1 day post m/c

My unborn baby died. That's the first time I've been able to express that without euphemisms. I still can't say it out loud, but I can type it. I don't know why I can't say it. I can say he's gone, I can say I miscarried, but I can't say he died.

I had great beta numbers. I'd seen a heartbeat. I'd seen the progress from a fetal pole to an identifiable human-like body. I saw that little body moving on a screen. This wasn't supposed to happen.

I wasn't supposed to pace the floor, breathing through cramps, for another 6 months. It wasn't time for me to have to reach between my legs and catch what came out of me. To have strawberry-sized clots coming out of my body, blood alternately gushing and dripping constantly like a leaky faucet. (Isn't it messed up, the way everything to do with pregnancy is compared to the size of fruit?) To get to have the maternity pads to soak up the blood.

I had my first "big-girl" ultrasound (abdominal rather than transvaginal) while they were checking to see if my uterus was retaining any products of conception. I almost asked the doctor if he thought Juniper had been crocheting in there or something, and had left behind a scarf. What an effed up term, "products of conception".

Although I'd already passed the "POC" before I had my u/s, it was clear that Juniper had already died long before even the spotting started. My beta was only 3,535, which is nowhere near the levels it should have been for me being 11w3d. Juniper had died sometime in the 3 weeks since my last u/s, and I'd been walking around with deadbaby inside me.

Except for a couple of incidents, I have been eerily (and I know unnaturally) calm. I know this for the coping mechanism that it is. When I'm ready to be able to grieve, I will. I just can't right now, I don't think I can handle it right this moment, while I'm still cramping and bleeding and wanting to just eat Raisin Bran.

And that's messed up, too. Every morning when I'd have my Raisin Bran, I'd pat the little firm place on my lower belly, and tell Juniper how Mommy was eating healthy just for him. And then I'd snort at myself for talking to a fetus who couldn't hear me yet. Eating Raisin Bran today just wasn't the same.

Because the remains of what had been inside my womb passed into my hands while I sat on a toilet in triage, and basically looked like a 3-4 inch, cylindrical mass of bloody grey and red tissue, I don't actually know what gender Juniper had been. I still feel like it was a boy, and had a name picked out for him: Samuel Alexander. I love those names, and now I can never use them. Even if I get pregnant again someday and have a boy, I feel like I already had a child who bore those names, as stupid as that might sound. When I wrote online, I called my baby Juniper; in the privacy of my home and in my thoughts, I called him Sam. So how could I have another Sam?

This entry is as disjointed as my thoughts. I guess that's appropriate.