There's been some interesting progress recently...

Acupuncture last night had me all stressed and strung out. I'd nearly cancelled because I really didn't want to go - my usual acupuncturist was away, and I knew I'd be with the other one. She's nice enough, and she did the post-transfer treatment, but I just don't feel like I can relax with her. She kept pushing me to talk about the loss and talk about my plans for some sort of memorial for the Caterpillar. She kept pushing the plant thing, and that's so not going to happen! I have some ideas, but I haven't talked about them with DH, so I really didn't feel comfortable talking about them with a stranger.

Poor DH... we went to bed, and he's expecting to get lucky, and suddenly he has an emotionally disturbed wife on his hands that just can't stop crying. He kept having to spin me around so I'd cry on the pillow rather than on him like normal because he didn't have a T-shirt on at the time. It's funny now that I think about it.

We talked a lot - about how I was worried about the appointment coming, that we'd have to argue and fight for what we wanted. How I was worried I'd be too upset and strung out to be able to ask the questions I needed to ask. How I was worried that the FS would be so focussed on the head stuff and moving forward that he wouldn't want me to even think about things like the spotting when I reduced the prednisone dosage... DH explained that was why he wanted me to write down the questions I have, so that he can ask them for me if I'm too upset.

We talked about councelling... and how I didn't think it would be useful at least until we'd got some medical answers back. And how I didn't think I'd be able to talk about it with a stranger when I can't even find the words to express how I'm feeling with him. I didn't even want to talk about it with the acupuncturist, so how am I going to talk about it with someone I've never even met before?

Eventually we got around to the fact that I was sick of apologising at work for not being there last week. It was making me feel as though I was apologising to the world for having my baby die. I was sick of feeling guilty because certain things at work got messed up. I was feeling guilty because our next FS appointment is on the day of the school athletics carnival and I'll only be there for half a day and I'm messing up the transport arrangements by needing to drive and the teacher who is responsible for organising the event is undergoing chemo treatment for breast cancer and I didn't want to make things more difficult for her...

And with all this I realised that I was more worried about how the miscarriage has effected everyone else rather than worrying and thinking about how it has effected myself and DH - the two main parties involved... And with that realisation the tears stopped the sense of utter confusion stopped (to some extent) and I began to feel a whole lot better.

I'm allowed to be upset, hurt, depressed, angry because my baby died. I'm not allowed to sit here and feel guilty because it kept me away from work and is throwing someone else's plans into utter confusion. Today's been a much better day as a result. I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted, and I'm just not going to let anyone pull guilt trips on me for not being there for my year 12s. It's an 11 week term and I wasn't there for one, I'm going to be there for the other 10 weeks - if they want to sulk, they can go ahead and sulk - it's not my problem!

There is something that is bugging me, however. I arrived home to find a pathology bill in the mail. Requesting doctor was my FS, date requested was the 16th, date of service was the 17th. My initial thought was that maybe the FS had actually had some testing done on the baby... no, turns out (with the help of google) that it was a pap smear. I had a pap smear done while under general anaesthetic and I didn't even know about it. I wasn't due for one, I wasn't asked if I wanted to have one, I wasn't told that it was going to happen, or that it did happen. First I knew of it was the bill turning up in the mail. It just feels odd.

BW