Stars Hollow is my happy place
If you ever find yourself wallowing in the aftermath of miscarriage (yeah, that finally happened*), I highly recommend going back to the beginning of Gilmore Girls to binge-watch your blues away. I don't think I've seen this show since it went off the air, so diving back in all these years later is almost as good as watching it for the first time. It's such sweet, feel-good fun - exactly what I need right now. I doubt I'll rewatch all 7 seasons, but I'm halfway through season 2 and it's still giving me joy. I think I'll keep going for a while.
* So, the miscarriage... That was the most horrifically painful unpleasant five days of my life. My doctor told me it would be like a heavy period. What a big fat lie that was. Thank God for so many women on pregnancy forums describing every painful, gory detail of their miscarriage experiences or I would've thought I was dying. Am I being dramatic? No. It was brutal. The "death cramps" I used to get in my early years of womanhood would've been a welcomed trade-off.
The first day... holy shit. If there's one day I'd like to remove from my memory forever that'd be the one. It was excrutiating. By the wee hours of the following morning, I was so fatigued and my body so stressed from all the pain that I started having these extreme chills with uncontrollable shaking with every contraction. My temperature dropped to 96.4º! That was a little scary. I think it scared the man too because on more than one occasion since then, he's said, "I'm glad you didn't die."
After that first 24 hours or so, the pain wasn't quite as severe and it mostly came at night. Mostly. There was crampiness during the day, but I mainly just had 2-3 hours of bad pain every night for the next four nights. I really think miscarriages should be like they are on TV: pregnant woman walks into the bathroom one day and declares something's wrong. Cut to next scene and she's fine, just not pregnant anymore. The end. But for me, the whole process ended up taking five days. Five miserable, awful days.
Emotionally, I think I'm doing okay. I'm a little up and down and even though it's now been several days since all this, I still have random weepiness. Aside from a sense of loss over what might've been, I've still got a substantial level of pregnancy hormone coursing through me, so I guess feeling emotional is to be expected. I've got weekly blood tests to monitor my hormone level until it gets back to normal and I've got an ultrasound coming up to make sure all the "products of conception" (gotta love those medical terms) are gone. Fingers crossed they are because if I require medical intervention after going through five days of natural hell, I might just crack.
In the meantime, I'll be hanging with Lorelai, Rory and the rest of the quirky characters of Stars Hollow.