Waste

I'll be honest, this post won't be pretty.

Today, in the disturbing roller coaster of emotions we call "the grieving process", I have disgust at the waste of this whole miscarriage. So much waste.

There's the waste of time.
Each morning I awoke at 4am to start taking my pregnancy meds, then I'd go back to sleep for 3 hours and take more meds. By then, Dan would be gone to work and I would groggily watch Morgan until the sleepiness of my drugs wore off. (Enter Sesame Street.) Throughout the day, I would have light nausea and eat strange foods. Sometimes all the food in the house seemed unbearable and I'd go out to buy new cravings: cottage cheese was one day's favorite. And then at night, I'd take some more meds that required me to lie still for a half hour. All that sickness and sleepiness and medicine taking. What a waste.

There's the waste of funds.
Between doc visits and medicine I spent around $100 a week to keep this prengnacy, which is nothing, I know, when friends tell me about their expensive medication. But still. Waste. The D and C surgery did a lovely job of helping us reach our deductible for the year. But it's nothing I'd write home about. More waste.

There's the waste of weight.
I probably gained 5 or 10 pounds, but my legs are just not pretty. My jeans fit funny now. And there's no way to make first trimester pregnant legs look pretty. They're chunk-style. I went to buy a new bathing suit because Dan and I are hoping to get away to the beach for a week. Dan's folks invited us to Alabama. I just don't fit in my old suit. I don't mind forking over the money for a new suit, but it's going to take a while to make this body feel like itself again. A waste of weight.

There's the waste of grieving.
I've been through this before. Really only time heals. So let's fast forward life to the "healed" part. Because grieving is a waste.

There's the waste of thought.
All the time thinking at night about how we'd rearrange our life for this little one. All the thinking of doc visits and remembering to take meds. Thinking, thinking, thinking. All for nothing.

And now I'm challenged to ask myself the hardest question of all: Hope- was it a waste? Because if HOPE is a waste, then forget going to the next specialist. Forget trying again. Hope is not seen, the Bible says. But how important it is. No, without the hope, I never would have even had the opportunity to try. Hope was not a waste.

Oh, Simon, you were worth it all. You were NOT a waste, my dear.