Surfacing

We were overwhelmed with the response to our sad news. Thank you so very much for all of your comments. Longtime readers, we feel like we know you, even though we haven't (likely) met you in real life. Those who took the time to comment for the first time, thank you too. You may think that when you're the 128th, or the 209th, commenter that it doesn't matter if you leave a message, but it does. We read every single one. Many of them while I was waiting for surgery. And they helped. Each of them. All of them. So thank you.
I have considered starting a post many times since we lost the baby, but just don't know where to begin or how to express what we're feeling in words.
I am at a loss for words.
I am lost.

Every miscarriage has been different. You'd think we would get the hang of it, become used to at least our own reactions, but they keep changing. This latest pregnancy, I felt very hopeful. The RE said the baby looked "perfect"; the OB said she was "very optimistic." I also felt intermittently convinced that we would have another bad outcome. Because that's what has happened every time. And then to see the baby lying there so still on the ultrasound. No heartbeat. Again. Another missed miscarriage.
It is terrible that our worst fears keep coming true over and over again.
The prospect of trying again fills me with dread. Even if I somehow knew we had a perfect embryo, pregnancy right now has been transformed from something I have always, always wanted to a fear-filled nine months that I'm not sure I can do anymore. This is so saddening and is another loss, in addition to the five pregnancies. The experience of growing and nourishing a child inside of me - something I have always longed for since I was a girl - feels ruined.
These many attempts and consecutive losses - which have spanned our entire marriage - are taking a toll on me, on Will, on our relationship, on our friendships, on our families. I don't know how to grieve the losses over and over again and then move forward. I feel that I am becoming suffused with a sadness that just doesn't entirely lift. And that our strategy of just continuing forward hasn't worked because it seems like there is always just another loss around the corner.
One thing I know for sure: if we're going to try again, I need to be seen by a recurrent miscarriage specialist first. We had a recurrent miscarriage work up at an academic medical center, which turned up no clotting issues and found Will and I to both be chromosomally normal. After all of it, they found nothing, really. So we were told to just keep rolling the dice and hoping for the best. I can't do that any more. I fear that we have more than one problem going on, something in addition to our two confirmed chromosomal losses. Maybe my body is rejecting the babies. Maybe the placenta is not forming correctly. But I do not believe that we have merely fallen on the wrong side of the odds five times in a row. I refuse to gamble again with my sanity and our relationship without arming ourselves with everything we can.
Even armed with information, trying again feels psychologically and spiritually perilous.
At the same time, I can't imagine a life without children.
I do not know where to go from here.
Mo