Passing Weeks
As the weeks progressed, life became a little bit easier for Elan. But there were constant reminders of her loss. As Elan stepped out of the shower one morning, she noticed that her breasts that were once swollen and enlarged through pregnancy were now shrinking and returning to their pre-pregnancy size. The areolas around her nipples had faded from their dark tan appearance and returned to their light pink color. Her swollen and slightly protruding belly began to deflate. These things reminded Elan of the joy and excitement of her pregnancy and the deep sense of loss she now felt. Work became a distraction. The constant emergencies that popped up daily filled her with some sense of purpose even though work did not carry the same weight it once had in her life. The “emergencies” did not seem as important. She became annoyed and anxious at every ping alerting her to a new email and every ring of the phone. Even so, Elan reverted to her same pattern of people pleasing and goal attainment. She came into the office early, worked through lunch, and stayed late to try to climb out of the hole that her leave for the miscarriage created. Although work was a much-needed distraction from her current pain, the constant barrage upon her return left her exhausted.
One weekday morning as Elan felt the anxiety rising her body as she tried to get ready for work, she decided that this was the day she would go for a morning run. Elan would often find an excuse not to run during the week. She often relied on her common bank of excuses to not run in the mornings of being too tired or needing to get into the office early to finish a project. She normally saved any runs for the weekend. But today was different. She almost felt like she could not make it into work unless she did something to soothe that feeling that she was about to jump out of her skin, or something was crawling all over her. She needed to run to relieve the angst. She continued the 5k run/walk program that she had started earlier. This time it was three-minute walk and seven-minute run repeated three times. It was slow. But Elan kept going. She felt each foot land one the pavement in front of the other on this crisp morning where she could see her breath. The repetition of the movement calmed Elan. As she returned home, she felt a renewed energy that she could go to work and make it through the day. She felt reenergized even if just for a few hours.
Elan arrived at work, grabbed her second cup of coffee with two sugars and two creams, powered up her computer, and turned on some music to keep the positive energy flowing. Her supervisor then walked into her office to let her know that the company fired her friend Joey. Unbeknownst to her supervisor, Joey and Elan had become quite close over the past year. Elan and Joey worked on many projects together. Elan told Joey about her pregnancy and miscarriage. Although Elan was thankful that she still had her own job and was very much aware that her friend had just received terrible news, she worried. This company Elan had been working at for only a year seemed to fire people on a weekly basis. There did not seem to be any real reasons for the constant firings except for the temperament of upper management. Elan then thought about her life decisions. She had traded in a lucrative career to work as a career counsel at a law school in a small town and now as in-house counsel at a small real estate company where she made half of her former law firm salary. She had decided to throw everything away to try to give starting a family her all. Elan went through so much medical testing, invasive procedures, and even a surgery. The IVF hormones that her husband injected into her belly and buttocks were painful and bruised her body. Elan had sacrificed her career and her body to try to have a baby. The only thing she had to show for it is the forty pounds she had gained through the years of fertility treatments and a job that seemed to let people go not on performance but on how the wind blew any given day. Elan always tried to rationalize and regroup. She thought to herself, she could only control her controllables, and the rest was outside her hands. She also thought, just keep going and put one foot in front of the other and maybe the answers would come.
The Conversation
The only conversation that gave Elan any sort of comfort was with her friend, Beth. Beth was a professor for the Veteran’s Legal Clinic at the local law school. Beth was badass even though she did not realize it or ever consider herself that. She was a veteran of the Army JAG Corps, a children’s book author, and a painter. When Elan did a brief stint at the law school as a career counselor, Elan and Beth became close friends in a short amount of time. Beth had her own struggles. She was diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age a year after they met. Elan’s only experience with colon cancer was her grandmother that was diagnosed in her mid-eighties. Elan never considered this disease one that could strike someone only ten years older than her.
