How am I doing right now?

 Well, I think I can honestly say that I’m doing alright. I probably don’t mean quite the same thing that you do though.

I mean that I’m sad, but it’s okay for me to be sad. I mean that, considering everything I’m going through, I’m right where I should be. I have been blessed with a sense of peace about my miscarriages. I’m still missing that baby I lost last August. I’m still sad about that loss, and now I’m sad about the most recent loss as well. This is all okay. It’s where I should be. That’s what I’m really saying.

Sometimes I think we are too hard on ourselves. We think it’s not okay to be sad, or that if we still feel sadness about something then we can’t be happy. I remember the first time I heard anyone say that bad moments don’t make bad days. It was amazing to me to realize that I could have bad moments during what would turn out to be good days for me. We make that choice. It is okay to be sad, and to have these moments. We still have the choice to let these moments ruin our days or not. We can be happy and still have those moments that make us sad. There is nothing wrong with that. It also doesn’t matter how long after our trials we still feel that sadness. In many cases I don’t think we will ever not feel sadness from the loss of a loved one. We will have moments of sadness for the rest of our lives, and that’s okay.

It is a good thing to feel sadness. Yet we act like it is bad, we hide our sadness and pretend that it’s not there.  We set a time limit on how long we are allowed to be sad, and think there is something wrong with us if we’re not ‘better’ by then. We often do this out of an attempt to make sure people we are around don’t feel uncomfortable. I think all we end up doing is not allowing people to help and comfort us.  We isolate ourselves. It is not easy or fun to reach out to other people, but it is a necessary thing for us to do. We need to serve each other, and let others serve us. I am really bad at doing this, but I’m beginning to realize just how much we need the service of others.

That was just a few thoughts that have been running through my brain for a while.

Also, it is extremely frustrating to have to wait for a negative hpt. When I take one and it’s still just that tiny bit positive, it’s like a tiny little kick in the gut. Why can’t it just be negative yet??? I would really like that. It’s almost negative, but not quite there yet. It probably will be soon.

Why I didn’t make it to church on Easter Sunday, and why the message of Easter means more to me than ever.

It's not a happy post, and it's long. You don't have to read it, and you may not like what I say. I'm writing this becasue I need to. Not because you need to read it.

Did you know you can miss someone you’ve never even met? Any mother out there who has lost a child early in pregnancy probably knows what I mean.  After two miscarriages it amazes me how much you can miss a child you never saw, never heard, never even really felt. Yet, I know how much I miss those babies. I know how hard that is. Would it be any easier or harder if I had felt my babies move, or had seen or heard their heartbeats, or had lost them later in life. I don’t know, but I think it might be harder. In the end it doesn’t matter if it’s easier or harder or what. If you lose a child, in pregnancy or after, it can break your heart. It can shatter it into a million pieces, or that’s what it feels like.

This gets me to thinking about how we’re supposed to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I don’t think the Lord expects us to live our life going through that much pain. I do recognize, however, that when I let it happen, I become more patient, humble, gentle, and forgiving as a person after going through these trials and experiences.  These trials soften me. I have no better way to explain it than that.

I hope you all had a good Easter Sunday. I can’t say that I did. You see I woke up to get ready for church and noticed I had started cramping. I had found out several days earlier that the baby I had been carrying had died, there was no longer a heartbeat. This was at my first Dr. appointment for this pregnancy. It happened the same way last time. Baby measured at about 8 weeks along for the pregnancy and no heartbeat both times. Anyway, after I ate breakfast on Easter I decided to wait a few more minutes to see if it felt like I would go on to miscarry that day or not. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that the cramps were worse and I decided to stay home from church just in case. This would turn out to be a very good decision on my part. I asked my husband to let them know I wouldn’t be there since I teach the mia maids (part of the young women’s program in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) the last hour of church. My husband got ready to go, and decided to take his motorcycle to church. I hear him start the bike, and I hear it running for a while. After some time he comes in, seems kind of mad, takes off his helmet, and goes back outside. I go out to see what had happened, and why he hadn’t left yet. Someone/something had cut all the way through his clutch (there is a line for it on the side of the bike). Without that he couldn’t drive his motorcycle at all. So he figured all this out and by this time it was half way through the first hour of church. Neither of us ended up at church, and we didn’t end up telling anybody we weren’t coming either. We both teach, so I feel a little bad that we just left our classes without teachers and without notice. I think people would understand what happened though. Later on I did end up miscarrying and it happened before church let out that day. So I definitely made the right decision in staying home. I had dinner with my parents/brother later that evening. I let them know what had happened, but we had a good dinner with them. That was my Easter. I really hope your day went better than mine.

