The Pieces of a Dream

I'm a fairly private person, as is my husband. We don't typically share intimate details with others, not even necessarily with our family. But when hopes are dashed and emotional and physical pain is so palpable that we NEED to tell people, we have been sharing, little by little. Slowly we've began to tell people that we had a miscarriage.
It's with a little fear and trembling that I write this a couple days before Mother's Day. It is not my intent to make anyone feel like they cannot celebrate with joy and thankfulness the gift of motherhood they have been given. I want anyone to do that! I also want you to share the aggravations of motherhood and the sorrows of motherhood without any measure of guilt. God knows that you should be celebrated every single day of the year (thinking back to the many things I put my own mother through). Thank you, moms, for your selfless giving.
I'm writing this because I know that I am not alone. There are others out there who have struggled to start a family, as we have, and grieved through miscarriages, as we recently experienced. The pain is felt even more acutely around this time of the year when we think about our mothers and a dream that hasn't happened for us yet. (Or perhaps a continuation of a dream if you already have little ones, but have been wanting more.)
We really tried our best to be cautiously optimistic when we finally (after nearly 2 years) saw a positive pregnancy test result. I have always been aware that miscarriages are common and that I would be a likely candidate to have one or more miscarriages in my life. We tried to keep the dream somewhat distant, but it was hard not to talk about it, think about the possibilities, and wonder what life would bring us. The reality of the situation began to become more and more real with the typical pregnancy symptoms I was experiencing. I was just a week away from my first check up date when the miscarriage happened.
My first thought was just, "Darn." I probably sighed out loud. I told Korben (my husband). He said he was sorry. It took several minutes for the sadness to hit, but when it did, it hit hard. I didn't go to work that day. I spent two and a half hours in the doctor's office getting every test done imaginable to simply confirm my suspicions were correct: miscarriage. Korben went to work that day as it was a very important and busy day in the office. He didn't even have time to think about it until the following day. It hit him hard too. He left work early that day. Then we both knew: miscarriages are not something that you can easily brush off and keep moving on. There is grief from a dream that ended. There was the beginning of life that didn't last long, but I tried not to think of that aspect too much. Grieving a dream is easier than grieving a life. But like any death, especially an early death, you lose a life AND the potentiality of what else that life could have brought.
There's also the physical pain of it. The first week I thought the emotional pain was worse. But when I took some medicine over the weekend that put me in LABOR PAINS and a trip to the ER, I realized that there is some real and serious physical pain (the worst pain of my entire life). I was curled up in a ball on the nasty floor of the ER waiting room, loudly groaning in pain and attracting the attention of everyone else in the waiting room. This is not how an introverted, private person typically deals with anything except that I thought I was dying so I wouldn't have to deal with the embarrassment afterwards. Because the medicine didn't do the trick (and no way was I going to take any more doses of it), I had to schedule a D&C, a surgery. More missed days of work, more pain to recuperate from.
The physical pain makes it hard for me to forget, to move on, and to bury myself in my work. It's a constant reminder that I lost something. It also makes me question whether or not I really want to do this again. Because, if I'm honest, the whole getting pregnant and birthing a child just seems like a necessary evil to start a family (those labor pains were no joke!). I don't have that magic "pregnancy-bug" that some women get. The most ideal type of delivery is the kind that comes right to my door (pizza, for example. Why is the stork-thing not a real thing?).
So there comes a point when you're just tired of crying. Tired of thinking about it. Tired of having anxiety around people who don't know what happened and you don't want to suddenly have "a moment" that makes coworkers or complete strangers feel awkward. It actually feels good to just get the story out and let people know, but I can tell you that it is hard to do this without having another breakdown and ugly cry (thank goodness for text messages). At this point in our grief process we're kind of just done with the whole thing. It's been a two-week process so far. But grief doesn't really speed up if I will it to. Talking about it helps some, but I know there may still be some "moments" in the future (Mother's Day weekend comes to mind).
If you are sitting, surrounded by the pieces of a recently shattered dream, wondering if you should collect the pieces and try again or leave them where they lie and pursue something else, allow yourself to be sad, to ask the difficult questions, and to be okay with the pain. The answers to your questions don't have to be answered today. Korben and I are left with more questions now than when we first started. It looks like the road ahead may be more difficult than we anticipated. And that's where I'm going to end this! The story of a miscarriage is not about giving up or finding hope, it's about dealing with grief and not knowing what's next. But we are certainly not alone. Love to all of my struggling sisters (and brothers!) dealing with this pain.

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 109:16