Life after my miscarriage

TW: Pregnancy loss and the subsequent things that come with it.

In my last letter, I had written about having lost an early pregnancy. This was written about a week after I had started miscarrying, and I write this now about about two weeks after that letter. A few days ago, I “completed” the miscarriage, which is the term used to indicate that the hCG levels (the hormone that indicates a pregnancy) in my body have lowered, that my body is back to “normal.”

I took a home pregnancy test to confirm the above — even though it was obvious to me what had happened, and although it’s still displaying a faint “positive” line — and it felt like such whiplash to be told by my pee that I was no longer carrying a baby.

Well, a couple of days after my spotting stopped, my period started back up and it’s way heavier than it usually is. Which is heavy enough. (I once bled so much, my menstrual cup overflowed and blood dripped down my leg in front of a coworker and I had to waddle home on the Tube and DLR in my wide-leg pants, which thankfully, were a very dark grey that was almost black. I started wearing incontinence pads during the early days of my period after this incident.)

I find it a little insane that no one tells girls what to expect from something so common as pregnancy, of which one in like, four or five ends in miscarriage. The only sex education I really ever remember getting from my private all-girls Catholic school was an anti-abortion film called The Silent Scream, where it showed the process hidden behind a flimsy curtain, presumably to deter us from having any sex at all.

We had biology lessons, of course. But learning about important parts of your body through diagrams can make one feel quite detached from your own vessel. When I met up with a few girls I went to high school with a few years after we graduated from high school, they reminded me that I once told a group of them to try and look at their own vagina with a hand mirror, because a book called Deal With It! released by gurl.com (I miss it everyday) advised it was good to learn about your own body parts. I had no recollection of this… erm, encouragement on my part, but I still stand by it. Countless posts on Twitter and Facebook by people with such limited biological and sexual knowledge is, for lack of a better word, concerning.

Anyway, my point is: no one talks about any of this. It’s such a disservice to not educate young women about their bodies because it’s felt so uncomfortable to do so. I obviously knew how conception happens, but I had no clue about my pregnant body beyond that. I knew I shouldn’t eat alfalfa sprouts or sushi and that I should take folate (thank you, The Princess Diaries), but other than that, I was so clueless. Imagine how much panic-scrolling on Reddit I had to do when I started miscarrying.

My body was so fatigued — all I wanted to do was nap — and it came at such an unfortunate time, as I had finally started working again, albeit part-time. My mood was at a low that was comparable to that of my worst depression. I didn’t want to see anybody, and so I had to cancel on people. My need to be liked was overridden by the overwhelming sense that nothing really mattered anymore.

And like, we didn’t even plan on the pregnancy. Our first try, we weren’t tracking ovulation or anything, so the pregnancy didn’t take. I was late for a few days, but my period came and that was that. We received a positive result after the second time, and we were floored. And just as we had started wrapping our heads around the big change about to happen in our lives, it was over.

So, I’ve been a jumble of emotions and, really, I just feel a lot of confusion and, in many ways, grief. Everyone has been really nice and supportive. I felt a bit weird writing about it, but because I did, I’ve connected with a number of friends and acquaintances who have graciously shared their own experiences, some of which I never even knew they’d gone through. No one talks about it, and I don’t think it’s about shame or embarrassment. It’s kind of the sort of sadness and loss that is so hard to explain unless you’ve been there, too.

When you find someone who understands, though, there’s a little feeling of relief, almost. As though you’ve been waiting for someone who got it, beyond empathy and the general care a friend would extend to you. Though very much appreciated, it’s really so different when you feel your grief and loss is seen and understood by someone else, innately and completely.

I told Mark that maybe I didn’t want to try again if, after the next one, we lost the baby again. I truly was unprepared for the heavy weight that came with this loss. I really don’t think I want to go through it again more than once again. A woman on Reddit miscarried 14 times before she had her baby. I do not have the strength to go through that, nor do I want a child that badly. And I don’t mean to sound flippant, but it’s true. My life does not feel incomplete without a baby.

