Recovering - one day at a time

It's four days since my ERPC operation and I'm starting to feel a little more like me again. We're taking it one day at a time and there's still some big emotional mountains to climb, but right now I'm skirting around them and concentrating hard on getting through each day.

To add to the confusion around the miscarriage I had to return to hospital this morning for an anti-D injection. My blood results came back as neither rhesus D positive or negative and have been sent on for further analysis. To be safe I had the jab anyway just in case I am negative and it could affect a future pregnancy. It took all my strength to revisit the hospital so soon and not breakdown. I sat in the same two waiting rooms and saw the same nurse as before, and although it was only four days ago, I was able to realise emotionally how far I have come, yes there were a few tears when I first sat down but I wiped them away and pulled it together. This time the EPAU had at least three women who looked how I had looked six days ago, I wanted to say to them that they will recover and get better, but of course I couldn't, I read my book and tried to keep my mind clear and the threatening tears away.

I've now had time to reflect on the 12 weeks of pregnancy before the miscarriage and how they had taken their toll on me. It was a bad pregnancy. I felt queasy and tired all the time, my skin dried out, I couldn't brush my teeth without gagging and there was a constant fog on my brain, but I also thought I'd get through it, that when I was safely into the 2nd trimester I would look back on the bad times and think that it was all worth it. Now my skin is (rather ironically) looking radiant, my brain is tick tick ticking over and I am enjoying being able to eat anything from the fridge without  throwing up. The big emotional mountain here is what happens if I get pregnant again and go through the same symptoms? However this mountain is in the distance and I've turned my back on it for now. Other mountains looming are how will I cope in September when I'm still at work and not on maternity leave, and a rather close one, how will I cope going back to work and having a tricky conversation come up?

Facebook is a bit of a minefield, it's been hard to see pregnant friends complaining about Braxton hicks, posting week by week updates and seeing the photos of the little girl born the day I had my baby removed (particularly as she is wearing the same baby-gro Tom gave me on Mother's Day, which took place four days after our baby had died but we still weren't aware).

I am finding a lot of comfort in reading the miscarriage and loss chat boards on NetMums. Even though I'm not participating in them, it is comforting to read the advice and success stories from women who have gone on to have a happy healthy pregnancy afterwards. One member wrote a wonderful quote:

"No one will ever know how much I love you, because you are the only one who heard my heart beat from the inside"

I loved reading this as it summed up my feelings entirely and also made me realise how lucky I am that I already have a little someone who has heard my heart from the inside and who fills it up again every day. When Charlie came back home on Saturday, coping with the miscarriage stepped up a gear. Suddenly I was singing songs about goblins, covered in wet kisses and being accused that I'd fed him (horror of horrors) an orange babybel instead of a red one (I hadn't but he refused to believe me). It is the normality of cooking pancakes, walking in the park, splashing in puddles and cooking spaghetti (just like Peppa Pig) that shows me that our family can get through this, we are strong together and although we have been horribly shaken, we are not broken.