End of Summer

I am eager for Autumn--more specifically, for the grace of new seasons and new beginnings.  Even as there was much for which to be grateful this summer--our trip South, a recent trip to Martha's Vineyard, time with family and friends--I can't help but write the narrative of my summer in this way:  it sucked. 

I miscarried a pregnancy this summer. I don't wish to be drama-queeny about it, but I realized late last week that I am still in need of more healing.  How did I happen upon this realization?  I went to the gym. 

I hadn't really gone to the gym--or exercised much at all--this summer, and I am one who exericises pretty regularly.  I discovered that I was pregnant in mid-June, and at the time of discovery, I was about six to seven weeks along.  My visits to the gym started to decline because I felt so incredibly tired (caring for a toddler is very tiring; imagine what happens when the body starts to baby-make).  In late July, I had a standard OB visit, at which the nurse practitioner gave me an in-office ultrasound.  When the exam began, we could see the tiny fetus but no flashing light--the flashing light indicating a beating heart.  The NP told me not to worry--my dates could have been "way off," and so she scheduled me for a more "official" ultrasound at Methodist Hospital, where the sonography is more sophisticated.  At my "official" ultrasound the next day, a fetal heartbeat was detected, but it was extremely slow.  The specialist told me that I should prepare myself for the failure of the pregnancy but said that we wouldn't take any action as long as there was cardiac activity.

For the next two weeks, I went back and forth for ultrasounds and saw, with each one, a heart that was struggling and would soon come to a stop.  In the last week of July, the failure of the pregnancy was confirmed, and my doctor scheduled me for a D&C.  My body, it seems, did not want to give up on the idea of the pregnancy, and so intervention was necessary....

Around that time, I stopped going to the gym entirely.

But last week I went back.  I got on the treadmill and tried to run a mere three miles (three miles!  I once could boast of 5+ miles even in non-training mode).  I couldn't even do two.  At 1.8 miles, I slowed to a walk, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the trainer who once worked with me in some strength-training sessions.  She smiled and walked over to the treadmill.  "I haven't seen you all summer," she said.  "Where have you been?"  I probably could have just responded in this way:  "I have been so busy.  We have been traveling so much.  But I'm going to try to come regularly again."  But for some reason, I decided to just be honest.  I stopped the treadmill.  "Actually, it was a rough summer for me.  I was pregnant for a while but had a miscarriage.  It's taken me a while to feel 'myself' again.  This is my first time back in a while."  

And then I started to cry.  I couldn't believe it.  Here I thought that I was entirely "over it," but I couldn't keep the tears back.  Thankfully, the trainer had a tissue in the pocket of her hoodie and encouraged me to come into the locker room, where we could talk privately.  She was very kind.  She sat with me for a few minutes as I collected myself and then offered to guide me through some stretches (for free!) to help get some of the tension out.....

Anyway, that was how I came to the realization that I'm not quite "over it."  In fact, if one grieves a miscarriage in the same way as one grieves any death, then perhaps I've been stuck in the "denial" stage for a bit.  For as soon as my surgery was over, I frenetically began making plans:  "I'm going to take a class at the Seminary!"  "I'm going to practice my piano more!"  "I'm going to sign Aidan up for any and every class in Park Slope this Fall!"  I made myself as busy as possible.  It wasn't that I denied that the miscarriage had happened...it was that I tried to move on too quickly.  I tried, almost desperately (it seems in retrospect) to wrest control of life in my plan-devising, for miscarriage was an experience in which I felt totally out of control.

I don't know if grieving "requires" going through each and every stage that Kubler-Ross identified in her famous work on grieving.  Do I feel angry?  No.  I really don't.  Am I depressed?  Not really.  I do feel sad but not hopeless.  I'm certainly not engaging in any bargaining with God ("God, I promise to be a less selfish, spoiled brat if you can only help me in this way...."), as I've never believed that 'God' works that way. 

So maybe the tears that came so unexpectedly last week were the beginning, and only the beginning, of healing--an acceptance that there was loss and that it was painful and that I still feel sad and out of control and physically yucky and may feel this way for a while. 

Someone once said to me, about grieving, that "the only way to get through it is to go through it."  I'm going through it.  The leaves are starting to fall.  And I am hopeful.