it all night. In the five minute drive from work until I got home I was crying uncontrollably and hyperventilating. I battle that sadness every day but sometimes I just don't feel strong enough anymore and I just can't live like this anymore. Didn't God know this would do this to me, why would He want me to be like this?  I didn't used to be this kind of person and I try so hard every day to not be the way that I am- but a broken heart begs to be felt and I'm just not sure how to fix that. How am I supposed to deal with this more gracefully?

My counselor advised me to "Speak your truth, be assertive but not aggressive, help people understand how to talk to you, but if you carry hurtful things they say all the time and make it your own burden in addition to the grief it just makes the anxiety so much higher."  It’s still difficult to navigate the issue socially, because often hurtful statements are those that are made innocently, or not even directly to me, and I don’t think it would be appropriate in those situations to butt in and make the conversation about myself and “speak my peace” so I need to learn to make peace with myself first.

I've tried some interventions to help with the anxiety, particularly at night because that seems to be when I have most of my panic attacks.  I invested in a weighted blanket (like really invested- those things are expensive) and it works well for me.  It's relaxing and calming and really has lived up to it's reputation.  Hopefully I can find more things like this to help.  This blanket covers half of my bed and weighs 18 pounds.  

  

In other news, I finally got good news about my health.  It's been a while since that happened!  I have had chronic GI problems most of my life, but in the last few months they got a lot worse and I had some heavy bleeding, etc.  So I ended up having a colonoscopy, and was just waiting for more bad news of some other issue to manage.  Fortunately, everything went as well as it could have!  No issues that can't be managed with daily medication (I'm hoping it continues that way).  Turns out it was all just from the same issues I've had my whole life.  I am so relieved to have a test come back negative and not walk away from a doctor appointment with some new diagnosis for once.

Sometimes when I'm feeling impatient, it helps me to plan the next few steps in the journey.  I feel pretty strongly that I need to lose some weight before we try for another pregnancy.  I never had any trouble with weight until right after my first miscarriage.  I gained 20 pounds right away, and for the past few years even though I've done diet and exercise programs on and off I've still put on like another 40 pounds.  It's really discouraging.  Just admitting that it is a problem is hard because it never used to be.  I know that Hashimoto's doesn't help with your metabolism, but I would at least like to lose 20 pounds to know my body is in a healthier state.  I'm motivated to keep trying.  My awesome husband bought me a fitbit to help me keep track of everything through the day, and is very encouraging.  I also struggle to sleep without taking some sort of sleep aid or at least melatonin, and I'd like to get past that. Focusing on improving my health should help the next few months go faster.

If I ever start feeling impatient- all I have to think of is how much we need to do before we could try for a baby again. Kevin's issues need to be squared away, which could be soon, or a year from now (or never but let's not go there).  I would need to get my IUD removed, and titrate off my medication.  I would need to switch over several meds to be safe for pregnancy.  I need to lose that stubborn weight.  I need to make sure my thryoid is still within a good range. I'd need to start on aspirin, and eventually progesterone, and decide with my doctors if the Lovenox injections are even worth while.  Give up caffeine...that will be a tough one.  I'd need to start on my vitamin therapy, etc etc.  I'm sure there are lots more things we would need to get ready first.  It's overwhelming.  I know I need to be more emotionally stable.  I have to consider the stress of a pregnancy on it's own, and praying that a little heartbeat will show up on an utrasound.  That we can have a miracle baby- someone who fights through all the odds.  There are lots of logistic things to work out also.  I'm the only one with an income and all our insurance is through me- there would be lots to work out.  I would be so happy to work it all out if we were blessed with a baby, but for now I will try to focus on all those things that need to happen first.  

"Nothing is lost to the Lord" I've felt the truth of that statement resonate within me before and deep down I know all will be made right.  Families are forever. Patience is actually choosing not to wait- choosing to not wait to be happy.  Patience is being happy now, before we have all the answers.  

At a church dinner, I heard something I absolutely loved, "We sometimes wonder why we can't just do without the trial at all, since God could just stop it from happening. But God loves a good story, where his purposes can be unfolded and we can grow."

We're about two weeks away from the first test to see if Kevin's surgery was successful.  I'm not expecting full improvement yet because I know it can take up to 9 months, but I'm hoping for a drastic enough of a change that I know it is working.  Or just a full reversal of the problem that shows him 100% healed.  I would be ok with that too ;)

I feel like the holiday season is just in time this year.  Time to focus on Christ.  Time to feel love and be with family- time to be thankful for my many many blessings.  So many things in my life are going so well.  So many things have worked out in our favor.  I do try to focus on them, but sometimes you have to recognize the bad so you can feel more of the good. Even though I'm learning to manage the pain that comes with life, I'm still thankful for my two happiest things: