February 22, 2015
"I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write this down. After it happened, all I wanted to do was talk about it, and the more time passes, the more my body recovers and my body has almost now completely forgotten the experience. It's like a dream or a lifetime ago. I'll try to tell you as much as I can remember.
After the ultrasound, we went home. Sarah and I went to Smith's, and then the ward activity at the church. I was feeling pretty well all evening. No cramps or bleeding that was strangely strong or anything. I went to bed around 11:30 pm. Matthew was pretty tired but I was feeling uncomfortable and awake, and thought I'd probably need another hour to settle down. So I asked him if I could watch Netflix on his phone. Around midnight, the pain started to get worse. I couldn't even find a single position in bed that would offer relief. I couldn't lie still, and I was starting to get sleepy, but was frustrated because I kept cramping and needing to pee. I decided to take a warm bath and that helped a lot with the pain. I was bleeding and passed some small clots. In my ignorance, I wondered if any of them could be the tiny baby. I kept Matthew's phone with me and watching Call the Midwife helped me to keep awake and not be too panicked. But after two hours of being unable to leave the tub to go to bed - I kept trying, drying off and getting a fresh pad and returning to my clothes, but then feeling so much pain and discomfort nothing would make it feel better but returning to the tub - I got scared.
I had read miscarriages take hours, days, or even weeks, so I was terrified of having to endure this for DAYS. I needed sleep badly but more than sleep I needed a break from the pain. I was exhausted and scared of having to go through this the whole night by myself, so around 2 am I woke Matthew and told him I felt really bad. He didn't know what to do, but he did try massaging me. It didn't help. I was feeling like I had a box inside my stomach pushing up and out and all around like I was going to explode. It sounds silly describing it and I can't quite recall it to my body's memory even now, but my mind was very clear that that's what it felt like at the time. Also, I was seating but couldn't leave the tub to cool off. My lower half wanted to be on fire and my upper half was dripping with sweat. And I was so exhausted. The pain never gave me a break. I could tell there were moments when it escalated, but I could never really feel it subside. The only way I recognized that it had subsided was when it shot up again.
Having Matthew awake and there for me was a great mental and emotional relief: he followed me back and forth from the bed to the tub with the computer, my clothes, towels, etc., so all I had to focus on was the pain. But there was no physical relief, and I really was starting to panic when even the tub didn't bring me any relief. We timed the pains, which by this time I was beginning to recognize were actually contractions, and the time seemed to both pass very quickly and drag on. We switched from Call the Midwife to Arrested Development when I began to be in so much pain I couldn't even pay attention to the computer for long stretches of time. Having something playing in the background was a good distraction and helped to keep me from noticing the slow passage of time.
As for pain relief, I tried everything. I took Tylenol very early on, but nothing else - perhaps I was too far gone, exhausted, and cynical to think Ibuprofen would even help? I meditated. It helped weirdly a little bit in the beginning, but not further on. Nothing helped further on. Matthew massaged me, but as all the pain was in my abdomen and not my back, it didn't really help. I tried "going with" the contractions instead of fighting them by tensing up. That felt very scary. Just giving up and letting the pain completely take over and just decide to go away or not on its own whim. Sometimes it helped a little though and the sharp hard pains went down a little to more manageable pain. And breathing. Good Lord did I breathe. I breathed every possible pattern I could think of, from quick, fast breaths to long, slow breaths to even, relaxed ones. It kept me alive but wasn't doing a whole lot else. I distinctly remember grabbing Matthew and being like, "WE ARE GETTING AN EPIDURAL!" at some point and I meant it, absolutely, 100%. I was positive that this wasn't normal and I couldn't take any more. I don't remember much of what I said. I kept saying, "I'm so tired. I'm so tired" over and over, and also, "all I want is for it to stop." At one point I felt might die? But not really? I didn't think it was worth it to try to go to the hospital and I guess I'd rather die at home than try to get in a car or call an ambulance.
Another thing that made everything more difficult was (TMI, but really, this whole post is TMI) pooping. I hadn't eaten very much, but around 3 am or something I kept having to go to the toilet. I was in awful pain and just wanted to stay in the tub but was so upset I kept having to poop. It was painful and unavoidable. I've never been in so much pain and somehow annoyed that I still had to interrupt my pain so I could take care of a bodily need.
I hated that I couldn't rest in the tub. I needed a floating pillow or something. My neck ached and my head and shoulders were too hot and even though I was dead tired, I could not sleep. There was one point when I almost dozed off on the bed with Matthew rubbing me and the heating pad, but it was only about a minute that I was actually asleep before the next pain jolted me awake again. I don't know how to explain that I managed to fall asleep in those minutes between contractions except for sheer exhaustion. I also remember shifting in the tub to try to find a position that offered relief and I found that going from sitting up to lying down hurt like hell, but once I was lying down, I felt a little better.
