grace

content warning: pregnancy loss / miscarriage

A month ago, I would have been eight weeks pregnant when I woke up to a spot of bleeding. By 10.30pm that evening, I was having what I would later learn to be the equivalent of labour contractions that would last until 230am. And as the first bit of blood clots passed from me, the pain stopped. And as immediate as that pain stopped, so did all other pregnancy symptoms I had been feeling before.

Based on my LMP (last menstrual period), I was 10.5 weeks. At a dating scan I did at what I thought was 7.5 weeks, I was told the bunny-shaped image was only 6 weeks 1 day with a heartbeat just on the normal range.

I now also know a lot more jargon and acronyms that I didn’t know of before with regards to conception and pregnancy.

In the days that followed the miscarriage, my body recovered very well. In fact, so well that it changed so quickly – leaving me feeling very surreal, and the pregnancy seemingly vague, like a distant memory.

Up until that point, I had experienced mild discomforts – no morning sickness or nausea, but a fair bit of indigestion, a lot of burping, a ravenous hunger that consisted of four proper meals a day of a lot of meat and vegetables and a lot of peanut butter, massive growth in my boobs and a rounding of my hips and tummy that led me to put aside any clothing with a waistline. For the most part, I was enjoying every bit of the pregnancy. And it wasn’t until a fortnight after that I would understand that the real sadness I was feeling, was that I missed being pregnant. Even if it had only been for such a short while.

Which is a lot to reckon with.

My measured self had not yet romanticised the existence of the future child, instead paying attention to every minute change in my body – a sac of cells was developing. And if you know me, you would know that I had never really desired children in the way many others do. I had and have no sense of being clucky. I have thought about raising children but I had no particular interest in birthing my own children. So for me to consciously be on a TTC (trying to conceive) journey is a lot. Even more so to find myself pregnant, losing the pregnancy, and missing being pregnant!

–

It’s the end of a big year. At work, holding two major, different rhythms – delivering on the 2020 cancelled projects in the first half of this year, and then to change gears into the new strategy in the later half – was hard work. Even harder was realising that we are all individually operating at ~20% less coming out of the last few years; so collectively we have all been operating at the compounded rate of ~20% less – compounded because in filling the gaps, there were times when some of us had to extend beyond what we had so that someone else didn’t fall.

This would probably be my biggest lesson on leadership this year.

I write more about my Next Wave specific reflections here.

And for now, I’m going to leave these thoughts here because I am certain the rest time ahead will offer a lot more eloquence. Because right now, all I can hear are the pressure valves hissing.

The string is wound real tight. And the tank, empty.

–

In the follow up ten days after, the doctor at the ultrasound wrestled with language so medicalised we forget how words embody meaning. “Everything looks good. Uh no, not that this was a good situation. *clears throat* Everything looks normal.”

My pragmatic self teased him a little. I figured naming it was better than avoiding it. But then –

“Your uterus is empty.”

is both welcomed news and an unfortunate reminder of how something so absent can be so ever present.

And I was not prepared for the fullness of those words.

–

Life constantly requires you to be in the unknown. Conceiving can feel like both the most random and the most precise occurrence all at once – and you are lulled into all the things you think you can do to improve your chances to conceive, but really – the outcome is entirely out of your hands.

I did not expect this – but in the back of my mind, it was all-consuming: tracking every symptom, marking every date on the calendar, wondering, wondering, wondering –

“am I ovulating?

“is this our window?”

“will we fall pregnant?”

“will this pregnancy stick?”

“will we be pregnant again?”

“will it hurt this much again?”

I also did not expect this – that now that I want this, that I should want this as much as I do.

And yet we all know, that we don’t always get what we want.

–

There is a kind of sadness in the undercurrent. Not so much the grief of an unborn child – but if we are to go by what we have, then what we are moving towards is looking pretty good – then it is in the heartache of unmet desire, and the impatience of the anticipation of a shared life with J and A and (x).

It is its own kind of longing.
And longing can hurt.

I did choose to tell a solid circle of loved ones about the pregnancy – which meant I had to update them after the miscarriage – which meant I had others to hold this loss with J and I. I was, and continue to be very loved and nourished through this experience.

And that is more than you can ask for.

–

But it is the end of a big year. The string is wound real tight. And the tank, empty.

And when I turn 37 on Tuesday, I intend to immerse this body in a hot bath and feed it some delicious food. It would still be a few days yet before I get to rest. But I can see it – naps, fiction, ukelele, saltwater, cooking and eating, with no where to be but in my body.

Because this year, I’m celebrating all the wonder that is the human body – to do what it needs to do, to grow and shift and shape and breathe life.

So that grace might find me.

Happy birthday Jamie.