It might actually help to write about it. So here goes.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to write this post, or even mention the subject. The first time I went through this, 3 years ago, I was not a blogger, and I didn't even really have "mom" friends. TH knew of course, and I told my family, but otherwise I had to sort through all of these feelings on my own. This time, I have a whole circle of friends, in real life and online, who are moms and who can maybe -- just maybe -- understand where I'm coming from. On top of that, I've been slacking alot in the blogging department lately because this is overshadowing everything else, it's the proverbial elephant in the room. I write about Christmas and New Year's and J's latest exploits, but underneath it all I really want to talk about something else. Just this once, get it all out there and then move on.

Four weeks ago, one week before Christmas, the morning after the Great Vegas Blizzard, and on the very morning of my first prenatal appointment, I had a miscarriage.

Again.

I've been coping with it pretty well, but the amount of disappointment, frustration, and grief that I feel after losing a baby that was only with me for all of 9 weeks is somewhat...surprising. Again.

As of this week I would have been around 12-13 weeks along, in the Safe Zone for publicly announcing the pregnancy. I had it all planned out. Today's post was going to be titled, "The Thanksgiving Surprise," with the obligatory picture of the positive test (which I forgot I took until yesterday, nice little jolt there as I was uploading pics.) As the name suggests, we found out I was pregnant again on Thanksgiving. That morning I woke up from a really strange dream where I was doing a c-section on a dog and my tech said to me, "Congratulations! Another boy!" (I know, weird), and I suddenly realized that a certain something that happens every 28 days or so hadn't happened in like, 40 days. So TH ran out, got a test, and we were indeed pleasantly surprised. Because I've been down Miscarriage Road before, I was also a bit nervous, but I tried to think good thoughts. After all, that was a fluke, right?

For 2 1/2 weeks, it was smooth sailing. I had symptoms -- nausea, bigger boobies, and, you know, no period. I even had 24 hours of strange heart palpitations that were confirmed to be yet another joy of pregnancy after a panicked 2am search of WebMD. I made my doctor's appointment and calculated a due date: July 31. I started taking prenatal vitamins again and reading What to Expect When You're Expecting (amazingly, you forget), and my biggest dilemma was when I should stop Weight Watchers and how long I could keep running. In other words, those first couple of weeks I almost forgot about What Happened With The First Pregnancy.

That last week, the week before Christmas, I knew something was off. Like I said, I've been in this part of town before. My symptoms suddenly...stopped. I woke up one morning, and I didn't feel pregnant anymore. It's hard to explain. I kept saying to TH, it's so weird, I'm going on 9 weeks, shouldn't I feel something? What happened to the heart palpitations and the sore boobs? Where's the queasiness? What I wouldn't give to feel like vomiting right now. A couple of days later, I was at work watching out the window as the bizarre snow started falling, and I felt a tiny little crampy twinge in my lower back...and I knew. I'll always remember that. Due to the crazy weather, we were stuck in traffic for four hours on our way home from work/daycare. J and TH were so excited about the snow and the Christmas lights and all of the cars sliding around, so I kept it to myself that the tiny little twinge in my back had turned into a horrible throbbing ache. The next morning, we awoke to almost a foot of snow, closed schools and jobs...and no more baby. (And my clinic Christmas party that night, thank God I had an excuse to drink. Just kidding. Kind of.)

Since then, it's been up and down. The first time this happened to us, it was like I had been smashed flat by a steamroller, physically and mentally. That time, we actually went to the emergency room in the middle of the night because even with all of the cramps and bleeding, I was positive they could just give me a pill or something to stop it. That was my first pregnancy, and it had never even occurred to me that miscarriage was a possibility. This time, I had a little perspective. I have J as living, breathing proof that I can get pregnant after a miscarriage and have a completely uneventful pregnancy. I have J, period. There's nothing like a wonderfully self-absorbed 2-year-old to keep you from wallowing in self pity.

But every now and then, I'll feel a flash of emotion with no warning and the disappointment sets in again. I turn on MSN.com and see a story about the Duggars having their 18th child, and I angrily flip off the computer. I watch a segment on the Today Show about some lady who was pregnant when she sky-dived and her parachute didn't open and here she is a couple years later with her perfectly healthy kid and I want to scream -- come on, that fetus survived hitting the ground at 50mph and mine couldn't take laying around watching Top Chef?? WTF????. Last week I found out that yet another daycare mom is expecting again, and as I congratulated her I felt so jealous. J is the oldest kid there but the last to get a sibling. It's so crazy - we weren't exactly trying to get pregnant, and if it still hadn't happened by now I wouldn't even have been worried about it. But it did happen, and for almost 3 weeks that baby was very real to me. And now it seems almost like a dream I had, a blip on the radar that lasted for a moment and then it was right back to life as usual.

The worst part is that if and when we do get pregnant again, it won't be fun and magical and joyous, at least not at first. I'm already over-analyzing it as it is--is something wrong with me? Is it my age, did we wait too long to start having kids? Is this a sign of (gasp) fertility problems? Could it be that J is the fluke, not the miscarriages? I already feel stressed thinking about this happening again.

So that's the story. I got it all out. I won't say I'm "over" it, but life does go on and I'm generally happy. The future may hold more kids for us, and maybe it won't. We'll see.