Why blog now?
I've put off starting this blog for a long time. My first miscarriage was in October, 2000, and I had been keeping blogs since long before that. (I started my first one in 1998.) At the time of the miscarriage, I had already started a mostly-private pregnancy blog, so it naturally morphed into my "working through miscarriage" blog. But only until I didn't need it anymore, and then I archived everything on my hard drive and deleted it from the Internet. It was a very private blogging experience, anyway, no comments or links to anyone else. I was using it for my personal grief processing, I wasn't looking for a community.
Of course, the real problem was, I wasn't ready to identify myself as infertile, or a miscarrier. After that first loss, the doctor counseled me (as they almost always do) that miscarriage is very common, and that the next time would probably go better, and of course I wanted to believe that. I didn't even press to have the tissue tested after the D&C, because I couldn't believe something so horrible could happen to me twice.
Now, of course, four more miscarriages later, I surely would like to know what caused that first one. But hey, it's way too late now. And I was too out of it to ask for testing then, especially when I was holding onto the hope that I would be one of the "many" women who miscarried and then went right on to have a healthy pregnancy.
It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea of myself as a person with a fertility problem. To accept the idea of my husband and myself as a couple who maybe couldn't have children. Even after the second miscarriage, when we visited the RE for the first time, I hadn't really accepted that view of myself, of us. I guess it was an issue of self-perception, self-definition. I never looked for a support group, either, because at the time it would have seemed too much like identifying myself as one of "those" women.
Anyway this is not really my story, not the way I want to tell it, but I thought I should put down in writing why I'm starting this blog now, after all this time resisting. Even now, years after I've accepted the fact that I have a problem, I keep putting this blog off, thinking, "I don't want to start an infertility blog, I want to start a pregnancy blog." Well, who knows if that'll ever happen? In the meantime, I'd like a place to keep track, and be honest, and I can't do that on the blog that my mother-in-law (and most of my family) reads, for reasons that will probably become clear later.
Besides, I know myself. I'll keep this blog up better if I do it for the Internet instead of just for myself.
So here we go.
Of course, the real problem was, I wasn't ready to identify myself as infertile, or a miscarrier. After that first loss, the doctor counseled me (as they almost always do) that miscarriage is very common, and that the next time would probably go better, and of course I wanted to believe that. I didn't even press to have the tissue tested after the D&C, because I couldn't believe something so horrible could happen to me twice.
Now, of course, four more miscarriages later, I surely would like to know what caused that first one. But hey, it's way too late now. And I was too out of it to ask for testing then, especially when I was holding onto the hope that I would be one of the "many" women who miscarried and then went right on to have a healthy pregnancy.
It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea of myself as a person with a fertility problem. To accept the idea of my husband and myself as a couple who maybe couldn't have children. Even after the second miscarriage, when we visited the RE for the first time, I hadn't really accepted that view of myself, of us. I guess it was an issue of self-perception, self-definition. I never looked for a support group, either, because at the time it would have seemed too much like identifying myself as one of "those" women.
Anyway this is not really my story, not the way I want to tell it, but I thought I should put down in writing why I'm starting this blog now, after all this time resisting. Even now, years after I've accepted the fact that I have a problem, I keep putting this blog off, thinking, "I don't want to start an infertility blog, I want to start a pregnancy blog." Well, who knows if that'll ever happen? In the meantime, I'd like a place to keep track, and be honest, and I can't do that on the blog that my mother-in-law (and most of my family) reads, for reasons that will probably become clear later.
Besides, I know myself. I'll keep this blog up better if I do it for the Internet instead of just for myself.
So here we go.
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