In February my husband and I decided to try to start a family. We waited until midway through a cycle and chose to try just once. I'd never felt closer to Sir than I did then. We were starting something.

Of course, who actually TRIES to have a kid and succeeds their very first try? So I convinced myself, or tried to anyways, that I needed to wait to test. Well…that's crap. I tested every few days. Even when it made no sense to test, I peed on a stick anyways. The day of my expected period came, and I wasn't bleeding, so I peed on one again. Nothing. A couple of days later I thought MAYBE I could see a faint line, but was I imagining it? I held onto that stick and kept staring at it every few hours. Which makes zero since. But I did anyways.

A few days past my expected period date I tried again, this time with a two-pack of pink dyes. I could kinda see it, yeah. I still couldn't get a good picture, though. So, being the stick-pee-addict I had become, I went out and bought myself a digital (which I hadn't known was a dumb idea) and one more blue test, which seems to always be more sensitive. Positive on that blue one. I could completely see it. I was sure. I was ready to tell my husband. I peed on the digital and… "NOT PREGNANT."

But fuck it, right? It turns out those are way less sensitive. I had a total of four positive tests. I called my husband. By the time he got home from his meeting I was wide-eyed on the toilet, bleeding and crying. My period hit anyways.

It didn't hurt, though. My periods are the sort that keep me home from work, unable to get out of bed, screaming until the 800mgs of ibuprofen kick in and let me rest for a couple of hours until it starts up again. This one didn't hurt. But maybe that's how it goes when you lose a child that early.

I sobbed and showed my husband the tests. He held me. I skipped work that night. I called every doctor I could find to request an hcg test so I could have a baseline, something that proved if I was even pregnant to begin with. The only place that could get me in immediately was some horrible, horrible private practice bimbo. They did the obligatory in-house blood test (negative, like I warned them, given how faint my positives had been), a blood panel, and a quantitative. I had to wait a fucking week for them to get back to me with the quant hcg. 11. Miniscule. So I *had* been pregnant. And if a home test measures at 25 units hcg, I had decreased in a day.

I went back to my normal doctor and by that point it was time to request a followup quant hcg to make sure the level was going down normally. A few days later they call me back and said "Congratulations! It's too soon to tell the family, but you're pregnant! Your levels are at about 500!"

I shit you not, I dropped the phone. I had miscarried, I thought. I thought it was a chemical pregnancy. I picked the phone back up and apologized, and I asked them to please repeat that. And one more time. Did…did I hear them right, would they mind saying that ONE more time?! We scheduled an appointment to check the levels again that Friday.

I drove my husband out to our favorite bar and ordered him a rum and me a sprite. I smiled. We had our few hours of holy shit, we're parents. We each picked one person to tell. Well, I picked two. We called our friends and announced the news, warning them that it was really early, and not to get TOO excited.

Friday, I went in for my blood draw and made the nurses, doctor, and rest of the staff SWEAR to call me THAT DAY with the results.

And they did.

"I'm sorry. Your levels have gone down to 430. You are miscarrying, and it will probably continue all weekend. Have you had any spotting, bleeding, or cramps?"

"well, yes, off and on. On one side. I needed to ask you about it, but it was a pretty quick stop by-"

"Well, that sort of cramping is normal. You'll pass the baby over the course of the weekend."

I put the phone down. I stepped into the shower, fully clothed. I turned on the hot water. I sat down, and tried to hold the blood in, tried to hold everything in.

And then I started breaking shit.

I screamed, I smashed my hands into the walls until I bruised my palms, I punched the shower head (and I wouldn't recommend that), I cried, I pulled my hair, I lost my mind. I lost my mind while my husband, who thought he was a daddy, slept in the other room across the hall.

Then I went and told him, sopping wet and choking, that we were not parents. I had lost it twice.

I stayed home from work that night, too.

I spun my way through four ounces of wool, two ounces of camel, and was starting on making BFL yarn by 6 AM, while my husband was still at work for another hour and the pain started getting so bad I couldn't push the pedals on my spinning wheel anymore. I stood up and rocked back and forth. Tears squeezed out from my scrunched up face. Guys, I don't exactly have a low pain tolerance. My right side hurt so badly I couldn't breathe. I called Sir and asked him if he was coming straight home at 7, and if I would be wasting the ERs time if we went in once he got home. This was probably just how a miscarriage felt. They would laugh at me, bill me, and send me home. But I couldn't stand up straight anymore.

He rushed home after his shift and got me to the doctor by a little before 8 AM. I told them I was miscarrying, and it was probably nothing, but after not being able to sit on the bed, rocking against it, and crying quietly for an hour they finally gave me morphine and I could grit my teeth and bear it again. And then the horrors started.

Nothing, absofuckinglutely nothing about this is easy for me to talk about, and no one except my husband can imagine what happened that day. I'm just going to try to write about it.

