But That Can't Be

Well I guess I just can't take it.  Tonite after supper I started to hemmorrage and really have a time of it.  We called the Doctor over about 10 o'clock and he gave me 2 shots of urgut then it stopped.  Dr. said it was a bleeding uterous + that I aborded - but that can't be.  We made ice cream tonite - tasted swell.  - Annette, January 1943

Annette was exhausted and struggling to keep up.  All the while, she was pregnant and didn't know it.  In the days after this post, she stayed in bed as she suffered through intense abdominal pains and a fever of over 104 degrees.  She thought she had malaria, but the Doctor confirmed that she was suffering from metritus - an infection of the uterus.  The shots of 'urgut' must have been ergot, a natural remedy used to treat excessive menstrual bleeding, and before or after a miscarriage.

Annette doesn't acknowledge the miscarriage in her diary until a week later.  She couldn't believe that she was pregnant again.  Her body was in survival mode, so maybe she couldn't process it until then.  She was working so hard to take care of everyone that maybe she couldn't take care of herself.  In a later post, she wrote "I sure have one dopey system."

I can't imagine the difficulty of that loss.  Or the difficulty of enduring such a complication with limited access to medical treatment.  And what did she include in that post?  Ice cream.  When our worlds get turned upside down, we turn to what we know.  Food is comfort.  Annette needed healing and reassurance and love during this time - which sometimes appears in the form of ice cream.