FAIL.

That's how I feel. Logical, reasonable or not, I feel like a giant failure.

Temp drop back to coverline and spotting today. Spotting went away again, but it's clear enough what is happening.

I want to shrug it off. I want to say it's fine. We gave it our best shot and had great timing, and that is all that is in our control. I want to look ahead to next cycle, and be positive about the good things here (and there are some, I'm sure).

Instead, I'm trying not to cry (it's a no crying day, orders of my friend Mandi), and trying not to feel like a massive failure as a wife, woman and mother.

It was disappointing and hard to not be pregnant after good timing before the miscarriage, but it's really hard now. I sobbed myself to sleep. I feel stupid talking about this, again, like a failure, because it seems so drama queeney.

But I'm being honest here, and my therapists have all told me it's far healthier to experience the emotions we feel and deal with them honestly and openly than hide them and bottle them up and wait for them to explode. So, I'm trying.

I just feel like I may never be a mother. And that fear grows for everyone with every passing cycle, I think. But it's greater when you could get pregnant and you couldn't keep it. Whether it's true or not (and 98% of the time, it's not), you feel like it is your fault. It is your body that is growing and maturing that egg and your body that is supposed to move it into the uterus and then nourish it and help it grow. It feels like your body betrays you when that doesn't happen.

I've heard well-meaning people say to someone after a m/c - 'Well at least you know you can get pregnant!' as if it is supposed to help. I've heard people say that to themselves, and I think it is comforting for some people. But for me - so what? So I got pregnant once. And it wasn't a healthy baby. How does that help me? What if I never get pregnant again and I blew our chance to have kids?

I feel like my body is to blame for the miscarriage and that my body is to blame for not getting pregnant again. And yes, logically I know how stupid that is.

Worse, is what I think next though. What if it's not my body? What if it's me? Because I'm not a very good person. What if it's my fault becuase I did this or didn't do that? What if it's my fault because I'm selfish and I don't volunteer? Or because I don't recycle?

I sometimes feel like God is punishing me. I cried last night that I think God hates me because I am such a bad person. It's like all of the fun of Catholic guilt with none of the relief of confession and absolution.

Do I, in more sane and less PMS-driven states, really believe that? I don't think I do. I mean, I don't believe it for other people - I don't believe that God is vengeful or angry in that way, and I do believe that God loves us all, as we are. But when I try to apply that to myself, I often do not believe it.

I just don't think of myself as a good person most of the time. I try. I know I could be better in a lot of ways. And so now pregnancy and trying to conceive has been pulled into this and it's awful. It's like one more masochistic way to hate myself.

I feel like it has to be my fault. My chart was so gorgeous, so beautiful. I had so many symptoms (and have been assured I didn't imagine them). I really felt like this cycle would be it. Now it's not and I feel like it's because of me.

It's a really shitty thing to feel and a really shitty place to be.