Sike

1.21.2013

After dealing with the emotional and physical blow of a miscarriage in mid-December, Jay and I were finally coming to a place of acceptance and peace.  No longer fresh, our wound was developing a nice scab.  But then...


But then, I got sick and went to the doctor.  She recommended, while I was there, to have one last blood draw to ensure that my pregnancy hormone level was back to zero.  It can take a few weeks for it to leave your body, and the last time I tested it was at 9.  I reluctantly agreed to have one more needle penetrate my arm only to confirm that my womb was indeed empty.  Talk about double pain.

The next morning, I received an email from my doctor that said, "Hi Jennifer, your hormone level is 119 so it looks like you are pregnant again.  Congratulations!"  My face fell into my hands in disbelief, and also in relief.  I was totally terrified, shocked, and cautiously optimistic.  I was kind of in a trance the rest of the day, not quite sure whether to panic or allow feelings of joy to surface, or even to believe this crazy news.  How could it be, I wondered, that we could be pregnant less than a month after our miscarriage?  But then I did the math and consulted the google, and let myself believe that we were pregnant again.  

It was real.  

Jay came home that night and I shared the news, and we had the kind of emotional freak-out where we were kind of laughing but kind of crying and totally shocked and felt like someone was punking us.  Our hearts were still so vulnerable from our loss that we were walking on eggshells around feeling the joy.  But eggshells be damned, we were pregnant again and that alone made us feel like whole people again.  And being whole again felt joyous.  But then...

But then, after going in for a follow up blood draw 48 hours later, I received an email from my doctor that essentially said, "Sike."  Apparently, someone in the chain of incompetent medical "professionals" (can you tell I'm bitter?) mixed up my results and it turns out I was not pregnant.  I was not whole.  The minute those words entered my consciousness, our nicely healing scab was violently ripped off, exposing our wound again, bloody and raw, like it had just happened.  Turns out we were indeed being punked.  

Even though this wasn't a real pregnancy, it offered us the much needed hope of a real pregnancy; it was a beacon of light in this otherwise dark time.  Learning that we were not pregnant after believing we were for 48 hours has set us back a few weeks in our healing.  It feels so cruel, like we've been intentionally stabbed in the gut by a benevolent and loving God.  I know that the whole story has yet to be written, and I have deep and abiding faith that our story will eventually include children when the time is right, but man does this hurt.  

So in the wake of this healing setback, all I want to do is escape; I want to escape my skin, my house, my job, my city, my state, and every boundary I know.  Not to escape or deny the pain, but to wander and wonder at things/places/people that are outside of my norm.  I just want to go someplace where I can be anonymous and find solace in the simple things again.  So that's what I'm gonna do.  By the grace of this benevolent and loving God, I had a sudden opportunity to go to Seattle for a few days to kick around, get lost in the misty beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and hopefully... heal.  But then...

But then, it fell through.  

SIKE!  I leave on February 18th.  Stay tuned for stories and pictures.  

4 comments:

Heather D. said...

Yay for Seattle!!! Glad to see you back on the blog train - can't wait to catch up.

Jen said...

Thanks Heather, can't wait to see you!

Unknown said...


Just catching up with blog reading... I am so sorry to learn of your loss. It’s courageous of you to write about things that are often hard to talk about. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Enjoy Seattle! You deserve a break.

Jen said...

Thanks for your words, Laura. I appreciate it.