My new mission in life

If telling Ane was the hardest part about the miscarriage, at least it was quick and clean. Not unlike severing a hand with a lightsaber.

Sorry, Tad left his lightsaber on the floor over here by the computer.

Telling everyone else who didn’t hear about it on day one or two has been akin to water torture. Especially people at our church.

We told our pastor and his wife right away via phone. Some of our friends in the church read this blog. Thanks to our pastor’s wife and my friend Aimee, the women’s Bible study that I used to be a part of heard about it fairly quickly. But there are a lot of people who simply haven’t heard yet.

It appears that my new mission in life is to make at least one person feel like crap every time I walk into the church building ever since I miscarried. If I assumed word would get around, it seems that I have been proved very, very wrong.

I’ve had to tell two women who either congratulated me or asked when my due date was that I was no longer pregnant. One of them cried when I told her. I felt horrible.

Last Sunday, the Webmaster and I were spending some time during first service in the “comfy chairs” by our children’s director’s office. She was in the office at the time, so some Sunday School teachers were popping in there to ask a question or to grab their weekly doughnut from the box that she gets for them every week. One of those teachers, who I have known for years and years, who teaches the 4th and 5th grade boys, saw the Webmaster and I sitting there – I was cross-stitching, the Webmaster was on his laptop. “You two have way too much time on your hands!” he exclaimed. “You should have another baby! That’ll fix it!”

He went into the office. The Webmaster and I looked at each other. “Well, he doesn’t know,” the Webmaster said in a low tone.

Twenty seconds later, he came out and began profusely apologizing. Our children’s director had overheard him and quickly told him what had happened. He had had no idea that I had even been pregnant.

If it didn’t hurt so much, it would be downright comical.

Maybe I should start wearing a sign while I’m at church (“Hi, my name is Deanna and I had a miscarriage”), but somehow, I don’t think it would be appropriate.

The biggest difficulty is that we did tell quite a few people, and news does travel. I was 12 weeks along. In theory, there was a heartbeat. We didn’t run out and start telling people the second there was a plus sign on the stick, but I was far enough along that it seemed silly to not tell people. We even deliberately put off telling Ane until after that first OB appointment. The bad news simply hasn’t caught up with the good news. And none of these people who I’ve mentioned ever intended to cause me pain – far from it. Their intentions were all good. And I have tried to reassure each of them of that whenever this happens.

I just want it to stop. But I don’t think it will anytime soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 1:50 am and is filed under From the Church Front.
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