By January 2009, just 6 months after our wedding, Ivan and I took the first step toward trying by going off ‘the pill’. A lot of people had warned us that stressing over trying to get pregnant could actually make the goal harder to achieve. So I insisted, at first, that we were not officially ‘trying’…we were just ‘not trying to not get pregnant’! That attitude lasted oh… about a month, when the excitement was too much to bear and I impulsively started telling the world that we were trying (in future I will hold off on this since it became emotionally triggering each time a well-meaning friend or family member asked 'so are you pregnant yet?!?'). I also figured it would be wise to at least figure out my ovulation schedule by tracking my menstrual cycle and charting my temperature. I told myself that I was just being ‘aware’, but found that there was a fine line between being aware and becoming obsessed.
Rather than patiently waiting for my period each month, I would start getting anxious and excited a few days before and would HAVE TO take a pregnancy test. Then when the test was negative, I would tell myself it was too early to be accurate and would repeat the process each day until my period arrived. The first couple of months, I told myself ‘that’s okay, it wasn’t meant to be, this time’…but that line got old. I gradually, yet rapidly evolved from someone trying not to think about getting pregnant to someone who was already starting to feel like it would never happen. There were so many months where I just had a good feeling and would psych myself up into ambitious thinking, only to drop into heartache the moment my period inevitably arrived. A couple of times I was so sure that ‘this was the month’ even before a urine pregnancy test could work, so I went to anonymous clinics to get blood tests done…but those too resulted in disappointment. Ivan was riding this same emotional roller coaster along with me and although we tried to support each other, we sometimes ended up setting off each other’s vulnerability. Several times, I put much energy into wishfully thinking that I could surprise Ivan with good news for a special occasion – like his birthday or our anniversary – and each time I was wrong. I began to understand that the process of trying can be torturous for a self-proclaimed control-freak like myself, since sometimes the element of control is just an illusion. We advocated to get ourselves onto a fertility clinic waitlist since many of our friends, who had fertility challenges in the past, warned us that the waitlist could be at least several months (and since you're supposed to try for one year before getting on the waitlist, it can start to feel like precious 'wasted' time).
Finally, after about 11 months and 50 Dollarama pregnancy tests (yup, you can save about $10/test : ), a second pink line showed up! I stared at it for a while in disbelief before running over to Ivan. I had big plans of going to buy some cute baby things to tell him with the good news in a fun way, but I didn’t have the patience for that! Needless to say, we were beyond ecstatic. We told our immediate families and spent the next few weeks on cloud 9, daydreaming about what was to come.
But at our first ultrasound, we could both tell by the silence and facial expressions that something was wrong. They told us that it was too early to tell for sure, but that they could not see the type of development that would fit with the timing I had estimated. I spent the next few days frantically researching what’s called a ‘blighted ovum’ (a fertilized egg that does not develop into a pregnancy). I read anecdotal stories of women who were misdiagnosed as experiencing this condition only to learn a few weeks later that they somehow did have a normal pregnancy. I clutched onto that evidence and convinced myself the same was true for me: if only we could wait a few more days or weeks, my baby would magically appear on the screen, and they would tell me they made a mistake. However, the second ultrasound confirmed our worst fears since this time they said, with more certainty, that the pregnancy was not progressing normally and we would likely miscarry.
But at our first ultrasound, we could both tell by the silence and facial expressions that something was wrong. They told us that it was too early to tell for sure, but that they could not see the type of development that would fit with the timing I had estimated. I spent the next few days frantically researching what’s called a ‘blighted ovum’ (a fertilized egg that does not develop into a pregnancy). I read anecdotal stories of women who were misdiagnosed as experiencing this condition only to learn a few weeks later that they somehow did have a normal pregnancy. I clutched onto that evidence and convinced myself the same was true for me: if only we could wait a few more days or weeks, my baby would magically appear on the screen, and they would tell me they made a mistake. However, the second ultrasound confirmed our worst fears since this time they said, with more certainty, that the pregnancy was not progressing normally and we would likely miscarry.
Since most people, including us, don’t usually talk about miscarriages, I really didn’t know what exactly to expect. I knew that they were extremely common (some sources say more than 1/4 pregnancies) but I thought that it would just ‘happen’ quickly and painlessly…apparently I was wrong. I was given 3 equally unappealing options: a) take a strong medication to induce the labour/miscarriage b) have a medical procedure ('D and C') done in hospital to remove any pregnancy material in my uterus, or c) wait an undetermined amount of time to see if the miscarriage would happen on its own before reverting to a or b. I decided to wait and was relieved that my body miscarried naturally, yet overcome with grief. Contrary to my hopeful beliefs, it took weeks of discomfort and emotional agony, plus a few hours of intense contractions that felt as close to labour as I could imagine. To make matters worse, this was happening to Ivan and I during my 27th birthday and Christmas of ‘09. Special days that we thought would be filled with the extra joy of pregnancy were now filled with tears and sadness. Whereas 'normal' grief involves reflecting on the special moments in your past, this grief involved longing for the special moments in our future that were suddenly taken away.
I still have mixed feelings about the unsaid rule that a woman should wait 3 months before announcing her pregnancy since the chance of miscarriage drops significantly after that point. In a way, I wish that all of my family and friends knew what we were going through so that we would have endless support surrounding us and so that I could share my experience with other women who may have benefited from the knowledge. But on the other hand, my own emotions were so raw and intense during that time that I was not interested in repeating the story to anyone. I guess that's why it's comfortable and even cathartic for me to share my experience now - I've had time to heal from it and am ready to validate what so many women have gone through and normalize what so many women will go through.
In retrospect, our miscarriage would have probably been more manageable if someone could have told us that we would soon be pregnant again and delivering our healthy baby exactly one year later. But of course, the amazing moments in life wouldn’t feel as rich, if they weren't contrasted against tough ones.
I still have mixed feelings about the unsaid rule that a woman should wait 3 months before announcing her pregnancy since the chance of miscarriage drops significantly after that point. In a way, I wish that all of my family and friends knew what we were going through so that we would have endless support surrounding us and so that I could share my experience with other women who may have benefited from the knowledge. But on the other hand, my own emotions were so raw and intense during that time that I was not interested in repeating the story to anyone. I guess that's why it's comfortable and even cathartic for me to share my experience now - I've had time to heal from it and am ready to validate what so many women have gone through and normalize what so many women will go through.
In retrospect, our miscarriage would have probably been more manageable if someone could have told us that we would soon be pregnant again and delivering our healthy baby exactly one year later. But of course, the amazing moments in life wouldn’t feel as rich, if they weren't contrasted against tough ones.
