Collateral Damage

If you think that the only shit to clean up after a miscarriage is of the psychological nature, you are wrong.

Here's what else there is:

-A baby bump to get rid of, without a baby to make it worth it. I've been thin my whole life, and I'm not going to lie, I've liked it that way. I was just -- just -- recovered physically from H's birth to the point where I recognized myself last fall. Then IVF, 1.5 trimesters of pregnancy and all the wine and ice cream sundaes I drowned my sorrows in afterward...and I'm not thin. I feel horrible, and I know I don't look like a thin person, and the worst part of that is there is no apparent explanation for it. I sort of want to have a t-shirt made that says "I'm fat because I had a miscarriage." I know this all sounds very vain, but there it is.

-As a result, wardrobe issues to contend with. As soon as the procedures were over, I wanted back in normal clothes. I would literally burn my maternity clothes if I didn't think there was a modicum of chance that we may still use a surrogate, and it might cut costs to ask her if she can wear some of the clothes we have. But I'm definitely not back in my normal clothes, either -- at least not the sizes I was wearing last fall. So I've had to buy fat clothes, and let me tell you, it is physically painful to do this.

-Bills to pay. There's a whole big billing mess with my fertility clinic that I might make you suffer through at some point; the short story is that they wouldn't actually take the insurance plan they said they took when I signed up for it, so we ended up owing $1,300 to them this year for the pregnancy monitoring. And other bills keep trickling in. I just received one from the perinatologist's office for $400+ for two ultrasounds; it's incorrect, so I am now in a super fun phone war with them to correct it. Oh, and my insurance company is still dragging their heels on paying out for the laminaria procedure pre-D&E, because apparently they think just for fun I went to the hospital one evening to have seaweed sticks shoved in my cha cha so they could safely remove my dead baby. I can't tell you what it does to my soul to have these arguments with these people. What I really want to do is tell them to pound sand.

-Stuff still in the attic. There are bins upon bins of stuff up there that I would love to sell, but still can't, because if we do make one of these embryos into a person it will be a boy, and the thought of buying that stuff all over again makes me want to go to sleep right now. So we remain in limbo, not using those things but not free to sell them, either.

-Just the general shitiness of living in a super fertile town where everyone has lots of kids and many people seem to take that for granted. I am reminded everywhere I go that we are different, and not in an electively cool alternative/hip/indie way. Different in a mother-nature-shit-on-us way.

To counter all of this suckage, I am in the process of getting a puppy. Which isn't going to make it go away, but is going to make things a little bit cuter.

Stuck.

I haven't written, because I'm not sure what to say.

The clinic won't do it. They won't let us take my friend's other-worldly offer to carry our baby.

I can't get into the particulars -- this is a real person who has been through enough scrutiny and discussion around her reproductive system. We knew all along that she wasn't the "ideal" candidate on paper that you'd get by going through an agency. She was ideal in every other way -- every way that matters in someone you're considering putting your embryo in -- but something in her pregnancy past gave the doctors pause. And ultimately, after a lengthy review, the risks spooked the docs too much to give us the green light.

What can I say about another heartbreak? About all this torture with nothing to show? About having to say no to someone offering to make you a baby when you can't do it yourself? About the fact that we're left with four frozen embryos, and all I can think about is the fact that one of them might look like his brother H -- but we'll probably never know?

I get up every day and give it my all. I haven't missed a beat with work. I laugh and eat and read and exercise and even enjoy myself a lot of the time. My life is good. But someone is missing.