Recovery

It's been a week since my miscarriage and I'm feeling like I'm pretty much over it.  I did a lot less grieving than I thought I would.  The procedure on Friday went smoothly and I felt fine by Friday night.  I just moped around the house over the weekend and, although it was probably good to have some time to reflect, I was very happy to get back to my normal routine on Monday.

I guess I was right when I said that there wasn't much of a context to disintegrate with this loss.  Usually, that disintegration is the work of grief.  (I got that from Leonard Peikoff, but the specific source eludes me.) When you love someone, you integrate him or her into your life.  You share values.  In my case, I hadn't integrated a person into my life, but a pregnancy.  I had to do things like unsubscribe from a pregnancy newsletter, cancel ob-gyn appointments, cancel my prenatal yoga class, rethink next summer's travel plans, set aside the plans for preparing the baby's room, and even cancel a prenatal massage.  Those things were a disappointment.  I had valued all of it as part of the pregnancy experience.  But I had no connection with the life growing inside me yet.  I do indeed feel like this is just a setback.  We're still going to have a second child and all the values that come from that - we're just not going to have them as soon.

I don't mean to diminish this experience.  It really is a horrible thing to go through.  I think when it happens in a first pregnancy it is much more difficult.  But it's been a week and I'm over it.  Sure, there is a little residual sadness, but it is in the background.  There is a little bit of new doubt about whether we will be able to have a second child, but I'm fighting that by focusing on the fact that it is metaphysically given whether or not we will succeed.  We will take all the action we can to make it happen, but worrying about it will not change anything.

We did decide to get the chromosomal analysis of the fetus.  We should have the results in a few weeks.  If there is anything to learn from this that can help our future efforts, we'll learn it.  Most likely, though, we won't learn anything at all.  I'm ok with that too.

There are other things I've learned from this experience.  I'm working on a bad premise I have about accepting help and support from other people.  And I've been vindicated in my practice of being totally honest with my daughter about sensitive issues like this.  We told her everything from the day I took the pregnancy test to the miscarriage, and she's handled it just fine.  I'll write more about both of these subjects in the days to come.