The message of the resurrection means more to me than ever. It helps me to have that reassurance that I will have my children again. It may be in this life or it may be after, but my Savior has made it possible that I will have them again, one way or the other.

Many women in my position ask the question why. Why me, why now, why does it not happen to all those women who use abortion as birth control, or who are too young, not married, not trying or wanting to have kids, why? Part of me has wanted to ask these types of questions. My Heavenly Father, through the Spirit, has told me in no uncertain terms that I don’t need to know, and that it is okay that I do not know. He has given me a sense of peace that I won’t have the answers in this life, but that I will sometime after this life. There is a reason, whatever it might be. That reason, and knowing what it is, is not necessary for me to have. I will find my way back to Heavenly Father without it.

I think I would want to say that I have felt Heavenly Father come nearer to me because of these experiences. I, however, am coming to realize that this statement is not entirely accurate. Heavenly Father is always there for me and is always near to me. As one of my mission presidents said, Heavenly Father is only ever as far away from you as your knees are from the floor. I have come to realize that I am bringing myself closer to him. I reach out more, I get more personal in my prayers, I talk to Him more, I think of Him more, and I ask more questions of Him. Since last August I have been seeking out my Father more, and because of that I am nearer to Him.

 I also recognize that I could very easily let myself get mad at Him about all of this. It is a choice I make to not let that happen and at times it is a hard choice to make. In the end I have to remind myself that my God does not stop every bad thing from happening, but neither does He make them happen. We have to experience the bad to know the good. If God stopped all bad from happening, we would never know what good was. We live in a fallen world where sometimes things are just broken. In order for us to grow and learn, not everything that is broken gets fixed by God. This lets us learn how to fix these things ourselves, and learn to depend on God when we can’t. Every trial we have can lead us closer to or farther away from Him. Our Father in Heaven wants us to come closer to Him, but He will not force that on us. We have to choose to go to Him.

I have been reluctant to tell people about what all we have been going through. In many ways I still am. I have been told by many different people, in different ways, that I need to reach out. In other areas of my life I see where I have that need to reach out to other people, so I guess I’m trying to take the advice I’ve been given. It is not easy for me to do. Part of my reluctance is that I have a tendency to be very literal and blunt in conversations. I have come to be pretty good about not saying what pops into my mind, but then I have nothing else to say. I might smile and give a general, vague, response that people just say in that situation, but that I don’t really mean. More often I just smile and nod, at a loss as to what to say.

Sometimes when people tell me, oh I’m sorry, I look at them and think “No. You’re not sorry, you’re just saying that to be nice. You don’t know me and I can tell you’re not really empathizing with me right now.” Other times I see the sincerity in their face and I want to assure them that it’s not their fault, and that while I’m not okay right now I will be. These are the types of things I think to say, and, trust me; it is always an awkward conversation when I do. It seems the only acceptable thing to say it “thank you, I’m okay” even when that’s not true.

Then there are all of the other unhelpful, thoughtlessly said, very rude things people say. I know they are trying to be nice, or they don’t know how rude they just sounded to me. That doesn’t make me any less upset when it happens though. On my bad days, I react in a manner that is much ruder than what they have said could possibly have warranted. On my good days I say something kind of polite back and walk away. You could get anything in between. I call myself blunt, but honest to a fault may be a better way to put it. Even those little white lies that people say to make someone feel better I feel uncomfortable with. I’d rather be honest. Usually I just avoid actually answering these types of questions if my opinion would not be kind. I respond something like “I’m not a good person to ask about clothes. I have no fashion sense. Do you like it? What’s important is that you like it.” Lame response? Maybe, but it’s honest and not mean. So, however you put it, I’m socially awkward. At any rate, if we ever encounter a situation like this and you are completely thrown off by my reaction, please try and be forgiving. I am at my most awkward when I don’t know you very well yet. Really, I promise, that’s all it is.

This is also the main reason for the extremely long post. It is an attempt to let people know what happened, while (probably in vain) trying to avoid all of the awkward conversations.

After two pregnancies both ending in miscarriage I will get to start the process of going through testing to see if we can figure out what’s up. There may not be anything to find, but at this point I’d rather do the testing. I would have done it sooner, but they won’t test until either 2 miscarriages with no live births or 3 miscarriages. Those stupid statistics make show most people don’t have problems unless they fall into one of these two categories. I wish the testing was cheaper/easier and just routinely done before you have to lose pregnancies. However, that’s not the way it works.

I’m nervous of what we’re going to find out. If it’s good news, bad news, we can’t find anything wrong, it’s treatable, not treatable, or whatever, it’s still something I need to know. Only after finding out these answers will I be able to move forward and know what is next for me.