Elan immediately jumped in to help her friend that needed surgery and chemotherapy. Elan helped Beth’s students and taught a few classes in the second half of the fall semester to help her friend concentrate on her health. That is the thing about loss or a surprise diagnosis, the world keeps moving. Beth’s students still needed instruction and the clinic’s clients still needed assistance. Elan continued as a career counselor and took on most of Beth’s responsibilities for no extra pay or gratitude from the administration. Elan did not care because it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, assisting a colleague almost cost Elan her job because she did not stay in her lane and know her place. Beth was cleared of cancer after two surgeries and chemotherapy and returned to the clinic the next fall.
After Beth returned to her job duties and the disheartening experience with the administration, Elan found a new job as the only in-house counsel of operations for a small real estate development firm. Because she needed new employment, she took the job at a salary that she made twelve years ago as a third-year lawyer. At the time, Elan did not mind because it would give her a new experience and less pay meant less expectations. She would have the time she needed to concentrate on the invitro fertilization procedures.
Through all this, Elan and Beth remained friends. Elan told Beth about the positive pregnancy test and texted pictures of the ultrasound images. Elan also told Beth about the miscarriage. When Elan spoke with Beth on the phone, Beth did not make Elan feel alone or misunderstood. Even though Beth told Elan about her own miscarriages, it was not in a way to compare or compete as to who had experienced more trauma. Beth did not tell Elan to keep going through invitro at all costs. Beth did not know that Elan and James had already spent the down payment on a home on these invitro procedures. Beth listened and let Elan feel heard. Strangely, Elan’s family and longtime friends had been unable to accomplish this task. The piece of advice that Beth gave to Elan that she cherished was that this did not have to be the end. Beth said, “If you still want a family, you can have it. It will just look a lot different than you imagined.” This comforted Elan because she thought that maybe this did not have to be the end. Although Elan did not know how, she thought there still could be a way. In this moment of grief, was born a tiny glimmer of hope.
The Aftermath
The next few days were more of the same. It seemed to take all of Elan’s will to get out of bed. Each day was a struggle. Elan returned to work. She had a migraine that lasted the entire week. She tried to respond to over a thousand emails that cluttered her inbox during her brief leave and respond to the new crises of the day. Elan had always taken pride in her work, but now it all felt pointless. Elan and her husband took on the heartbreaking task of telling their family and friends that the baby they hoped for all these years would not be arriving in six months. Elan and James were eager to tell family about the pregnancy when they received that positive test result. They did not wait to cross the safety zone of the first trimester because the doctor had assured them that the rate of miscarriage was very low because they had the frozen embryo genetically tested prior to transfer.
As Elan began to make the calls, send the texts, and have the in-person conversations about the loss, she never felt more alone. The responses could be categorized into the optimist, denier, and comparer. The optimist told Elan about their friend that went through the invitro process two, three, and four times and finally obtained their dream family. Better yet, the optimist would tell the story of the couple that quit trying to conceive and then miraculously conceived. Neither comforted Elan because her eggs had aged. In her invitro experience, only one out of her ten eggs developed into a normal embryo. It was a miracle that she got pregnant and ultimately devastating to lose that miracle.
The denier treated her loss as if she had accidentally backed into another vehicle in the grocery store parking lot. Elan’s mother was the worst offender. When Elan tried to confide in her mother in her most vulnerable state, her mother said, “these things happen.” In that statement there was no recognition of the years of effort and resources expended in trying to conceive or the recognition of the loss of pure happiness and hope that Elan and her husband experienced during those few precious months of pregnancy. Elan thought, what did she expect from her mother that tended to deny all human emotion. Elan’s mother had chosen to fall in love with an abusive alcoholic when Elan was six years old. Elan had lived in fear until her mother finally moved them thousands of miles away when Elan was twelve years old. Elan lived those six years in fear and constant anxiety about what each day would bring. As with all things, Elan should have known better to confide in her mother and expect a nurturing and sympathetic response.
Lastly, the comparer, chose to relive their own trauma of miscarriage when Elan spoke about her loss. The comparer seemed to try to compete with Elan’s current pain. In their lack of compassion, the comparer seemed to say in their response, “This is nothing, and I had it worse.” When Elan told a coworker about the miscarriage and this colleague had been one of the only colleagues, she talked about her invitro treatment with, her colleague replied, “I have been through that.” Again, others minimized the pain Elan was experiencing in this moment. When Elan sought comfort from her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law nonchalantly said that she had been pregnant seven times and experienced five miscarriages. Elan’s mother-in-law bragged about her only grandchild during the entire conversation. As her mother-in-law bragged about her granddaughter, Elan could only think about how she would never give a grandchild to the family. Again, Elan felt alone.
