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.

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.

Greeting Cards

My Confession this week...

I want to start this post by saying that it was inspired by sisters’ passing. The love we were given by the people around us made me think about people’s response to tragedy as well as happy events.

I think that sending a birthday/thank you/sympathy/congratulations card can mean a world of difference to the person receiving it and if I can make a person smile by just remembering them and sending a card, I will try to do it every time. 

My sisters’ passing last month got me thinking about all this. What is socially correct? When should cards be sent? When shouldn’t they? 

My family received several sympathy cards from friends in the days after my sisters’ death. My parents got cards from my mother-in-law and from my brother’s mother-in-law. My dad received cards from ex-co-workers who heard the news. I received a card from the workers in my unit. 

I think there are some people that are in positions that should have the extra touch of giving sympathy/birthday/etc cards when these events happen. When someday in the future I have employees under me I will try and make sure that I am aware of any big events in their lives and make sure that they know I am thinking of them. I will also do my best to treat them all equally. 

I received A LOT of condolences on-line via Facebook. This was very nice and I appreciated reading them. It really made me happy in the hours and days following my sisters’ death to see the messages pop up. However, a card in the regular mail would have meant a lot more. The idea that a person took the time to pick out a card means something to me. 

Maybe I’m being unfair. People are busy, they have other things going on and they don’t have time to stop at the market to pick up a card. Maybe I’m just grieving and feel like everything is unfair. 

I did not write this to offend anyone but instead to get it out of my head. It has been circling round and it has been bothering me.