Grief is not a linear process. You do not progress from one stage to the next in one specific order. I once read that we keep our grief in a box. In this box, there is a pain button against one of the walls. At first, the ball is very large in the box and it can’t help but hit the pain button every time it moves. But over time, the ball shrinks so the grief ball doesn’t hit the pain button as often, but it still sometimes will bounce against it. However, the amount of pain is the same no matter how big the ball is. There have been times where the grief ball has randomly hit the pain button for me, but it hasn’t been as often as I thought. I’ve been doing okay, until what was supposed to be an uneventful doctor’s appointment.

Before I lost Bean, I had found out that I was no longer immune to the chickenpox. At my follow up appointment after my surgery, my midwife suggested that I get vaccinated for the chickenpox before getting pregnant again. It made sense. I didn’t want to get the chickenpox while pregnant and I knew I couldn’t get the vaccine while pregnant. So, I had reached out to my PCP and had asked for an appointment. They made one without calling me back so I moved my work schedule around to accommodate that appointment so that I would get vaccinated before we started trying again. 

The day of the appointment was a hellish day. Work was crazy. Everyone seemed to be in crisis that week and one that day as I was trying to get out the door. I managed to get myself to the doctor’s office 5 minutes before my appointment and was happily surprised I didn’t have a copay. I walked to the waiting room and found that I had no service in the chair I had chosen. I then had to wait… and wait… They finally took me twenty minutes late. I then found out from the nurses that the reason they were so late was because they didn’t understand why I was getting the chickenpox vaccine since I was vaccinated as a child. I explained that my prenatal blood work showed that I was no longer immune to it. You can’t get the chickenpox vaccine while pregnant. But I’m not pregnant. Not anymore. I had to go through my history that should have been in my chart. I was shocked I was able to keep my composure. I was falling apart inside. I thought this appointment was going to be a come in, get stabbed with the chickenpox, and move on with my day. This wasn’t happening. But then the big blow came after I had explained the miscarriage and the surgery. I was told that if I received the vaccine, I would not be able to get pregnant for three months. I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped at this. Why hadn’t anyone told me? I wanted to get pregnant again. I didn’t want to risk birth defects or another miscarriage. I walked out of the office without getting the vaccine and proceeded into my car to cry. 

It is completely normal to have days, weeks, months after the loss. There will be times when your grief ball hits against that pain button randomly when you least expect it and that is okay. Take care of yourself when this happens. When I got home from my appointment and had managed the crisis at work, my husband made me chocolate chip pancakes because that is one of my comfort foods. We cuddled and talked about how I felt and then I watched Grey’s Anatomy and I hope that when your pain button is pressed by your grief ball, you have a husband that will make you chocolate chip pancakes even though the plan was to have chicken that night. It’s so hard to get through a miscarriage without people in your corner and I am so thankful for everyone that has stuck by me. Most importantly, I would not have been able to cope without the support of my husband.

For more information on the grief analogy used in this post, please follow the following link: https://psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-grief-the-ball-the-box/