Wednesdays

Wednesdays are hard. I was born on a Wednesday (Wednesday's child is full of woe, how pleasant is that old poem? I'd like a rewrite, please), but that's not why. Wednesday is the day I had my surgery that removed my dysfunctional ectopic pregnancy. Four Wednesdays ago at this time I was still pregnant. Four Wednesdays ago, about an hour from now, I was under anesthesia and becoming not-pregnant.

Wednesdays tend to be a day of wound re-opening. I am ok during the day, when I am busy with my new teaching job. But in the evening, I can't help but still dwell on the fact that just four weeks ago I was pregnant (albeit knowingly on my way to a surgical miscarriage of sorts, and so aware that it was short-lived). I cry a lot on Wednesdays.

Physically, four weeks later, I am 95% ok. I am still sore a bit at my site where the tube and pregnancy left my body. My muscles are still a little pissed off at the trauma from the surgery and my not-so-stellar recovery. But I can walk normally now and I can even go up stairs at a brisk, bouncy pace. I am not in pain and can almost forget that just a few weeks ago I was on heavy painkillers and stuck in bed.

Emotionally, four weeks later, I am barely passing. I would put my emotional grade at a 68%. I can hold it together at work for the most part (except for after school today, when the guidance staff put out an email of grief resources for students going through family tragedies, and it hit a little too close to home to my own grief for the baby that wasn't meant to be). But when I get home and have space to think, it's hard. I think about how I have de-pregnified my existence. How I took the baggie of pretzels out of my purse because I don't need a snack to not feel nauseous anymore. How when I find the little box of ginger candies in my purse it makes me want to cry because they aren't necessary for daily living anymore. How when I cleaned out a tote bag for bringing my stuff to school I came across the pregnancy book I bought when on the business trip with Bryce outside of Boston--I wanted so badly to have something new and mine and related to my pregnancy, as though it would somehow be a magical talisman to keep my ill-fated pregnancy afloat. It went into the little room, the mythical baby's room, where all my pregnancy books, and picture books, and board books that we used to read to my belly during our short period of being pregnant reside for the moment. Our house is pretty much pregnancy-free. I am enjoying the last of my glass of wine right now, and even that makes me sad--four weeks ago I wasn't drinking wine because I was pregnant. While I enjoy my wine and my margaritas on Friday nights, even that pleasurable vice comes with a twinge of grief. I wish I wasn't drinking right now. I wish I was actually going to be 11 weeks on Saturday, instead of expecting my period. (I'm holding onto the hope that maybe the fact that I was pregnant, no matter how briefly, might reset my dysfunctional menstrual cycle. Maybe I'll ovulate this month. Ha.) It's amazing how many little reminders I find that I once had it in me to believe I was a miracle and that, for a short time, I was the miracle. I think they're mostly removed and displaced though.

At some point, all of these things will come back out as we plan for our next attempt with our frozen embryos. But right now I am not ready. I am still in a state of mourning for my brief pregnancy that felt much longer than it actually was. I enjoy my wine but taste the bitterness that is knowing I can drink wine because we didn't quite make it to our miracle. I can't help but wonder, when will Wednesday just be Hump Day, a celebration of the weekend that is almost here? When will it not be a painful reminder of the Wednesday when our hopes of being an exception in a good way were excised along with our ill-fated pregnancy and my tube? Soon, I hope. It gets a little less jagged every week. But this week, this fourth weekly anniversary of the end of something that had already gone wrong, I can still feel the stabbing pain of loss. I guess I can look forward to the transition from stab wound to blunt object.