Trying to Conceive after Stillbirth/Recurrent Miscarriage/Late Loss

[Tildy]

Hi girls,

My posts here are going to have to get more few and far between, because sitting on a computer chair seems to be the worst for this pelvic disorder business. So friggin' awesome to be a computer programmer then, huh? At least both of my offices have desks that can be adjusted to standing position, but how fun was it to stand 8 hours today? Another reason to miss being a teacher.

Today I want to talk to Teagz! I think you need to have a serious (but loving!) talk with DF, lest your different grieving patterns drive you apart. It's totally normal and common, what the two of you are going through, but sadly, it's also totally common for us men and ladies not to understand each other about it. We think differently to begin with, and since you were carrying Jayvan, there is a lot more for your very different female thinking/emotions to deal with.

I started seeing my grief counselor immediately after losing Beiron, and right away to the second session I took DH with me. Even though it had only gone a week and a half or so since the miscarriage, I noticed he was already trying to "fix" or "distract" me. That is so VERY my DH. This is a man who once sat at the other side of the room and stared silently at me when I was bawling my eyes out over something, and when I eventually burst out, "How the hell can you just sit there and stare at me instead of coming over here and holding me?" he answered, "because whenever I hug you when you're crying, you just cry harder! I only make it worse!" It made perfect sense, and yet it was so wrong!

I believe this is not only VERY my DH, but VERY VERY male. When you start to cry, Teagz, DF panics and feels that it's his job to somehow make you stop. You're sad, and he thinks it's his job to make you happy. He might also feel guilty for not being as sad as you, so making you instantly happy will not only fulfill his DF duty but also assuage his guilt. He might try to fix this by encouraging you to move on and be positive, or, if he's like my DH was, he'll just try to distract you. Sit on the other side of the room, ignore the crying, and say "What nice weather it is! Let's go for a walk! Hey, that movie we wanted to see is out! Should we ask Alice and Bob is they want to hang out tonight?" After a week or so of this, I could see exactly what was going on, and could also see that I would strangle somebody if it didn't stop.

So DH came with me to the grief counselor, and she was very straightforward with him: You cannot fix her. She needs to cry, and she's probably going to for a while. You are not a failure as a husband if you can't make her stop; on the contrary, if you continue attempting to make her stop, you will hurt her even more. Just hold her and listen until SHE decides she's done crying for today and that it's time to do something else. Yes, hugging her and holding her will probably make her cry harder -- this is a COMPLIMENT to you. She feels comfortable breaking down completely in your arms -- and you're helping her drain the "poison" that absolutely, positively needs to be drained. The time frame before she stops crying every day, she told him, is more likely to be several months than several weeks. If she still won't get out of bed in the morning 3 months from now, she told him, THEN you can start to worry.

This is exactly what he needed to hear. I am glad it was her that said it, because she phrased it better than me, plus that he BELIEVED it much more than if I had said it. My DH immediately became much better, and has continued to improve since then, and my ability to calmly tell him what I need -- instead of getting frustrated and angry with him and not even quite understanding why -- has improved greatly, because I understand even better now that even when he's doing the completely wrong thing, it's because he thinks what he's doing is best for me. We acknowledged from the beginning that I was much sadder than he was, but that detail was never really important.

The counselor was right, that it took about 3 months before I definitely saw a long-term improvement in how I felt. Oh, there were lots of short-term improvements, but they were always followed by crashes. And since I got a BFP 3 months after losing Beiron, I cannot honestly say if the improvement would have been the same if I hadn't been pregnant again so quickly. And even so, as I'm sure you understand, I'm not "all better" now, and I won't be all better even after Kebab is born. I never really will be -- even if in the future I might cry over what I've been through once a year rather than once a week. And I believe DH understands that part, too.

So I hope that there's something in there that can help you explain a little to your DF -- and help you understand him better. I firmly believe that he is afraid of you continuing to be sad because it would mean he has failed; that he's trying to do what's best for you but that it's kind of the opposite of what you need. Your grief is very much like a puss building up in your body, and you need to be able to drain that ooze out of you by crying and pondering and being sad for a while now. Otherwise, if you bottle it up, even for DF's sake, 10 years from now it might explode in your face when you least expect it... and THAT, I can assure you, is not fun. That's what I did with 4 or 5 other traumatic experiences in my life, bottling them up because my mom or my ex or someone else wanted me to be a tough Minnesota Lutheran and pretend I was happy -- but then when I lost Beiron, all of that un-handled grief came up to the surface as well, and I was suddenly handling 5 painful experiences all at once.

If nothing else, maybe he can understand that Jayvan was due -- what, in May? So there are still 4 months left in which your life will be very different from what your heart had vividly imagined.

I hope you don't think I'm naggy or long-winded or out of line with my sermoning, but I hate to think of that kind of irony where two people make each other sad with behavior that actually comes from them loving each other!