Confidence

We have had our Nuchal Translucency Ultrasound and the results were great. We were lucky in that the doctor who performs the NT at our regular hospital was on vacation and it is an ultrasound that needs to be done at a specific time so we were sent to a contracted OB office to have it done. I say this was lucky because their machines and technology are much more advanced than what Kaiser seems to have. We got a 3D/4D ultrasound with just our $10 co-pay (the only time we have to pay for anything during this pregnancy). It was such an amazing experience. We saw you moving around everywhere. You were flipping from one side to the other. It’s funny because on the screen you look so big, but in reality you are only about 3 inches long right now. That’s as long as my index finger! So tiny, yet you have provided us with so much joy in just such a short period of time. This amazing ultrasound allowed us and the doctor’s to see that your organs are all growing, that your heart is beating away (in the 150’s) and that you have your little fingers and little toes. It has allowed us to breathe a sigh of relief that you are real and doing well in there and will come meet us in 6 months (or so). It has been a long and stressful year for your daddy and me, so it was the best thing in the world to see you happy and healthy wiggling all over the place. We got a glimpse of your face (admittedly still a bit alien like) and you are gorgeous to us. Your outline showed us your tiny little nose and puckered lips. We saw your hands moving around (but not sucking your thumb yet) and your crossed legs at the ankles. Even with your ankles crossed we got a clear view of your gender. We had it written down by the technician, but we both knew you were a BOY. You did not hide your privates from the machine. I was afraid we wouldn’t find out until you were born, so I am very grateful that it was clear as day to see. (Maybe one day this will embarrass you!) Daddy has been a part of this pregnancy from day one, but he was nervous about everything being okay just like I was. This ultrasound was done exactly 6 months from the date that your older brother or sister (I think it was a sister) passed away. Having gone through this so recently we were both on edge and worried about what may or may not be with you. Having the doctor tell us that everything looked good was such a relief that we could barely stand it. Since that day daddy has been constantly putting his hand on my belly and laying his head on it as well. It’s way too soon for him or even for me to fill you moving (although I’m surprised since you move so much!) but it makes me happy to see him taking such an active approach. We have a  Doppler at home and the day after the ultrasound I lay down next to daddy as he took a nap and he woke up just enough to ask me to put it on so he could hear your heartbeat. It wasn’t the first time we heard it at home, but it was the first time he had requested it. You have a great daddy!

Transition!

I have been hot and cold with this blog for a while. The pressure of having to post daily or even just a few times a week got to me. I dropped it all instead of just posting when I wanted to.

I started the blog as a way to decompress from my wedding planning (I planned it all myself in like 4 months). It definitely helped. Then life got busy and I had nothing to say.

But now, as you can tell by the blog design I have plenty to say and talk about. I am going to try to post often, but it will be much more about posting when I want to share or document something. I am keeping a journal for my pregnancy, but I wanted to post here as well. I am going to use this almost as a diary to my baby as we progress through this pregnancy and beyond.

I already have some posts that I pre-wrote, but before I post those I wanted to do a little bit of a transition post. The last time I posted here it was a lot of venting about my miscarriage so I didn’t want it to be so cut and move on as it otherwise would have seemed.

So… this post might be a little long.

I found out about my miscarriage on March 15 th , 2016. I was 10w5d pregnant
and I was going in for a regularly scheduled midwife ultrasound. It was obvious pretty quickly that something wasn’t right, but I tried to keep my hopes up initially. My husband couldn’t make it that day so my mom came with me instead. My midwife was training another one so they were both in the room. At first they had tried to do an abdominal ultrasound, when that wasn’t showing anything they gave me a vaginal ultrasound. It was obvious that the midwives were getting nervous at this point and didn’t know what to say or do. They went ahead and called the OB on call.

He took quite a while to show up. He did and wasn’t able to find the baby, or if he did, he did not point it out to me. He gave me time to get dressed and went out. In the time it took for him to get back I called Thomas and he was able to make it to the hospital.

The doctor explained that it was most likely a chromosomal defect that caused the miscarriage. He said that the baby was destined to not survive since conception. He also said that “at least you know you can get pregnant”. As you can imagine this was not helpful at all (I have learned since that this particular doctor has been a pretty bad doctor to two of my friends).