The changes in my body were very unpredictable. I felt I had 0 control over what was happening, but my body was figuring it out and taking charge without me. I am so grateful our bodies have this programmed into them. And I am amazed in retrospect at how much my body is capable of. The process of making a baby is truly awe-inspiring. Anyway, around 3 am Matthew and I discussed options. I really wanted drugs. I thought maybe my dad or the midwives could help me. We called our midwife at 4 am on the hotline and boy, she was unhelpful. A midwife had called me earlier on Thursday around 8 pm and told me to expect "a heavy period" and asked if I had any questions. Ha. Of course I was fine then and said so. So the poor tired girl at 4 am told us the pain would last "a chunk of time" and told us the usual spiel about relief methods that we'd tried and that weren't working at all. I don't remember anything else she said.
I quickly began focusing on the promise of drugs to get me through the pain. The vague hope and possibility of drugged relief was what I now clung to. At 5 am we called my parents, who knew nothing of the ultrasound or miscarriage, so it was a bit of a shock. My dad answered, said he was sorry, and said they had Lortab, which I remembered taking after getting an IUD, and it did help. So I was absolutely on board with Matthew driving to my parents' to get drugs. I was feeling a little better, just able to hold on, and my brain had become accustomed to the idea that we wouldn't be asleep for a while. Maybe it was my second wind. Matthew left me in the tub and I watched Call the Midwife and clung to the tub's soap dish holder in lieu of Matthew's hand. Fortunately, it seemed a very short time until he came back. I think the idea of "drugs on the way!" helped me get through. I took the Lortab immediately. Matt said my mom had given him a big hug and had a crumpled face and that meant a lot to me. After taking the Lortab, I waited for something to change. About 20 minutes later, the change came.
THE WORST PAIN I'd ever felt in my life. The previous stuff times 10. I couldn't hold in my screams any longer. I screamed into one hand, gripping Matthew with the other. It felt hugely powerful, overwhelming, dangerous, out of control, and if it hadn't gone away, I might have passed out. But it did. I thought we had reached a new level of pain and I'd be in this new hell for the forseeable future. I knew I couldn't bear it. I was crying. Another one came, just as awful as the last. Horrible, horrible, blackout pain. I think there were only 3 or 4 of these. I reached inside and became aware I could feel something. It felt like it could be another fold of lip or skin or something else. The more I felt it the more I realized it was coming out of me. But it was stuck. That made me excited because I finally had a measurable goal that I could work for, and if I could just get this thing out, there would be change, and possibly relief. So I started pep talking myself. "You can do this! I'm so close! You're soooo close! COME ON!" But it wouldn't come out, despite me pushing as hard as I could and giving it my all. Matthew said to wait and push with the next contraction. That was the first moment it really dawned on me that my pains were indeed contractions, and they were all building up to a big moment of pushing out something big.
I didn't want any more contractions. But ultimately, Matthew was right. I felt the exact moment the contraction came, somewhere while I was reluctantly taking a break from pushing. It was like my insides expanded suddenly and a big push, not from me but from something inside my body, forced the "thing" out all at once. It was huge - much bigger than I expected by far. Big enough to cup in two hands. Maybe the size of my fist. I felt a rush of relief and I was panting and lying back and the water was turning red all around me because so much blood had come out. I still felt a little bloated but the awful box-explosive feeling had slacked off hugely. I had trained myself not to move or do anything to disturb any amount of relief that I came across during the experience, so it took a few seconds for me to sit up, but I really wanted to see what had come out because it was so big.
So I sat up, slowly, and then - WHOOSH! - a flipping over, compression, release, turning over feeling happened in my abdomen and another huge object shot out of me like a torpedo. And then INSTANT relief. Powerful, overwhelming, beautiful relief. I've never felt anything so good. I felt I'd been reborn and had a new body. The exhaustion even seemed to go away. I felt like I'd immediately returned to normal, that everything sick, dead, and bad had come out of me, and my body was new, healed, and wonderful. I couldn't believe how the fast the change from pain to relief had happened. It was like a magical potion.
After Friday, I had cramping and bleeding very much like - surprise! - a heavy period. It lasted about three days. Every day after that, I felt stronger and stronger. I was even able to go swimming and have sex later that week. It was surprising, but one of the first feelings I had after the miscarriage was that I was ready to get pregnant again. I was inexplicably excited and giddy about it. Lortab? Inspiration? Hormones? No clue. It seemed that most of my friends who had experienced miscarriages had had D&Cs that were a lot more controlled and less violent. I definitely hope to never go through what I went through again, but the recovery was undeniably amazing, and it felt great to have all that strength and power to heal already within me. And we saved a ton of money by not going to hospital. Go me!"
