I’ve learned firsthand that miscarriage is a silent grief, one for which there is not a lot of readily available support. Of course, medically speaking, I didn’t have a miscarriage. I had a missed abortion, which almost makes it worse. I was pregnant for two whole weeks with a baby that wasn’t alive. My body did nothing to alert me of this loss other than not throw up two days in a row, which of course I took as a sign that something was wrong but was assured that I was being silly, a worry wort, a hypochondriac.

I was relieved when I threw up that third morning. And even though I couldn’t feel any movement from the baby, I allowed myself to believe that everything was fine. I trusted both my doctor and my therapist when they reassured me that it’s unusual to sense fetal movement in the sixteenth week, that lack of fetal movement isn’t even a concern until after the twentieth week. These were the last words my OB said as she placed the ultrasound wand on my belly only to find a tiny heart that wasn’t beating.

On my way to North County today, I drove past the hospital at which I was due to deliver and starting weeping uncontrollably a full three freeway exits before it appeared. Yesterday, at the doctors’ offices, I made it all the way off the elevator but not quite to registration before the tears started streaming down my face. The grief comes in waves, I do my best to ride them with grace and acceptance. Staying busy is my best defense, so for now that is the plan. Run all the errands, clean all the things.

I started seeing a therapist a couple weeks before I learned the baby had died. More than likely, the baby had already died before our first appointment together, but the purpose of our sessions was for me to undergo EMDR treatments to address the PTSD that still lingers as a result of Roux’s delivery. While that is still something I intend to pursue, the context of our relationship has changed dramatically. I’m no longer preparing for birth, I’m healing from loss.

Her office is located within the same office where I first saw images of my baby without a beating heart, where the last time I was within those walls, I underwent one of the most physically painful preoperative procedures I’ve ever experienced. Not to mention the place is spilling over with Pregnant Women, the demographic most likely to turn my stomach and bring me to tears at this particular moment.

To say I’m nervous about going is a wild understatement, but go I shall because I’m all about doing the work. Any work I can find, even if it’s hard or painful, I’m determined to come through this.

I will not be lost along with the baby.

I’ll be honest, getting ready for the day has never been something I’ve ever been really any good at doing. My thirtyfourth birthday is swiftly approaching and more than anything all I want is to feel like a grownup. And for whatever reason, part of being a grownup in my mind has always included a solid self-care regimen.

Surprisingly, in the days since being home from the hospital, I’ve taken better care of myself than I ever have. Showering upon waking, massaging cream and healing ointments into my skin, tending to my delicate and temperamental complexion, drinking lemon water throughout the day, braiding my hair before bed, even stretching before I sleep. It seems odd to say, but the truth is I haven’t felt this well in a long while.

It’s no secret that pregnancy has always been a tremendously difficult experience for me and this pregnancy was no different. As a matter of fact, I was so overcome with hyperemesis gravidarum that I wound up in the hospital needing IV fluids on two different occasions. It’s easy to live in sweats when most of the day is spent puking. These days I’m dressed almost before anyone else wakes up.

I’m sure it has something to do with self-preservation, an instinctual need to tend to my own well being in a time of great personal loss, almost as if to say that I myself am not lost. That I’m worth the few minutes it takes to wash and moisturize my face. There is gratitude in the simple act of caring for oneself, and I’m grateful to this body of mine for all that it has done, all that it has endured, and all that it will carry me through for all the rest of my days.

Sleep. I just can’t, it seems. I’m so uncomfortable, I’ve yet to find a position I’m able to maintain for any duration of time. Tossing and turning, moving from bed to couch and back again half a dozen times, and every morning rising with the dawn, unable to bear the thought of “resting” for one more second.

I have to keep myself busy, it’s the only way I can manage to get through the day. Running every errand, doing every chore, making and writing and cooking and eating, all the things to keep from doing the one thing I can’t which is think.

My mind, it is such a complicated place. We’re friends, my brain and me, but it’s not a relationship without its sordid history. It’s far too easy for me to run a rather morbid narrative in my mind, the past several days have been as dark as they come. Being still is not an option.

But how can one sleep without stillness?

I met a girlfriend for drinks tonight. I think the last time I did something like that it was 2009. These days are so strange, trying desperately to identify with my new role as newly un-pregnant. I wonder how I appear to people.

This morning I woke before the sun, well before anyone else was awake in my house. I made myself a quiet cup of coffee, my favorite kind of coffee, and sat and read and readied myself for the day. I took a pilates class at the gym. I put on makeup after I showered. These things aren’t things I used to do, but I’m pretty sure they are things I do now.

I can’t for one second sit still. I must always be going, doing, making, moving. There is no idle time. There is only time to go, do, make, move. My house hasn’t been this clean in ages!

I had intended for my return to public writing to be prompted by happier circumstance, one heralding the arrival of a new life. Instead, it is the loss of that life which brings me once again to the place where I feel as though this story needs telling. That perhaps in the telling of this story, someone will feel uplifted as I have so often felt uplifted through a story shared with me.

I’m still recovering from the surgery I had two days ago, I believe I’ll be recovering for the rest of my life. Never fully adjusting to such a loss, but how could I possibly? It is far too great a sorrow to fully overcome. Integrate, process, yes, but never overcome.

Keeping busy seems to be about all I can manage to do, buzzing about my house tending to all the little loose ends that managed to constantly escape me. Until now. Things I’ve been putting off for months, suddenly accomplished in a single day. Many such tasks were addressed today, along with all the laundry and a rather thorough cleaning of my bedroom. I even made a weaving. We also ran errands, and managed to purchase a globe, simply because we didn’t have one and I felt as though maybe we should.

Seventeen weeks is an awfully long time to live with another being inside your body, it’s hard not to become attached to the subtle ways in which the curvature of my being began to accommodate for the extra passenger. It’s shocking how quickly my body has remembered its shape from before I became pregnant, my belly already startlingly flat where once a sizable bump protruded from my abdomen. This was the most pregnant I’d ever been at this stage of pregnancy, I said often. And it was true.

So pregnant. And now, so not pregnant, with nothing but the tiniest set of footprints of a baby I’ll never know.

What a strange time.