I requested to have a more thorough ultrasound done by radiology just to ensure that the baby was indeed gone. A stage of grief I suppose. My sister had told me that they had told her something similar when she was pregnant with my youngest niece and so she insisted on a more detailed ultrasound in which they were able to find the baby hidden. That was not the case for me, but I couldn’t just let it go without making absolutely sure. At this ultrasound we were able to see the baby, who had stopped growing at 7w2d (per measurements).

I passed the baby just before midnight on 3/16/16, at home, in my bathroom. Thomas was sleeping. He got up, but he had to go to work the next day. I think it was his way of coping. I stayed at home for the rest of the week. My family visited me and I tried to take it easy. I definitely was going through some denial. I didn’t cry too much at first.

It was something that happened over time.

I don’t think I will ever be done grieving. I was recently speaking with someone who had a couple of miscarriages over 45 years ago and she still thinks about the baby’s that she never held.

I knew that I wanted to try and conceive right away. Partly it was the need to fill the void (although one baby does not replace the other in no way whatsoever) and partly for the same reason I was in a hurry to conceive to begin with – I’m not in my 20’s anymore.

I tracked my cycles using Ovulation Prediction Kits (like a pregnancy test, but it tracks when you ovulate) and in my 3 rd cycle after my miscarriage I conceived again – on July 1 st , 2016.

I was happy, but I was also super-duper nervous. I had a panic attack at my first ultrasound and I just couldn’t look at the screen. Thomas did well and I glanced over. The doctor understood my anxiety and asked if I would like to come in again two weeks later to help me keep calm. Normally the next appointment wouldn’t have been for a month. From that point (I was 6 weeks at the time) I had an ultrasound done every 2 weeks until I was 15 weeks.

The posts that I will be putting up in the coming days were written in the first few weeks of pregnancy. I am now almost 18 weeks along with an estimated due date of March 24, 2017.

Part 2 of What I Hope You Never Experience

I knew. I knew as soon as she put the ultrasound wand inside of me that the baby was no longer there. I didn't cry yet. They called in the on-call doctor. I called my husband. That's when I started to break down. 
Trying to stay strong I told Hime 'there is no baby'. The line was bad, hospitals like to block cell phones. I tried texting him. My phone was dying. My mom's didn't have reception. 
He said he was on his way. 
The doctor arrived and he did the vaginal ultrasound and confirmed that the baby wasn't there. Well... More on that later. 
The doctor left to let me get dressed. Thomas arrived soon thereafter. I tell him what happened and the doctor comes back to explain things. 
He said that it was most likely chromosomal. Something wasn't right from the beginning. He essentially said that the baby was destined not to make it from the moment we conceived. He told us that there was nothing that we could have done to prevent it, that there was nothing that we had done to cause it. 
He went on to say that at least "we could get pregnant".... Which I found a bit rude. 
He gave me three options. The first being to not do anything and let the baby come out on its own. I knew I didn't want to do this because it had already been 3 weeks and nothing was happening. 
The second choice was to have a D & C, which means they surgically removed the baby. He didn't recommend this as it can cause damage and is invasive. 
The last and most often chosen option was to use the medication Cytotec. It basically stimulates the uterus to contract and go into labor. 
I chose the last option. 
After speaking to my sister who had once been told her baby had died and then referred to radiology to do a more thorough ultrasound in which they found my niece... I decided to ask to have a radiologist do an ultrasound. It's not that I really thought that I would be told anything different, but I couldn't take the medication without being 100% sure that the baby had died. 
When the doctor did the ultrasound he didn't show me anything. He just said the baby wasn't there. When I went to radiology the next day and they did the ultrasound I was actually able to see where the baby was and it was obvious that the baby had stopped growing. 
At nearly 11 weeks you should be able to see the head, the body... etc. What we saw was basically what we had seen at 6w5d when we saw the heart beat. I saw my OBGYN that day and she told me the baby measured 7w2d. 
So in other words the baby passed a few days after we last were in the office. What I experienced was what is called a Missed Miscarriage (or the less liked name of Missed Abortion). This essentially means that the baby stopped growing but my body did not recognize that and so the hormones stayed and my belly stayed looking pregnant, but the baby was gone. 
With confirmation that are baby was no longer alive... On the afternoon of March 16th 2016 I took the Cytotec to cause labor contractions to start. 
I will have another post explaining that process. 

