WP - Thanks for your posts. Knowing one is not alone really makes a big difference.
I think you're dead on right with the miscarriage being a major issue. I guess in this respect I don't know if 'solution-oriented' is the right phrase. We had a long phase of just abject sorrow. There was a point when I really didn't think there was any reason to go on. But, eventually, as things do, you just kind of find a way to move on, and one day is better than the next, and on and on. But you're guess is right, I was the one who was bringing up the subject of trying again. She was upfront that she was afraid of losing another baby and of course risking her own life, but I thought she had agreed to it. But, I admit that I have never been the best at reading between the lines in these types of issues.
Before that pregnancy, she was also afraid that she would not be a good mother. This stems from having a neglectful and bordering on abusive mother (certainly emotionally abusive, sometimes physically). Of course she would have been a good mother, and I actually almost brought one of my more stoic friends to tears when I confided this with him, because he couldn't imagine her being anything but a wonderful mother. But this was a big issue that actually lead her to therapy the first time around, and this combined with the miscarriage are likely huge contributors to our problems.
For me, I thought I had been 'past' the miscarriage: acknowledged that this horrible things has happened, recognize that it's a part of me now, and then put it in a different place in my mind. But, even though I can sit in my therapists office and speak semi-calmly and rationally about the OM in the situation and how I want W to be happy and healthy and how I need to GAL and all that stuff, I am just weeping away when we talk about the miscarriage.
So in the end it's still terribly raw to me, and I bet ten times more for her. She's been consumed by guilt (no one has ever even hinted that there is any blame other than bad luck) about it and told me that she thinks it would have been better if the baby had survived and she didn't. Her therapist at the time had indicated that post-traumatic stress disorder is not uncommon in these situations, but then W decided not to continue with therapy. In retrospect, of course I should have pressed the issue, but that was then, and this is now.
Well, for now, though, I do what I can on my side, trying to see friends, go out and stay busy, work with my IC about what are obviously still hard issues for me, and give her some time and space. I read your story and I get hopeful, though objectively I know I have to be realistic and focus on things that I can actually change.
Thanks again to you WP and to everyone else who has responded. It really means a lot to me.
(I don't write often, but I write a lot when I do!)
