our miscarriage story - part 4 - moving on

It is finally over. I had very mixed emotions last night after it happened but I woke up this morning feeling so relieved and refreshed!

Right after Lucy woke up from her nap around 4:00 yesterday it started. I was putting laundry away and the cramping started to get bad. And then it got worse. Over the next hour or so I started getting pretty uncomfortable. I called Jimmy and he was stuck at work. Ugh. I couldn't do this alone with a toddler to take care of. I was terrified of how much it would hurt and the possibility of bleeding uncontrollably. The picture crossed my mind of Jimmy coming home and finding me lying in a pool of blood leaving Lucy left to fend for herself. SO...I called my aunt. She left almost immediately to come be with me. It took her about 30 minutes to get to my house and I was getting really miserable by the time she got there. I took some of the pain meds the doctor prescribed me and tried to relax. It felt just like labor. I was cramping almost continuously for about 2 full hours. Ouch. At one point I just wanted to be alone so I went upstairs and laid down with a heating pad. I laid there quietly for about half and hour and suddenly the pain stopped. Completely. I stood up and it all just came out. Thankfully, I was wearing a sofa-sized pad in case this happened and it caught everything. The idea of flushing it down the toilet seemed wrong so I wrapped it up in a ziploc bag. I thought I would be so grossed out and horrified seeing it but I wasn't at all. Plus I immediately felt so relieved. No pain, no more worry. I felt amazing.

I went downstairs to tell my aunt and got some much needed hugs from her. Jimmy got home just a few minutes later. We got to talk about everything. I thought I would be much more sad but I think the grieving process had happened for the most part when I found out. Together we looked at it. It was incredible. It wasn't gross at all. I could clearly see the placenta, the bag of water was still intact and there was a tiny little baby floating around in there. Absolutely amazing. Jimmy and I plan to have a little private burial this week. That gives me so much more closure than flushing it down the toilet.

Sorry it this has been way too much information! I had no idea what to expect. It seems like noone talks about the details. And I was really quite terrified of the "gross parts" which turned out to not be gross at all. I am even more enamored with the whole process of a human being formed than ever before!

So now it is time to move on and I am so ready. I am already planning on doing a gentle cleanse over the next couple of weeks to get myself back on track. We will try again for another baby. Maybe not soon but eventually. If I am blessed with another pregnancy I will probably spend the first several months being terrified. I will welcome the awful morning sickness because I will see that as a sign that the baby is ok. I will trust in my body again. This body carried Lucy safely for 9 months. It did not cause this miscarriage. My body knows what to do.

our miscarriage story - part 3 - waiting is torture

I had some time alone in the ultrasound room to make some phone calls. I called Jimmy, of course. He left his meeting and got in the car to meet me at home. After a little while the doctor and ultrasound tech came back in the room to talk to me about my options. I didn't really process much of what was said so I asked for a week to process everything and do some research.

On the way home I started making phone calls to my family and close friends. Not easy. During this process I've realized that I'm not the only one losing a baby. My husband lost a child. Our parents lost a grandchild. My grandma lost a great grandchild. Even though it is my body that has to go through all of this, it isn't just about me.

I got home, started doing some reading on what is involved with a D&C, what will happen if I try to go through this naturally, and made some phone calls and sent some emails. I sent an email to Courtenay (who is my go-to person for all things natural pregnancy and birth related). She is so knowledgeable on the whole process. She gave me some ideas to speed up the inevitable. High doses of Vitamin C, homeopathic Caullophylum and Cimicifugia, blue and black cohosh, and making sure I support my immune system by taking elderberry and red clover. She told me that the reason the doctors lean towards doing a D&C is that they are afraid of infection and the secondary reason is a very rare bleeding disorder caused by tissue remaining in there too long. Both very rare, but can happen.

I already had an ob appointment set for Monday so they kept that for me to go back in and talk with the doctor about my options. Jimmy was off work yesterday for MLK day so he was able to to with me (what a relief). The doctor was again amazing (I continue to be impressed with my doctors in this office). She again gave me my options but was totally understanding with me wanting to avoid the D&C. She told me what to watch out for...if I need to call the doctor and go to the ER. I'm praying to avoid that, obviously. She also told me about how much the waiting process can wear on you. That sometimes getting it over with is better on your emotions. That I can totally understand. I still would like to avoid surgery if at all possible. She sent me home with a prescription for strong pain meds and an appt. to have blood work done again in a week and to see her again in two weeks.