I Hope You Never Experience This

I was in the midst of writing some posts to share the wonderful news that I was pregnant when I had to stop and hit delete. 
Instead I'm writing this post. A post that may not be for you - the people who may still have me on their feeds, but for the people who search for specific terms to find it. Although there are some similar posts out there, I couldn't find any that were exactly or, in some cases, anywhere close to what I'm going through right now. I want to be able to bring my story to others in case they need it. 
I know I'm being a bit vague, so let me clarify a bit.
On January 23rd after a couple of days of cramping but with Aunt Flo (AF) not showing up I thought I would take a pregnancy test. We had been trying for just over 3 months at that point. The test came back very positive. Two beautiful pink lines (and then blue, then a cross, then a "pregnant") came back. 
I was having very irregular periods right after coming off of birth control. I had a 22 day cycle, followed by 41 days, and on my third cycle I ovulated on day 41. I was surprised that I got a positive test so quickly (although my mom always told me that the women in her line are very fertile!). 
I quickly made a doctor's appointment on the 29th which confirmed I was indeed pregnant but it was very early. A couple of weeks later I went back for a dating ultrasound which placed me at 6w5d and a due date of October 6th. We saw a heart beat at this appointment (although it was too soon to hear). 
We told few people about the pregnancy in fears of having a miscarriage, but it was not something we actually thought would happen. Especially since we saw the heartbeat and the chances of miscarriage at that point are so low. 
By that point I had started to have morning sickness, my smelling abilities increased, and my skin was super oily. My stomach was bloated and I looked pregnant. I didn't gain much weight even though I was eating a lot more than normal. 
However, somewhere around 8 weeks my morning sickness disappeared. I knew that this was perfectly normal, but as the next 2 weeks went on I began to grow anxious. I mentioned to my husband that I didn't feel right. That something was off. I didn't have any symptoms. I even emailed my doctor on the 11th of March with my worries. She wasn't in, but a nurse said that since I hadn't had any cramping or blood/spotting that everything was most likely fine and to keep drinking a lot of water. 
I want to say that I wish I had gone to the doctor, but it's not as though anything could have been done at that point anyway. The end had already happened. 
On March 15th I had a monthly appointment with a midwife to do a physical and listen for the heartbeat I was 10w5d at that point (so exactly 4 weeks after my initial dating ultrasound). My husband said I could let my mom go with me to this appointment since we had been told it was just a physical and no ultrasound would be done 
The midwife took information and then said that it was too early to listen for the heartbeat so that we would do an ultrasound. I was excited because I knew that at this point the baby would look like a baby and not just a peanut. 
The midwife started with an abdominal ultrasound and then said my bladder was too full. Which confused me since I was under the impression that for an abdominal ultrasound you needed a full bladder (you do). That should've sent me me warning signals immediately. But what did I know? Maybe I was wrong. She sent me to empty my bladder and told me we would do a vaginal ultrasound (which I don't find uncomfortable at all). 
I was still excited at this point, in hindsight I see that she knew what she was (or, really, wasn't) going to see but was hiding it. And this is what is really bothering me now. But, alas it makes no difference now. But it did make me not want to deal with midwives in the future - I'll stick to OBGYN's. 
I will continue this.... 

Tell The World!!!

Knowing what I know now I will act differently in any subsequent pregnancies. I will not hide the fact that I’m pregnant like a dirty secret for the first trimester. There is no reason to hide it. They say that it is so that we don’t have to tell everyone if we have a miscarriage. I found that I wanted to tell EVERYONE when it happened. And I did. I started texting people who I had never told I was pregnant in the first place to tell them my grief.

It got me thinking that there is no reason to hide it. Miscarriages are happening all the time to people all around us. 1 in 4 women suffer a miscarriage in their lives. I am one of those 4, but with the amount of people we know, the likelyhood is that many of the people around me have suffered through it as well. I know about a few but as I share my story more and more women are coming to me and telling me their stories.

