Teeter totter

I had a D&C last week as the pregnancy did not miscarry naturally. I was strange being in hospital again. Not pleasant but not as unbearable as I thought it might have been.

It was actually quite an interesting experience being admitted to the EPAU. It was a fine line as to whether they would admit me at all or not as the usual criteria involves 'recurrent' miscarriages. My GP views my pregnancy with the twins as a miscarriage as it ended so early. However, the EPAU considers my pregnancy with Jessica and Georgina a 'successful' one. And it was. I suppose I've become so used to thinking of that pregnancy as a 'failure', that my body let my girls down, that I'd almost forgotten that it was the pregnancy (my one and only) that resulted in my two daughters. How could I possibly consider that experience a failure when it resulted in Jessica who is still with me today and my darling Georgina who I got to hold and meet? It was actually good to see my previous pregnancy recast in a different light.

This brief pregnancy was very different. No living child, no body to hold, no baby to be seen, no scan pictures. Things never progressed that far. Nothing. Not as crushing yet somehow more crushing at the same time.

I always seemed to be in two minds about this pregnancy. On the one hand, I felt as though I was 'owed' a normal pregnancy. That if I managed to fall pregnant, I was almost guaranteed a full-term, healthy baby. Despite the fact that I know that the world does not work this way and, given my line of work, I should have some appreciation of independent events.

But on the other hand, I was (and still am) worried that there might be some underlying reason why I cannot carry a pregnancy to term. My memories of my pregnancy with the twins are so blurred. I felt as though I was going to throw up every single waking moment and I was so tired, it all seems so impossible now. I never really felt the girls move because they were so small still, I also had two anterior placentas that might have made perceiving their movements even more difficult. It all seems so very unlikely, that I was ever pregnant. Pregnant? With Jessica? That she actually had anything to do with my body and wasn't created in a hospital by doctors? Really?

Perhaps I am trying and trying to do something that is simply not a possibility for me and, in the process, I will wreck everything I hold dear. The conclusion at the hospital was 'bad luck' but still . . .

Whilst I am sad that this pregnancy did not progress beyond a few weeks, it made me appreciate what I have, how lucky I am to have a child.

So strange, this terminology that is used to describe pregnancy. When the EPAU contacted me they told me that the pregnancy was 'failing', they then double checked that I understood this to mean I was miscarrying. How strange. That one little word, failure, cut me right to the quick. Nobody likes to fail and it seems bizarre that something that is so far beyond our control should be termed as a failure. Failure seems to imply neglect or carelessness.

I know that, when Georgina died, I thought it was my fault. I felt that way for a very long time. I still blame myself to some extent. I raked over everything I had done or neglected to do over the course of my brief pregnancy. I wondered about make-up and bath oil and depilatory cream and deodorant and the caffeinated coca cola I drank once by mistake and whether I had been too fond of alcohol or chocolate or work prior to falling pregnant. Whether I was too fat or too thin or too young or too old. Too smug. Too happy. Too lucky. Too unlucky. Whether I was an awful person, a person who would be a terrible mother. Whether it was a punishment. I'm still not entirely sure it wasn't. Just a feeling that I can't quite shake off.

It took me a long time to stop hating myself for killing Georgina. I felt as though I had killed her twice over, once by birthing her and once in the NICU when I stood by and watched her die. I still hate myself from time to time, I suspect I always will. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night.

I feel a touch of that old self recrimination about the failure of this latest pregnancy. But not as sharply. Just bitter, bitter disappointment for the main part. And regret. Regret that I told my husband and my sister and my parents. And then had to tell them all over again. Not to expect the child or the grandchild or the niece or nephew. To take the gold star off the calendar that my mom had stuck on with so much glee.

But still. I am so pleased and proud of Jessica that I can't stop this bubble of excitement building up in my stomach and pushing my hopes higher and higher.

I hesitate to post too much about Jessica on this blog. Mainly for fear of jinxing myself. Which is silly but it is hard not to be superstitious about life when you are in the midst of it as it were?

But she is doing better than anyone ever suspected that she would. Apart from her ICU consultant who always told me that she would be 'a normal little girl'. How he knew this, I just don't know. None of the other consultants seemed to agree at the time.

She is doing things that I feared she never would. She is standing, she is starting to walk, she is communicating, she is smiling, she is eating like a champ, she is breathing on her own, she knows who I am, she knows who her daddy is, she wants to join in with everything, she loves other children. I can't help but feel my heart sing when I watch her.

Sometimes I get a little glimmer that she is different. She isn't a big child, or a developmentally advanced child, for her age. But she is amazing. When I look at her arms and legs and think of the twigs they once were. When I look at her breathing, on her own, and think of the machinery it used to take. I can hardly believe it and I was there. I saw her change in front of me.

The other day, when we were at an activity group I take her to, a little boy fell off the slide and landed right on top of Jessica. Now, this little lad was a fair bit chunkier than Jessica and he landed with quite a splat. He cried his eyes out. She just carried on. This little lad's mum was almost embarrassed by her son's roaring as Jessica ploughed ahead regardless.

It made me proud and it made me sad. Premature babies often have high pain thresholds apparently. I've often wondered whether this might be true as Jessica rarely cries. Sometimes she attacks her food with such ferocity I can only assume she must have been starving but you will never hear a peep from her. My poor girl, so beaten down by her early life that she can ignore these later pains.

I don't know where I am going with this post really. I seem to judder back and forth between elation and upset. I still want another baby. Greedyguts that I am.

My mum's theory is that I fall pregnant easily and, therefore, I will miscarry easily.
Easy come, easy go?
Except that the going isn't easy. Not really.