The end to another weekend, and turns out I didn't win the lottery again, so I guess it's back to work. Seriously lottery, I am so ready for my multi-millions already! The time change kicked my butt this morning, I find it so easy to jump out of bed when the sun is shining and find it so impossible to get out when it is still dark outside. Oh well, at least time change weekend means that we are closer to summer time.
On Saturday my husband and I went over to another couple's house. They were having some people over that we aren't that close with but the couple are really good friends of ours. The guy was my husband's best man at our wedding. Now I want to premise the rant that is about to follow with the statement that we really like this couple, they are good friends and while I am ranting about them, they truly are great people.
This couple just had a baby in late January. In fact they announced her pregnancy (we knew they were trying) in the card they gave us for our wedding this summer when she was just 10 weeks along. The hard part is that they had no idea we were trying to have a baby and no idea about our miscarriage. We chose not to tell people we were trying because of the friends I did know that were trying I felt like I was constantly watching for signs and I knew their cycles....just too much of an envasion of privacy. Anyway, my husband and I decided not to tell anyone we were trying, and not to tell anyone (except immediate family) about any resulting pregnancy until after the 12 week ultrasound. We told our families at 10 weeks, on Christmas Day, but that is a story for another day.
We were very excited to tell them about our pregnancy, and in fact my miscarriage was just a week before that 12 week ultrasound. Then the miscarriage happened. I found out on a Thursday, had a D&C the following Thursday, Saturday I spent making a diaper cake for her (with the assistance of another pregnant friend of ours who was actually due yesterday but no baby yet!), Saturday night we went out to dinner with them and other friends and she noticed the IV bruises on my hands. I made up some lame story to explain them away. She went into labour on the next Wednesday night and delivered Friday morning.
As you can imagine this timing was really tough for me and my husband. We chose not to tell them during this time, because I didn't think I was ready to talk about it without hysterical sobbing, and also because they are dear friends and this was the birth of their first born. I didn't want to darken their experience or make them feel like they couldn't be truly happy around us. This was the reason we didn't tell them for the first few weeks. Some days I wanted to wring her neck, when she was complaining about how difficult things were with a new baby, how tired they were, how sore she was etc. etc. She had no idea what we went through, and was just sharing feelings of most new mothers.....but it took everything not to yell "How difficult it is?? Miscarriage is difficult! I would love to be in your shoes! I am the wrong person to complain too!"
I haven't told them since then because there really hasn't been a good time. Everytime we plan on hanging out with them alone (just the two couples) either something has come up and one of us has had to cancel, or other less close friends that I don't feel like sharing with have joined us.
Maybe it was wrong to suffer in silence, but I was really just trying to be a good friend and let them enjoy their little bundle of joy. I am planning on telling them soon, although my husband says maybe we should tell them about it once we are pregnant and passed the 12 week mark. The reason I want to tell them is that I really can't handle some of the comments that are made, which aren't so bad, but would be considered very insensitive if they knew. Also I really feel like not telling even close friends just further encourages the stigma that goes along with miscarriage. Obviously I don't want random people to know my personal medical info, but good friends, yes! It seems that there is kind of a culture of miscarrige, where women who haven't had one, as supportive as they try to be, you can see that little glimmer of superiority in their eyes. Like being fertile proves their womanhood. Of course they are outwardly supportive and say all the well meaning things they can, I just know that somewhere deep down, even if just a tiny part of them, they feel glad that it wasn't them. The more us women who have experienced it talk about it, the more that other women realise how common it is. Sometimes I feel like miscarriage is viewed the same way as mental illness, people say all the supportive things in the world about how it's a medical condition etc etc but on the inside they judge you just a little. Stupid. Would you ever judge someone for having a broken leg? No, and these things are no different.
Ok well, clearly I have gone off on a tangent and am ranting about something completely different than my intended rant. So I will leave it at there today, and will share the rant about my weekend in my next post. I promise the post after that will be a positive and rant-free post!
No comments:
Post a Comment