Avoiding the Obvious

I have a lot to write about… but I’m not going to write about it right now. I’ve been having a hard time processing the emotional side of all this, and I know that once I start writing about it it’ll all boil over… and now is not the time.

I’m doing all right, though. More or less. Body is healing. Strength and stamina are returning. Slowly.

When I don’t want to write about what I ought to write about, I tend to think about books – which is probably the most boring and neutral thing out there that I could be writing about. Now that I’ve gone back in and added the pregnancy books that I hadn’t inputted (since we weren’t telling anyone yet, and Goodreads would have spilled the beans) I’ve officially read 110 books in 2011… more to come, obviously. I wonder what the final count will look like?

I’m gearing up for my winter rush, having started two series. One, the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, isn’t likely to last me very long; there are only 6 of them so far, and I tend to tear through paranormal novels like they’re made of tissue. The other is the Kinsey Milhone series (you know… A is for Alibi, etc.) which has novels all the way through V at this point. They take me a little longer to get through, so I should be in good shape for reading this break.

I also need to read/re-read two books for my classes, so that I can put together their respective units… pretty excited for that, actually, although I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything very intellectually “tough” (including lesson planning). The books are For the Win and Little Brother, both by Cory Doctorow, and they’re for my ITE classes.

I’m putting together a Goodreads account for my classroom library… going to be a lot of work, and who knows, maybe I’ll scrap the project halfway through… but I’d like to have it. I think it’d be nice. Helpful for my students, if I could get them to actually use it. Maybe I could assign reviews…

My head hurts.

Oh – did I mention that I stayed up until midnight catching up on two weeks of grading… and the electronic gradebook has been out of commission since yesterday and probably won’t get fixed tomorrow, so I can’t update any of the grades regardless? AWESOME.

Not What I’d Wanted to Write

Today was my 31st birthday, and I had planned a really special surprise that I’d been eagerly awaiting for several weeks. I was so excited to give myself the gift of going on Facebook and this blog to tell all my friends and family that Ryan and I were going to have a baby early next July. Our first doctor’s appointment was supposed to be yesterday, and we were going to share the good news today.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several days “losing the baby,” which is about the most awful euphemism I’ve ever heard.

Yesterday, in particular, was truly brutal – I guess I can be thankful that it was yesterday and not today. The worst of it is over, physically, but there’s still a lot of heartache, disappointment, and a nagging sense of surreality that I’m sure will linger for some time.

This was a very dearly desired baby – we’d even been trying fertility treatments – and I can’t really begin to express how badly this loss hurts, but I have Hope in a death-grip and can only pray that by my next birthday there will a different story to tell, instead of “I am 31 years old, and childless”. It has been a long bad spell for my family and myself, and it sometimes becomes difficult to have faith that things will get better… I guess I thought we were due for some good news, but apparently it just doesn’t work that way. Which, of course, I know.

The good news, of course, is that it is statistically unlikely that we’ll have a repeat episode (knock on wood) and that we now know that we can do this, so it’s just a matter of doing it again. I know that I did nothing wrong, that there was no stopping this from happening. We’ll have our babies. Just not this July.

BTW – I’m sorry, Becky, for prevaricating when you asked how the fertility treatments were going… and Kirsti and Gina, I think you must have suspected when you kept asking how I was feeling… the true answer was, “I’m happier than I have been in several years,” and I wish now that I had just gone ahead and told you why instead of holding out for an arbitrary deadline.

Anyway, I’m still not 100% certain I want to send this out into the online universe – aren’t miscarriages supposed to be one of those things you don’t talk about? – but something inside me seems to think that I’d like y’all to know… so I guess I’ll chance it. I can always delete the post, right?

Love y’all. Take care of each other.