"So how's your pregnancy been?" Conceiving after a Loss

(Note: I'm doing great! Fantastic! Really. I have some stress, yes, but compared to anyone else who is quitting their job, packing their house, getting ready to be homeless for the next who knows how long, including when they deliver their child, getting ready to ask people for money relentlessly until they get on a plane to go to a third world country where they still don't have a house with a newborn, I'm doing really really really well. This blog post looks back at February/March. That was months ago. I'm great!)

I, like every other pregnant woman, often get asked how every thing is going. But people seem really stuck on morning sickness. I'm not sure what's up with that. Even well into my 2nd trimester, people keep asking me how the morning sickness is. Maybe it's because that's the one miserable pregnancy symptom everyone knows about, so that gets overly worried about.
I haven't had morning sickness. At all. And I'm always so taken aback by that question. Because the first one, "how's your pregnancy been?" causes me to reflect and think, and then out of nowhere "have you been retching in the toilet?" What?! No! Compared to what I was just thinking about, that seems so trivial! As much as I hate throwing up, I'd rather bear that burden than this. But these generous souls have given me an out, so I take it. "No! None at all!" I smile up at them. "Good, good!" They pat me on the shoulder and walk away. And I never have to tell a soul that I'm afraid I will fail again. 

I had my D&C on December 5th. We start counting how far pregnant I am at January 7th.
Unlike the first time we were trying to conceive, I didn't take a pregnancy test every month and cry over negatives. (Mix hormones with disappointment and it gets messy!)
This time though I took got a positive on the first try. I came out of the bathroom holding a pregnancy test and bawling my eyes out. Needless to say, my husband was uncertain of what was happening. Why bring a negative test to him? Why cry if it's positive? But when he saw the positive test, fear flooded his face too.
Fear that we would miscarry again. Fear that we would have to go through this emotional turmoil again.

Every day for 6 weeks, I would replay that miscarriage again and again in my head. That moment of false hope when I saw the small form on the sonogram. The world falling down around me when there was no heartbeat. Everyday, I heard my wails echoing off the walls. Everyday, I felt the cold that the IV drip filled me with. For 6 weeks. I feared it would happen again. And I knew that if it did I would die. I knew I could shed no more tears. I knew I would go through the whole routine of the D&C shut down, going through the motions, without the emotional strength to do anything. I didn't know how long that emotional death would last.
But at 10 weeks, I had an ultrasound (that was actually not any further along than the first had been so offered me no reassurance). Nonetheless, peace came. And not the peace where I had to scream out to God to take these images away from me and let me sleep. Not the peace where I had to pray that God would protect me from my imagination (as I child with some mild paranoia issues, this was a common prayer). But a true peace that didn't need to be scrambled after, but endured. A peace where people would ask me how I was doing, and I was surprised to realize I hadn't been worrying about it.
The second trimester finally came and the doctor looked me in the eye and said, "You are not going to miscarry. Do you believe me?"
I did.
(Though if a kid dies in utero after the first trimester, they just call it by a different name. Tricky, tricky, doc.)
Our son started kicking two days before 19 weeks. Our final ultrasound looked great and the next doctor's appointment is the day after Father's Day.

Now the answer to that question?
Everything is looking great! I feel good. My child's kicks haven't become painful yet. I'm not uncomfortably large yet. None of the stress in my life is related to my kid at all. (Unless you count the diaper-shaped fabric in the to-sew pile.)

So the moral of this story is, don't lead the witness pregnant lady. Sometimes that gentle inquiry is enough of a platform for someone to open up. But it's a natural tendency to take the easy way out, so don't provide it. Give people the opportunity to gather the courage to share.