Capture Your Grief - Day 3 - What It Felt Like.

I don't know that I've written that much what that ultrasound was like, the one when we discovered that Abigail had died. I can remember after we got to the office, and I was filling out paperwork, and Britt bounced up to the window to tell the clerk, that we were here to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl, and how he was hoping for a brother. I can remember waiting with such excitement. When they called us to come back, I can remember telling the tech that I was really looking forward to this, because I didn't feel this baby move as much as the others. I can remember watching the screen as she moved around and got measurements and photos. The kids were pointing and excited, and I was smiling. Then all of a sudden I noticed that one of the measurements said 17 weeks, and I said that's not good, but still in a light-hearted voice. The ultrasound tech then said, no and to be honest I've not seen the baby move this whole time. That's when I got concerned. A minute or two later, she tried to record a heartbeat and got nothing. She told us that she needed to go get her supervisor. Someone at some point told us that she was gone, and that they would call our doctor's office for directions. We told the kids as we sat there, and then Gary carried them out to the car. While I sat there in the dark alone. I got teary eyed then, but didn't cry till I got out to the car. I'm glad I asked for some photos before we left. They loaded the three they took on a disk, while I sat back in the waiting room. Waiting for instructions from the doctor's office. I wanted to leave, I didn't want to fall apart in public. I wanted to go home. I wanted the nightmare that I had never dreamed possible to go away. I wanted to wake up to do the day over with different results. Eventually they agreed that I could go home, since home was on the way to the hospital anyway, and that the doctor could call us back on my cell phone. I remember crying and sitting stunned the rest of the trip.

That day is a real blur. Very little of it is defined memory. They say that grief does a real number on your memory and concentration. More than a year later, and I'm just now getting back to where I can knock out a days worth of work, and multitask, and keep multiple things in my mind at a time. I have had a few ultrasounds since then. One the morning Abigail was born at my insistence, to be sure. One a month or so ago at the RE's office to count follicles. There is not any joy or excitement with them anymore. But an immense dread and fear. There is a feeling of crawling out of your skin, as you sit on those tables, freezing to death looking at a machine that has the power to ruin your life all over again. There is a paranoid feeling of needing to run from the room. A real tenseness when they cut off the lights. It affects everything, and while we were told to write, "to give the outside world some insight" no one really gets it, and to be honest, I hope they never have to.