Did she really exist?

The bills have started to arrive from late December/early January. Marked "laboratory" and "surgery," we've begun fielding the costs for the betas and the D&C. For the most part, the only emotion that I've been feeling when I see these is frustration: frustration that we are being billed for things we've already paid for and frustration with insurance for giving me the run around (hopefully all of this will be solved soon). But one bit of information threw me yesterday, giving me pause. We received a letter from Dr. Optimism with the cytogenetics results.

During our appointment a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Optimism walked us through the meaning for the potential results of the cytogenetics from the D&C. Armed with the pathology report, which concluded I was pregnant, she noted that the amount of fetal tissue was very small. So there were 3 possibilities: one was that the karyotype would show aneuploidy, indicating why everything stopped growing, another was that the karyotype would be normal 46XY, indicating the embryo was male. The final was that the karyotype would be 46XX. This would be very hard to interrupt, as they wouldn't be able to tell whether it was the embryo's karyotype or mine. All they could definitely say is that there was no translocations.

Guess what the results were.

Reading the letter brought on a wave of emotions that I thought I had resolved. It's caused me to question whether this pregnancy even existed. In addition, there came sorrow over the possibility, though slight, that this embryo was indeed a girl. A little girl. And I failed her.

I hate yo-yoing between being okay and not. I hate that the reminders that time as so negative and sterile. I want to be able to move on, to move forward with love. And I want to stop questioning whether I actually was pregnant every single day. Because being in a state wondering if she did exist doesn't help.