The hardest part about the miscarriage was telling Ane.

I did it on the Friday I found out, because I was too upset to successfully convince her that Mommy was really okay, but my contacts were making my eyes water.  Uh-uh.  Not happening.

I had left the kids at my parents’ house during my appointment.  I called ahead to tell my mother, and then I drove there to break the news to Ane myself, with Grandma standing at the ready.

How do you tell a not-yet five-year-old that the baby she’s been hoping for isn’t coming?

I sat her down and told her as simply as I could that the baby died.  That it wasn’t healthy enough to live, so it had died and went to heaven.

Ane burst into tears.  I began crying all over again.

Ane began saying how much she wanted to have a baby to play with.  I tried to console her with the fact that CW Mom just had a baby, Friend and Handy Girl are both having babies, so there will be other babies that she will see frequently to play with.

“I don’t want those babies.  I want MY baby,” she sobbed.

Me too, kiddo.  Me too.

*****

Thankfully, Ane has the typical resiliency of a preschooler working in her favor.  For the first few days, she insisted on praying that God would heal the baby.  It was hard to dissuade her, so aside from telling her that the baby wasn’t going to be healed in the way she wanted, we just left it alone.  It’s been a few days now since she’s even mentioned the baby, but I’m sure that she’ll say something or ask a question at some point in the future - probably the next time she sees an infant.

Tad, of course, my sweet oblivious boy, is completely unconcious of what’s happened.  His ignorance has been my bliss.  It’s nice to have one child who will hug you without asking questions.

*****

When the OB determined that there was no heartbeat, she took measurements at the same time.  Using those numbers, her estimate was that fetal death happened around 8 weeks.

When I heard that, I was stunned.  “But my first OB appointment was at 10 weeks, and you said you saw a heartbeat then,”  I said to her.

She didn’t really have an answer for me, except that “Well, it was my second day substituting in the office, and I thought I did see something on the monitor.  Hindsight is 20/20, and if we’d done a transvaginal ultrasound then…”

In hindsight, it made perfect sense.  Eight weeks was when my nausea started to fade off.  It was gone at nine weeks.  It had weirded me out so much that I even mentioned it to both the nurse and the OB at my first appointment.  This did not feel like pregnancy to me.  And every time I said that, people around me said, “Don’t complain!  Isn’t it great that you’re not feeling sick?”

If I could have avoided this, I would have thrown up twice a day for 40 weeks instead of feeling the way I do now.

I felt too normal.  My hair never stopped falling out.  Yes, I was tired, but all my other symptoms had disappeared.  But who among us is going to complain that they don’t feel sick enough to be pregnant?

I guess I should have.

*****

Surgery went well and quickly, and I had a post-op appointment yesterday.  Everything is as it should be with me physically.  I’m not in any pain at all, and all the pathology labs from surgery came back negative.  Nothing is wrong with me.

The bottom line is, this baby simply wasn’t meant to live.  The best guess, without doing genetic testing, is that there was a chromosomal abnormality that caused fetal death.  Surgery simply took care of the fact that my body didn’t want to let go of this baby.

That’s the clinical, medical way of looking at it all.  I will be able to conceive again.  There is no reason that we won’t eventually have another healthy child.

Eventually.

*****

Again, I want to thank you all for your kind comments, private emails, thoughts and prayers.  The Webmaster and I have felt very blessed and comforted by you all during this time.  And thank you for reading through this particular post.  It will probably be the only one that I do that directly addresses this miscarriage.  We’ll go back to our regularly scheduled hilarity and time-outs tomorrow.

Princess Leia is armed.  You must give her candy.

The costume came from the store, the blaster came from Disneyland (batter-operated and makes great sound effects), and the hair…

The hair is Ane’s own.  Really.  The costume came with a wig, but Ane grew her hair out specifically to be able to have her own Princess Leia buns.  Her hair is quite fine and not very thick, so my secret was?  Two words: mini bagels.  At the suggestion of Little Mo and Big Jay’s mom Jenny, who did this while dressing up in college once, you leave a couple of bagels (mini in the case of a kid Ane’s age) out to dry for a few days, then make ponytails, wrap them around the bagels, and bobby-pin in place.  The dry bagel is stiff enough to hold bobby pins and hair.  You can see the results:

She was thrilled.  She was totally in character.  She loved her costume.  We went through the drive-thru at Wendy’s to get a Frosty for Obachan, and the people at the window caught sight of her and started raving and tossing candy at her.

I mean, wouldn’t YOU give her candy?

She was accompanied by her ever-faithful brother, Tad the Jawa:

The costume is vintage Halloween 1983, made by Grandma for the Captain when he was three years old.  We looked at the old pictures from that Halloween while we were at Grandma and Gichan’s house last night (I was a ballerina that year, and Resiss was a three-month-old baby, so she wasn’t in costume), and Tad is a bit taller than the Captain was at that age.  Of course, Tad has a couple months on the Captain in this costume, because the Captain’s birthday is the day before Halloween, but the Jawa robe was shorter on Tad.  Still, very cute with the Webmaster’s bandolier and utility pouches wrapped around his waist and chest, and the blaster that Gichan made in hand.  The costume cost exactly $0.  I can go with that.

Apparently, we believe in arming our children for Halloween.  An armed society is a polite one.  It also gets lots of candy.

May the Force be with you.  And with your candy.

Here are this year’s jack o’lanterns.  The Webmaster used a template this year, but Ane preferred a “traditional” look to her pumpkin.

May your trick-or-treating be safe, well-lit, and secure lots of peanut butter cups.

After waiting a few days to see if anything would happen on its own, I had a D&C this morning at the hospital.

I’m taking the next couple of days to recouperate, but the pain is definitely manageable and I am glad that I can begin the recovery process now.

I’ll be laying low for the rest of the week (The Webmaster took today and tomorrow off, so we have the kids covered), so blogging will be light.  I will post the kids’ Halloween pictures on Friday night or Saturday morning, and I am definitely planning on going out trick-or-treating with them.

Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.  I really appreciate them.