This is too graphic for a main page entry, and it’s about my miscarriage, and passing the embryo.  But, like I’ve said before, this is my journal for me, as well as for others.  And this entry is for me, but you can read along if you want.  Just.  Be warned.

I cleaned like a madwoman this weekend.  I washed the bathroom WALLS and CEILING for crying out loud.  I was on my belly, fully extended, with a swiffer behind the bed grabbing dustbunnies.  I CLEANED. 

I joked that I was ‘nesting,’ that maybe that’s what happens with a miscarriage, it’s the same as a birth only there’s nothing to mess it up after.  I moved all of the furniture in my bedroom so that I could sweep underneath, and then put it all back in the same spot.

Yesterday, I started telling Dave how much I just HURT.  I couldn’t tell if it was gas, it felt like gas, or if I was constipated, maybe?  I rolled around on the bed as I was trying to fall asleep, bending my legs up and back, massaging my abdomen, wondering why the fuck it wouldn’t just — release.  I wanted to fart, or poop, or anything, but it hurt to bear down.  It hurt to laugh.  It just HURT.

This morning, the same thing.  I got up and ate my cereal, but not all of it.  I sat down with my tea and was hit with a wave of cramps, and thought, FINALLY, maybe now I can get some relief.  I went to the bathroom.  I read a book to try to relax, I leaned forward and back and side to side and it just hurt hurt hurt.  I bore down and…. I knew.

I felt it slide out of me like a turtle egg, small and round and pliable. I froze on the seat, knowing. Did I want to look?  SHould I?

I did.

It was as big as my thumb, so much bigger than I thought.  I could see leg buds. And arm buds.  I could see a red vein running up the back, the spine as all of my book-reading and internet-surfing has told me.  I saw the thread that connected me to it, for a brief time, and I felt dizzy.  I could tell which end was the head, which was not.  There was still a trace of a tail.  I wanted to vomit. 

I flushed, and then felt guilty.  What was I supposed to do?  I went in to the bedroom and found my pants for the day, and started wondering if the khaki was the right choice, if I would bleed more now, and while I was mentally processing that, I was parroting to Dave that "Yeah, so I passed the embryo and it was as big as my thumb" and he said "that’s not that big" and I told him I could see where the arms and legs were starting and he said "Oh, Jesus."  And I looked at him and the pants and the iron and said "I can’t go to school today."

I called in, called Deb and told her and started to cry which I haven’t done since that Friday I found out, 25 days ago.  And I called the secretary and told her that I was sorry, I know it’s late, but I just can’t make it in today.

And I came down to my now lukewarm tea, and opened up this screen, and did the only thing I know how to do when I don’t know what to do — I wrote.

In my spotless bathroom, with it’s scrubbed trash bin and bleached tub, it’s polished towel racks and scale, it’s brand new mini-blind that was hung yesterday because the other one was ‘too dirty,’ it ended. Maybe I was nesting.  Maybe I was just spring cleaning.  Either way, it’s really over.  I thought that it had happened 2 weeks ago, when the cramping was so awful and there was so much blood, that the tiny grain of rice I thought was just a glob of cells had been hidden from me in the bleeding…. and it hadn’t.  I don’t know how to feel about that, about any of it, but I know that I am having a second wave of emotions over this. 

I just…. don’t know.