Most women suffer in silence. They may talk to a few family members and their partner, but they don’t have anyone else to talk to about it. There are forums and Facebook groups that are terribly helpful, but sometimes you just need to be able to vent to someone who knows exactly what you are talking about. I’m lucky that I have a couple of family members who have experienced similar situations and they are willing to let me talk to them and ask them questions. It’s part of the grieving process.

Not everyone is as lucky. I hope that the movements that have been coming up in the last few years (from what I can tell) to get people to be open about their losses keeps progressing.

Of course I’m not saying that you should share it if you don’t want to or are uncomfortable doing so. It is definitely YOUR decision to make. My point is that it is YOUR decision and not just the communities decision that says it’s taboo to do so.

I haven’t experienced this, but I know that there are people who will tell women who announce their pregnancies early on that they are jinxing it. That they will have bad luck. Simply a bunch of negativity. It simply isn’t true.

We shared the news of the pregnancy with our parents, my siblings and nieces and nephew pretty early on. Then the Friday before we found out the baby had stopped growing we told his siblings and grandma. Doing this did NOT cause the miscarriage.

As I mentioned, the miscarriage was destined to happen as soon as sperm met egg. There was something wrong with one or the other or the combination of both. But there was absolutely NOTHING we could have done to know or to cause or to prevent the miscarriage from happening.

As much as I don’t want people to say these things to me, I know they are true. They just don’t make me feel better or change the amount of grief I feel. 

Ramblings About... My Miscarriage

Exactly 1 week ago (fromt the time I write this) I was finding out that my baby had died inside of me. I have always wanted to have a baby and life has made it so that I finally got pregnant on January 13th, 2016. I found out 10 days later and I saw my baby on an ultrasound on February 16th, 2016. 

My husband and I have been married nearly 2 years, together for over 4. It was time to start since I am already in my 30’s (he is 6 months younger than me). 

I was so extatic when I saw the two lines giving me a positive pregnancy test that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to hold it in. I had to yell it out loud. But I played it cool and when my husband walked into the room a few minutes later I shoved the little sitck in his face. I took 3 or 4 tests one right after the other to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. They were all very positive. 

We called and made the appointment to see the doctor and there was no going back. I had a little baby growing inside of me. You may call it a zygote or embryo or whatever, but to me, from the moment I saw those two lines it was MY BABY. Our baby. Something we created. I knew life would change but we were ready for it. We have tons of family support (and even some nudging that it’s time to have kids) from both sides. 

Now, with the baby gone. No heartbeat and the baby not having grown past 7 or so weeks, we have nothing and I feel so completely empty. 

I knew it was coming, too. I don’t know how, because I was the one that kept telling my husband that the probability of miscarriage was low since we had seen the heartbeat. But somewhere around 8 to 9 weeks my symptoms disappeared seemingly overnight. I know that symptoms can go away. I wasn’t worried immediately, but as time went on I just felt like something was wrong. 

I expressed this to my mom and my husband who reassured me that everything was fine. I wasn’t bleeding, I didn’t have cramps. There were no signs that anything was wrong. 

If would we knew. Well, nothing would have changed other than I would have had had to carry my baby, already without life, for 3 weeks and 3 days inside of me. I think that is what is painful. That the poor baby was inside of me without anyone knowing he was dead. 

Who am I kidding, there are so many things that are painful about this (and I’m sorry that this is just a rambling post, but I have to get out what’s in my head in whatever way it comes). 

I though, beforehand, that the worse part would be giving birth to the baby. It was, but not the physical pain. The cramps weren’t worse than I had experience in normal periods. The emortional pain of knowing that my baby was sitting in the toilet and would just be discarded is what really got to me. 

Logically I know all the reasons: it’s better this way, God had other plans, he probably had chromosomal defects that prevented him from growing so that he wouldn’t suffer. Mother nature knows best, my body knew what to do. 

None of that matters. My baby is dead and I will never hold him in my arms. I’ll never know what it is to hold my first child. When people ask me how many kids I have (if I am able to have kids, that’s a whole other post) I’ll have to mention that I lost my first. Which I am not ashamed to do. But I know that people won’t know how to react to my statement. I will make them uncomfortable. 

I am struggling. I push through each day, but I have to hold the tears back. I’m back at work (I can’t take more time off). People here know what happened, but no one approaches me. Almost like I’m this weird thing that they don’t know how to deal with.