So now I wait. Every little cramp that happens I think "oh no, this is it". We were invited to the pistons game on Friday night and went. A little distraction is nice. But the whole time I was thinking about how awful it would be to have it happen at the palace. To leave what is left of my baby in the public bathroom. We also went to a wedding on saturday night. I don't want to spend the next several weeks sitting around the house waiting for this terrible thing to happen. It will make me crazy.

our miscarriage story - part 2 - confirmation

I got in my car on Wednesday afternoon to drive to the doctor's office. On the way there I called my dear friend Kari and told her why I was going in. She is such a blessing, and although our friendship has had it's up and downs over the years, she is always there for me when I need a friend. She offered to come with me but was at home with a toddler, a broken arm, pregnant, and a sick husband. I knew I needed to go alone.

I sat in the waiting room for a bit. Women coming and going with big round bellies. I've always been enamored with the pregnant bellies but never like this before. I couldn't help but hope that they knew how blessed they are.

I finally got into the office. The doctor came in, asked some questions, looked a little worried, and did an exam. She said everything looked ok (cervix closed, uteris still full) but set me up with an ultrasound in the office. So back to the waiting room I went, while those big baby bellies paraded in and out of the room.

After what felt like an hour of waiting, I heard my name and followed the ultrasound tech back to the dark quiet room. The same room where I had seen Lucy. She was always so wiggly on the screen. And adorable. A perfect little person tucked away safely in my womb.

She asked me a couple of questions. Yes, a little cramping, yes, a little bleeding, yes, 11 weeks. She turned on the machine and started looking at my insides. She moved the wand around, back and forth, took some measurements, none of it making any sense to me. My mind had already been prepared for the worse...I knew I wasn't going to see a wiggly baby. She turned the part on that shows the heartbeat, that little red, flashing, unmistakable sign of life, and there was nothing. Just blackness. I caught the tech out of the corner of my eye quietly scratch her head. I thought "oh, that poor girl has to tell me horrible news". She pushed the machine aside and turned to me and said "This is going to come as a big shock to you but I couldn't find any heart tones". And my heart broke the rest of the way. I was finally able to start to grieve.

our miscarriage story - part 1 - just a fetus

I'm unsure of why I am compelled to tell this story. There is some kind of secrecy involved with the whole process of losing a baby but as I begin to tell my story so many women have opened up to me with shockingly similar stories. I need to do this for me. I don't want to forget these days, even though they certainly aren't easy.

So many thoughts are racing through my mind right now. It's hard to get them organized enough to put them down into a story. If I just started typing away it would be a big jumbled mess so this is going to take a bit of time. Please note that these are my raw feelings and I apologize if it isn't cohesive.

It doesn't give much comfort when people tell me that it is common and happens all the time. Losing a child should never be thought of as common. It would be almost easier for me to take the worlds view and think of that 11 week growing baby as "just a fetus" but I know in my hear that that little baby, that son or daughter of mine, was a tiny person. Just because he or she was unable to thrive outside of my womb doesn't make him or her any less of a person, a person with a soul who is thriving in heaven right now.

So here's my story. I will have to continue it over several parts as my story isn't over yet. My body still has a lot of work to do to finish it, so that I can be done and completely ready to move on.

I knew over a week before I finally called the doctor that I the baby wasn't ok. I didn't have any of the symtpoms yet. I wasn't bleeding, I wasn't cramping, I just wasn't feeling anything. In fact, I didn't feel pregnant at all except for the obvious little bump I could feel in my belly, not even visible on the outside yet. I actually felt great. My morning sickness was gone completely, my energy was back. I didn't feel pregnant. When people asked me how I was feeling (and if you've been pregnant you know how very often that questions is asked), my response was "great". I kind of felt like I was lying when I said the pregnancy was going great because that little voice inside of me was telling me that something wasn't right. I just had to wait for some symptoms before I was ready to move to the next step.

And they came. On tuesday night I started to bleed. Not much, but enough to know that it had begun. I prepared myself a little bit mentally and tried to prepare Jimmy by telling him what I was feeling. I'm certain he didn't believe me, telling me that everything's ok but to make an appointment with the doctor in the morning. With my mind racing a mile a minute, I didn't sleep well that night. I called the office first thing Wednesday morning. Of course they wanted to see me right away so I was all set with an appointment at 1:20.

A couple of things happened on Wednesday that I can look back on and be so thankful for. First, my aunt (who works in my ob office) saw my name on the list for the day and called me right away. She was working until noon and offered to come watch Lucy in the afternoon. I didn't realize that I would be at the office for nearly 3 hours that day and right in the middle of Lucy's naptime which would have been awful for both of us. Also, I came so close to dropping my cellphone in the toilet just as I was leaving for the doctor. I know of countless iphones users whose phones have met there demise in the tiniest amount of water. I witnessed a miracle...the phone fell out of my pocked, bounces off both sides of the toilet seat and landed on the floor. I know this seems like a silly thing but without that phone, I would have gotten this news alone in the doctors office without anyone to reach out to.