Wanting First and Third

The early pregnancy days are so, so hard. There's a constant second guessing and worry as symptoms come and go. I've been through this before and it turned out ok, so I'm not as completely terrified as I was in the past, but it's still anxiety provoking. Bleeding keeps coming and going. I promised myself I would stop peeing on things once the FRER test line got darker than the control, but the bleeding threw that plan out of the water and I'm back to testing. They mostly bring comfort.

I went to my first pregnancy after loss support group meeting Monday night. Normally I wouldn't join anything until after the first ultrasound, because the risk of having to un-join feels far too high. This time, I'm trying to be both hopeful and proactive in keeping myself occupied until the ultrasound. The other ladies were nice. All had been through one second tri loss. A few had experienced a first tri loss, too. I was simultaneously glad to be the only one with multiple later losses, and somewhat out of place. One, because I don't want to be the one reminding them that rainbow pregnancies can go wrong, too. Two, because there is something slightly different when you lose your rainbow, too, and are pregnant again after that. I'm not sure I had realized that until now.

That first post-loss pregnancy, you can reassure yourself with all the statistics that this "just doesn't happen twice." You can believe the doctors who tell you "it won't happen again!" By the pregnancy after two late losses, you know that having a 99% chance of bringing home a live baby is still a 100% chance of a dead baby for 1% of people. Further, you know what it is to be that 1%. And you know that doctors can be completely wrong, because really no one knows what the outcome will be. That post-two-loss pregnancy takes any comforts you might have held onto in the first post-loss pregnancy and further dashes them.

I hope to get to go back again in a few weeks. If there's no one home at next week's ultrasound, I can switch groups to the loss support group. Pregnancy after loss meets the first and third Mondays, Pregnancy loss meets the second and fourth. I'll keep going to one or the other, although I can tell you which I'd prefer!