We’ve always sort of discussed having children in a quite casual way: “If it happens, it happens.” Don’t get me wrong, we’ve discussed it at length. This world is so cruel. But what I mean is that I would feel happy about my life with Mark without a baby, and I would feel happy, too, with one. They would just be very different lives, but I’d be happy all the same. It wouldn’t be incomplete, as such.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get back to normalcy as best I can. As I mentioned, I started working (as an art collections manager for a private collector) and I have a few commissions I need to work on, and some websites I’ve been building. If I ever manage to find the will, I would like to go to my studio more frequently. The deadlines are usually kind of drive enough for me. I simply do not want to explain to people that the reason I’ve been M.I.A. is that I lost a pregnancy. Still, sometimes, all I want to do is stay in bed.

These are the things that have occupied my brain in the idle moments:

1. Yellowstone — Somehow I thought this was going to be ““prestige”” T.V., but it is essentially a soap opera for cowboys and conservatives. The family dynamic reminds me so much of The Righteous Gemstones, except somehow the Gemstones are less morally corrupt than the Duttons? Funnier, too. Do I recommend it? Not really, lol. But it was a good enough series to fall asleep to.

2. The Wheel of Time — Ever since the show got canceled, I’ve started reading the series by Robert Jordan. There are 14 books and I’m on the fifth book, The Fires of Heaven, which is over 900 pages. I’ve also put the series in the background when I work, and I’m now on my fourth rewatch, lol.

   

   If anybody has a rec for a similar show, please let me know, though I’ve probably watched it already.

3. Okuntakinte!!! — Listen. I followed this man when he began documenting his journey towards assisted death in the Netherlands and launched something called The Last Supper Project, where he dines with strangers to share his last days. It appealed to my tendencies to find beauty in pain and connection, despite the sadness and hopelessness. HOWEVER. This man’s numerous scams and grifts and controversies have been meticulously documented by a number of people and diligent researchers.

   

   In the last week, he: a) got engaged to a man he met at one of his supper club dinners (which is called Fucked Up Individuals, named after the clothing line by his “best friend” Illi, who he runs it with, and which costs €150 per head), b) traveled to Poland to see this fiancé, without a valid visa, and got caught the German border with weed he’s brought with him from Amsterdam and then, got sent back to Poland and was detained there, and c) is no longer seeking medically assisted death, even though it turns out he never qualified for it anyway. It’s a lot.

4. Cooking good dinners — So, Mark’s got a 9-to-5 as a garden hand at a place in North London, and I’ve been doing a lot of meal prep for dinner and lunch. I wrote in a recent Instagram post that I can’t be assed to cook elaborate meal for myself (literally had chopped tomatoes and a can of tuna for lunch), but I do enjoy making sure Mark’s well-fed and nourished. I will make a post on the meals on our rotation, if that’s interesting. Though, let’s be honest, I’ll probably write one anyway, even if it wasn’t interesting.

   

5. Mobile games — unfortunately, I’ve been on my phone a lot, playing games. I don’t even want to say what games because they’re not even that good, but I’ve enjoyed the distraction. I will say I spent money on them, and this admission feels like the most private thing about me that I’ve bared, even though that’s obviously not true.

I’ve also been in the middle of The Artist’s Way, which I feel like I need to restart because I feel I’ve been quite uncommitted to it… like, understandably, as my life has been a little crazy. But I think this coming week is the week I try to reset and try to do it again from the top. I’ve only been doing it for three weeks (out of 12!) anyway, so no big loss. It feels like the kind of thing I need to take seriously for it to “work” though I have been doing the Morning Pages more or less regularly.

I’m a little sorry this has turned a little bit into a trauma dump. I think my big vision for this newsletter was to share about the media I’d been consuming, and really thinking about art and culture in the way that I had been when I was doing my masters. And then writing about it. Like a real intellectual (lol).

But, real life doesn’t really allow for a lot of these deep thoughts. Or they haven’t been lately. Apart from the aforementioned Big Drama in my life, I was also unemployed for three months (goodbye savings in my ISA), and before that, all I did was work (full-time and onsite) or paint, and quite frankly, encompassing all of that, I was feeling really quite torn up about the world, and really guilty that with everything happening, sometimes all I felt was really fucking lonely.

I know it will take a bit of time before I “get over” all of this, but, thanks for reading all of that, if you read it. And I hope you are doing well, despite everything.

* An earlier version incorrectly worded to say “one in four of five” pregnancies end in miscarriage. It's one in four or five, depending on the source I read.