reckless hope

friends of ours had a miscarriage over the weekend. I wrote a blog about her a while back. They've been ttc off and on for the better part of a decade. She always thought she'd be one of those earth mommas who coast through their pregnancy with barely a care, but infertility is the gift that keeps on giving. Crippled by anxiety she became convinced she was going to lose the baby. So she got ultrasounds and barely was able to function. She found out last week at just over ten weeks that the baby stopped developing around 8 weeks.

It was so sad. The thing is, she's handling it really well. Almost too well. When she called me to tell me it felt like a punch in the gut. I can't stop crying every time I think about it. She had a memorial service and showed everyone (6 or 7 women who are all doulas, midwives, and infant caregivers) the fetus. And we all talked about how perfect he was, how adorable. It was so different from my own miscarriage experience. I'm mortified to admit that I'm actually wildly jealous of the support she got. My husband and I were basically ostracized in the weeks after our loss. No one wanted to talk about it and it clearly made people uncomfortable when we brought it up.

The thing I can't stop thinking about is how well she seems to be handling it. In fact, she told me, its almost a relief. "I've felt that something was wrong for so long, its strangely validating to know I was right."

And this is what infertility reduces us to: constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, expecting the worst so it won't hit as hard when it happens.

Now she gets to play the 'ol "did anxiety cause the miscarriage or was I anxious because I knew I miscarried?" It never ends.

Here I am, 8dpIUI just waiting for my negative beta so I can start again. Somewhere, somehow, I know there's a tiny kernal of hope in me whispering "what if? What if?" But I smother it with complaints about supplemental progesterone and mean REs so it won't crush me if it doesn't work out.

And I don't want to live like this anymore. I want to hope openly and speculate with abandon. I haven't even written a single 2ww symptom spotting blog. The best I can do is upload some horoscopes that look promising. When did this happen?

I want this IUI to work. There. I said it. It may not, and that will hurt. a lot. But I want it to work. I want to hope again.