Elan wanted to scream during these conversations, but she bit her tongue as she always had and just politely ended the conversations and internally suffered. These family members and friends failed to realize or acknowledge that this would be Elan’s only pregnancy. Although her colleague and mother-in-law had suffered miscarriage, their life resulted in a beautiful family with multiple children. To minimize Elan’s pain by their own stories of trauma only made Elan feel invisible and alone. Elan felt deja vu in these conversations because she often felt invisible and alone as a child. She had tried hard in her life to escape the trauma of her childhood to only revisit these feelings after her loss. After these conversations, Elan strapped on her running shoes and went for an ever so slow run. But in these runs, she again felt present and alive if only for a brief time.
The Loss
Elan woke up around 5:00a.m. on a Thursday with a sharp pain in her abdomen. Although she knew what was happening from the two prior pelvic ultrasounds over the past two weeks, she was still in shock and disbelief. She ran to the bathroom and barely had enough time to pull down her underwear before the gestational sac and placenta were expelled from her body into her hands. As she held the proof of her pregnancy in her bloody hands, tears immediately streamed down her cheeks. She started screaming, “James,” “James,” “James!” Her husband woke up from his sound sleep not sure what was happening until he walked into the bathroom and saw her holding proof of their pregnancy and the baby they had dreamed about for years. As James processed what he was witnessing, his face saddened. And although they both knew this would happen neither of them were prepared. James gently told Elan, “Let’s get you cleaned up.” As Elan showered and saw the blood flow from her hands and body to the drain, she sobbed in a manner she did not know was possible. In that moment, she felt her dream of a family end. The past five years of scans, testing, surgery, fertility treatments, and invitro fertilization were now over. She felt this would change her forever because the hope she held onto for years ended as she realized there would be no future pregnancies.
Over the next few days, Elan was not functional. It was the first time in her life that she could not make herself move or care. Her whole body hurt. Much more than the physical pain of cramps, hunger, and dehydration, it was the exhaustion that came from grief that was worst of all. It took her half a day to move from her bed to the sofa or recliner. When her husband would ask if she was hungry around 3:00 or 4:00p.m., she never knew how to respond. The idea of eating felt trivial, and she could not even remember the feeling of hunger. James would make soup or order food, and when it came, she would eat and then go back to the safety of her bed to cry and sleep.
The next few days continued in this pattern. Even the idea of showering felt like it would expel too much energy. But, one morning while feeling the physical pain and exhaustion of grief, Elan realized that even though she had every right to feel this pain in this moment, she did not want to feel like this forever. The only thing that had ever made her feel better in times of distress or sadness was physical activity. Although it took every ounce of energy to get herself out of bed each morning, she looked at the Garmin app to find a 5K walk/run program. Elan had long put up her running shoes after injuries from two car accidents, but she felt she had to move in some way to start living once more. She found a program that started with a nine-minute segment that consisted of a four-minute warm-up and a five-minute run. Elan was still bleeding and battling severe cramps while alternating Advil and Tylenol to ease the pain, but she felt she had to do this.
As she stepped outside and heard the beep of her watch, she began the warm-up walk. She listened to music on her way. As exhausted as she was, it felt good to be outside. She had not left the confines of her home in over week, not even to check the mail. She felt the sun on her face and acknowledged the beauty of the trees on a crisp fall day. Her watch then commanded that she run for five minutes. Although she picked-up her feet to run, Elan could have moved more quickly by speed walking. With each step her feet felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Her lower abdomen and vagina throbbed. But somehow, with each heavy step, the act of putting one foot in front of the other helped her remember that she was alive. Even though she was not moving quickly or covering much distance, the act of movement made her feel that maybe just maybe she could move forward and somehow survive.