There were needles. Rude doctors. Screaming, cussing people. Nice doctors. Rude nurses and techs. Nice nurses and techs. A doctor making an accusatory point of reminding me my piercings would need to come out. Several people pointing and talking to each other instead of me, or on the other side of the curtain. Someone waggled a printout and wondered aloud if there were two babies, one in my uterus, and one in my fallopian tube. People telling me as crudely as they could that I WAS having surgery today. People telling me as crudely as they could that I WAS going to lose the baby, that it wasn't even really a baby. People telling me I had a choice, with kind eyes and compassionate words. People shoving a vaginal ultrasound wand up me while my husband pointed out things being labeled on the screen and a woman in the corner twiddled her thumbs. The disgusted look when my blood was on the sheets after the tech pulled his instrumental dick out of me. A woman leaving me with a new gown to change into and a man coming in less than a minute later, walking right in while my tits were hanging out and not even stopping. That same man injecting me with more morphine than I had asked for while I held the crunchy gown around my breasts, then leaving only for that first woman to interrupt the changing process again. Being left in silence for hours while we waited for endosurgery. Waking up by a frantic, shouting nurse because I had stopped breathing in recovery. Being woken up several times before I had to leave and being insistently asked whether I was staying the night or leaving right this instant, with absolutely no information on how scarred and ruined my insides might be from the surgery, or how it went. Demanding the doctor call the room and explain to me what had happened.

The nurse: "Oh, well, usually they just take everything out for things like this…I mean it's hospital policy not to tell you what happened because of the anesthesia – you'll just forget anyways."

Me: "PUT. THE DOCTOR. ON THE PHONE. RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW."

She explained everything to me. That surgery went smoothly – there was no damage to the tube outside of surgical and that I could try again as soon as I was healed, maybe as early as two weeks. I had three incisions – one above my pubic hair, one over my right ovary, and one inside of my navel.

They had taken pictures of my baby and showed them to my husband while I was under anesthesia.

I moved mechanically. I did their little tricks that got me released – I drank apple juice (which I vomited like a pro, thank you pregnancy nausea), I took a piss, I walked a straight line. Some obnoxious bitch wheeled me and my things to Sir's car and he drove me home.

I slept in a vicodin haze, unable to eat or drink more than strictly necessary, for two days. After that, it hadn't even happened. Nothing had happened. I had surgery – nobody needed to know. I went back to work as fast as I could.

For two weeks, nothing had changed. In my mind, I had simply never been pregnant.  Just had a quick surgery, that's all.  Right as rain.

Then it hit. And I fell the fuck apart. I wouldn't let Sir touch my stomach. I wouldn't let ANYONE touch anywhere NEAR my stomach. I hated everyone. I was looking for a fight, and a few times, I got one. I became extremely promiscuous. I had flashbacks. I pulled away from Sir as hard as I could, sleeping on couches and in my car, anything to avoid the life I had wanted. I started leaving town every weekend. I stopped going to firefighting. I started smoking like a chimney, getting too drunk at bars, and I stopped smiling completely. I had panic attacks on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

I fit PTSD to a T.

And the funniest part is when my doctor decided I shouldn't have medications anymore, so I had a panic attack right in front of him. Not on purpose, it just happened. Not my normal doc, the one who first told me I was pregnant. He decided ritalin didn't really help ADD, and was a devil medication. He also had come to the conclusion that one can't die of insomnia so one doesn't need ambien, AND that everyone he knew who had ever been on xanax (I've tried EVERYTHING ELSE) went down horrible life paths, so he would spare me that suffering.

Then my other doc, my normal one, gave me scripts for them but said he would cut me off unless I saw a shrink. Well…it turns out shrinks have 3-4 month waiting lists.

But it's okay. The smoking and drinking help.

I picked up a new job in a shop as a piercing apprentice, and secured the foster coordinator position with the animal rescue. So I never sleep. I still go out of town every weekend, but my husband is not too keen on this, seeing as how I've fucked the guy I go visit. It's funny, though, because that friend is the closest thing to therapy I have. He listens. He supports. He plays video games. He is the best friend I have right now, and if anything, is the reason I am still trying to give my life and my marriage a chance. And for the record, while people who are not poly may not understand this, look at it from a ptsd perspective: I can't touch my husband without flashing back to losing his child. I can't play with sex toys without flashing back to the ultrasound. I can't stand my husband touching me, holding me, anything, because of how fucking horrible I feel. I don't feel sexy. I don't feel attractive. I don't feel sexual. I don't want to have sex with the man who fucking came in me on PURPOSE after I lost his fucking CHILD.

Having sex with the person I visit, the one weekend I did, with my husband's permission, is as much therapy as whiskey and late night talks are. It….reminds me that sex is not just…that. That touch can be okay. That I can be okay. And I came back to Sir tentative, terrified, and almost ready to try being intimate with him again.

Except now he thinks I'm sullied. Awesome.

ANyways. This is an OCD blog, yes? Let's talk OCD.

If anything has brought out the OCD in me, it's losing a fucking baby THREE TIMES. I am right back to counting my steps, doing things in twos, saying things in twos. When I walk I look like I'm having a siezure. I cut things in half so they'll be even. Newspapers, for instance. Are always uneven. Don't even get me started on food.

I got my tongue pierced. To keep from irritating the frenulum it has to be pierced slightly off-center on the bottom side. Holy fucking jesus shit christ.

And that house I am so terrified of? The mess, the disorganization, the clutter? I started cleaning it. I started cleaning it so hard that I can not LEAVE the fucking house unless my husband literally drags me kicking and screaming out of it because it ISN'T FUCKING DONE YET.

Then I go outside, have a smoke, and wonder what the fuck my life is.