Epilogue

I am - and have always been - a planner. I like lists and goals and calendars and weekly menus and star charts and generally knowing what's coming next. Which is why last week, when I miscarried our planned pregnancy, I was completely thrown off my game.

When I miscarried in March, I was devastated, yes, but that pregnancy had never been part of our plan, which made the loss of the pregnancy, in a way, easier to manage. I could remind myself that really, this pregnancy was never meant to be . Although it was a lovely surprise, at the end of the day, I knew that I had in fact been actively trying to prevent pregnancy.

This pregnancy, however, was very much planned. It was eagerly anticipated, and carried with it - quite literally - hope for the future. And when I miscarried the pregnancy last Monday, I kind of lost it (i.e. I went through the stages of denial, grief, anger, and, of course, the drinking-lots-of-wine stage. Ahem.). Basically, I spent the week in a fog. I know that part of the fog was due to the physical effects of the miscarriage (I had lost enough blood to make anyone feel loopy). But a larger part of the fog was that - poof - just like that, all of our plans for the next nine months slash two years were eradicated. I would no longer be taking the spring semester off to have our baby in early March. I would no longer be announcing our pregnancy on the blog in September and telling our family members at Thanksgiving. The study would no longer become a nursery, and I would no longer have to uncomfortably dodge alcohol at beginning-of-the-academic-year parties.

Not to mention that having had two consecutive miscarriages, I now fall into the category of women with recurrent miscarriages, which immediately makes my mind go to "infertility" and "high-risk pregnancy" and all kinds of other terrible, panic-inducing places. There is a good chance that this miscarriage is simply a coincidence - that my body simply wasn't ready to support a pregnancy two months after a miscarriage and one month after going off the pill (not to mention after having endured a decade of various eating disorders). There is, however, still a chance that this miscarriage has larger implications, and serves as a sign that I will struggle with pregnancy in the future. This thought (obviously) completely terrifies me, and I'm really having to work on not letting my mind wander there too often. Because right now, that's not a healthy place for me to be.

I'm going to the doctor on Wednesday, and I'm hoping that she'll be able to give me some answers, but from what I can tell, there's a good chance I'll come away with none - that she won't know what to tell me, or why this happened, or if I'll have problems in the future. And although I'm DYING for answers, and desperate for a plan, at this point, I'm afraid that those answers and that plan aren't in the cards - I'm simply going to have to wait.

In the midst of all this CAH-RAZY - that is, this utter lack of A Plan - I've decided that I do know two things. Firstly, I know that my body and mind need some time off - that I can't simply pick up and start trying for another pregnancy right away. Emotionally and physically, I'm not capable of going through this again in the near future. My hormones need some down-time, you know? Secondly, I know just how much I want to be a mother. I know just how much I want to see Preston as a father, and how I want to create a family that is ours - a family that doesn't belong to his family or my family, but that belongs to us - to the two of us. Because in spite of all the brouhaha that this year has brought with us, I can honestly say that I have never felt happier or more at home than I do in this marriage, and I can't wait to share that joy with a child.