My Miscarriage Story - 2 months after

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

This topic on this post probably may receive a lot of opinions. But this is my opinion. I try to stay objective, thinking about the buts, and what others are feeling. But this is my opinion.

We've been trying since we got married.

We did not admit it, because we were tired of having false hope. Of course we want a baby. We went in thinking,'If we get one, we get one'. Because I know how hard it is to get one. I've got so many people around me that takes years to get one. It's not like 'I want it, I get it'.

So after like 6 months, we finally had good news. We were happy. So happy. But it was also just when the pandemic was announced. We had planned for a second honeymoon. We were scared. I had no one to talk to. We were living on our own. I don't have family members to speak to, to guide me on how to be pregnant. I was only close to A's family. So I told him, I need people to talk to about this. So we told a few people.

And I know this is really pantang. I know my colleague was against me making it so obvious. But I don't believe in pantang. For me, it really is, just a way to save yourself if anything did happen. You don't have to explain much. But I was like, I'm going to announce it to people that I think should know first. And if anything happens, I'm going to tell everyone too.

Of course at that time, I was not so attached to the baby yet. We know, we weren't really ready for it. We had sex thinking this is fun, to fulfill our sexual desires and whatnots. We didn't go in thinking we're gonna end up with a baby.

But we did.

It was a scare at first. But we heard the first heartbeat. And we thought, we're safe. We're going to be parents. We were excited. Our next appointment is a month later, not the next week like it's always been.

So the heartache we got when we went for our next official appointment was.. really unexplainable. Like, I really pray to God that no one experience this. It was supposed to be in Week 10. But it had stopped at Week 9.

And I guess, as the one carrying the baby, what hurts me was that, at Week 9, I felt something was wrong. I remember going to bed feeling very uneasy. I remembered at Week 9 going to bed thinking, 'No this is not a miscarriage'. I remember trying to convince myself that it's just another pregnancy symptom. And now I feel so guilty. And I keep thinking. Was it my fault? They say that what's in your mind can come true. Did I cause that?

I spent the next two weeks after the diagnosis crying and crying, being triggered and crying again. Both my mom and mom-in-law did not experience miscarriages and we could tell they both did not know how to console me. They see me crying so suddenly and they walked away. My sister told me of her experiences, but I guess, because she's experienced it twice and she's no longer with her husband anymore, maybe now it just seems numb to her. I guess she too, does not know how to deal with it.

Because everyone feels differently. I get that. Someone who has experienced miscarriages will feel different things. There's no proper way to console it. It's something that has not appeared in the world yet, a connection that only the mother and the baby has.

I only had 9 weeks with mine. It doesn't even have a gender yet. It doesn't even have a soul yet. But I still feel like we have a connection. 9 weeks is a long time. Considering the pain and the change in my body, it's really long. My husband can go about his way, but I wasn't even able to stand for so long without wanting to puke. I've taken care of myself so much for the baby.

When the miscarriage happened, I think I was really numb at that point. Only the night before, I was crying while listening to sad songs. But when it happened, I couldn't bring myself to cry. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything. And it was weird. I came home, laughing. After I posted about it on IG, people were comforting me left and right. But I was laughing and telling people I was fine.

And for a while, I believed I was fine.

See, for the 2 weeks of waiting for the foetus to pass, I didn't realise that I was actually going into depression. I was crying, I didn't want to move, I didn't want to work. I slept and slept and cry. Then I was numb. So numb. And I laughed. And pretended I'm over it, pretended that I was fine. But I knew I wasn't. I was just numb. And my husband thinks, Oh my wife's fine now.

A week ago, I was lying on my bed. And I felt it again. That feeling of not wanting to do anything. I didn't even want to eat. I didn't come out from my room. I started sulking, started fighting with my husband over the silliest of things. I had my period and I thought it's PMS. But even after my period, I was feeling these things. When my husband goes out to work, I started crying. I don't wake up until noon, and I can't sleep until 2am. When my husband's back, I pretend again. Because whenever I bring up 'I'm sad', he 'tch' me and starts stressing out. And that stresses me out, to think that I'm worrying him, to think I'm stressing him out. And sometimes I don't know how to talk to him about it anymore. He's past the point where I can talk to him about the miscarriage. He wants to forget about it. But I'm still holding on to it.

And that's why I have resorted to finding this old blog of mine. A place I can write my feelings without being judged. A place I don't feel stressed out about my feelings because no one reads it. No one will invalidate my feelings. And that's very important in my healing process. I'm not a burden to anyone here.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to work after 2 months of lockdown. It's the first time I'm going to be facing people. Facing my colleagues. Some of whom knows what has happened. I don't feel good about it. My workplace has become a place of stress for my emotional needs. Because they're very different people with very different thinking than mine. And the two people that can relate, is in the other team. Work has just been communicating through text messages. So I've been hiding behind my keyboard, making it seem like all is fine. If I'm not, I'll just reply a few minutes later. Or I'm crying while answering my colleagues. I can't do that at work now.

My workplace has two people who have experienced miscarriages. They know how it feels. But again, not everyone feels the same way. They may have gotten over it quickly. Heck, I had gotten it quickly. I was forced to, wasn't I? A week of hospitalisation leave that no one knew about. So I had to pretend like all is fine to people who didn't read my post. After that week, it's like everyone expected me to go back to normal mode as if nothing had happened. My colleague started pestering me on my last day of leave. Like, think. We're in a pandemic. I just had a miscarriage. You can reply to the client that I'm on hospitalisation leave. The world will not end by the few days of delay.

I'm just writing out all that I've been feeling. My husband tells me to take it slow. I don't have to reply so fast, I don't have to finish all my work. But I feel guilty. Because I wasn't doing my work at the start of the lockdown since I wasn't well emotionally. Then I took so many weeks after to recover, I almost missed a month's worth of work. I don't want to self-pity. But now I'm doing exactly that.

I'm confused. And I don't think I can move on until I know what I'm feeling. And how I should be feeling.