the pieces

I'm still picking myself up after being bitch-slapped by last week. Partly, the telling is too exhausting, partly I'm now very wary of telling because of events at work last week. In dot points:

- diagnosed via a letter? Or maybe not. Seems to have been a hospital mistake...

- mucked up a work thing. Then made it worse. To the point that I've now been told my duties have been changed. Yes, yes, my job is not on the line here, they are all very understanding. But I'm kicking myself (and frustrated at being left out of the "what do we do with a problem like maria" discussion) nonetheless. There's nothing to make you feel like an incompetent crazy-lady than people treating you like one.

- best friend has had her baby, and he is alive and well - Yay! But whoa - intense emotion-bubbles. Thankfully she's the kind of friend I can weep on (and who was there to be wept on when Z was born).

- oh, I miss Z so much. More than the baseline, everyday, where is my baby missing. Big peaks of "I want her here", "I wish she was making 15-month old noises", "maybe she'd be wearing the trashy-fabulous gold sequined baby-sneakers that El Prima bought her for Mardi Gras by now" etc. At least I've seen her star again the last couple of nights - for a couple of weeks there I couldn't pick it out, and felt so lost without her.

- went to see stand up comedy to feel better, ended up laughing so hard I hit my tooth on the chair in front and broke it. (Yes, I have enormous front teeth) And it was the same tooth I chipped in the accident, which has been repaired three times, but is still weak. Gah.

The intensity-knob on all of the above has since been turned down, thank god, and I'm feeling much saner as a result. Suffice to say, I'm still waiting on the results about the molar pregnancy thing, but my doctor reckons it is pretty unlikely given that my HCG levels seem to be dropping rapidly. Tooth is fixed, thanks to delightful dentist recommended by best friend. Work thing is okay - not my preferred outcome, but I have let the colleague in question know that next time I'd like to be included in the conversation. It's all back down to a crappy but manageable level.

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and kind words, and especially for the various offers to kick the universe in the balls for me (but said nicely). You are all ace. xxxh

Blighted

This morning's scan showed not much more than Thursday's - the beginnings of a yolk sac, but nothing more, and the gestational sac itself was way behind the size it should be by now. This means (according to our doctor) that it's a blighted ovum, "though that doesn't mean there was anything wrong with your eggs", he added helpfully.

So what now? Wait to miscarry naturally, or a suction curretage to speed things up. Our doctor recommended the second option, because apparently for miscarriages after 6 weeks, they are often incomplete and require a curretage anyway. Gah. As my best mate put it, I want neither of these options.

I've cried so much today, and now it has peeled back into a white hot rage - at our stupid extortionately expensive clinic, my stupid body, our stupid car, every stupid f$#ing 4WD on the roads, the ridiculous car-dependent culture I live in and this stupid little thing that was persistent enough to stick around through all that bleeding, but not persistent enough to grow into a baby. And which is still making me nauseous and giving me sore boobs. It is a destructive, petulant, three-year-old anger and yet I can't throw enough things to satisfy it, and calming adult voices only infuriate it. I'm not a very nice person to be around at the moment, as El Prima has found out.

Please don't tell me any stories about blighted ova you have heard of that grew into lovely healthy babies - we've already put this scenario to our doctor, and with three scans, he is 100% certain that this one's going nowhere. That doesn't mean I'm taking his advice and booking in for the procedure. At the moment, the idea of bleeding my guts out is almost appealing.