Conclusion of Our Story of Grief and Joy

If you haven't been following along, you'd probably want to go back and start from the beginning.  Click here to start with Part 1.

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When my last post ended I was over 39 weeks pregnant, and very excited to meet my little baby!  And to find out if I'd been growing a boy or a girl for the past 39 weeks!

On October 24, 2006 I went to my OB appointment while a friend watched my daycare kids and Sweet Pea.  My appointment was at 10:00, after doing all the typical checks, my nurse practitioner told me she'd try to strip my membranes so I could maybe go into labor... this time she was able to do it!

I had already been having strong contractions (like serious contractions... real labor contractions that just weren't becoming speeding up or growing progressively stronger, but strong enough to wake me up) about 20 minutes apart for a solid 33 hours, so I knew it would be soon.  I had told my NP that I hadn't been sleeping at night, so she gave me a couple pills and told me to go home, send my daycare kids home, find someone to watch Sweet Pea and take a long nap so I could be rested up for labor. 

No nap would be had though, because on my way home (about a 20 minute drive) my contractions started picking up, and when I got home I started timing them.  By the time I got home at 11:00 my contractions were 7 minutes apart and I called all the daycare parents to pick up the kiddos!  At 12:30 they were in the 5-7 minutes apart range and I called the hospital, and was told to come in!  Our hospital was a good 30 minutes away with no traffic, so we weren't going to wait around for the 5 minutes apart mark.  I called Spence and told him, "It's time!" and he hurried home.  All the kids were picked up very quickly since I had called them at 11:00, and everyone was out of the house by the time Spencer got home and grabbed some last minute things.

On the way to the hospital my contractions had gotten really strong and I was getting very impatient while we made our way to the hospital... all I could think of was one word... "Epidural" and the sooner we got there, the sooner I'd have an anesthesiologist in the room!  We were all set up in PETU to be evaluated at 2:15 in the afternoon.  My water broke in PETU, but it wasn't a gush and they weren't sure it had broke until much later.  But I had felt something pop down there, and when I told the nurse that, she said it was probably water breaking, and that we would get me to a room.

At 3:30 I was moved to a Labor/Delivery room.  After waiting entirely too long, I finally got my epidural at 4:15, felt one more contraction, and was then pain-free!  The next few hours of labor found me the most relaxed and comfortable I'd been in months thank to that wonderful medicine! 

About 3 hours later, and after a short nap (epidurals mean you have a good chance of actually taking a nap during labor... Thank you Mr. Anesthesiologist!!) I was 10 cm dilated and ready to push!

I started pushing at 7:33, and I told them to have the doctor ready because my first child had been born after only 11 minutes of pushing, so I was ready for this to go pretty quickly.  While I wasn't feeling any pain at all, I could feel the pressure, and when I heard the nurses and doctor telling me things like, "That's it!" I would just keep pushing like I was. 

I could barely even feel the baby crowning, and after having a worn off epidural with Sweet Pea believe me.. that's not a fun thing to feel!  I could feel that she was there, but no pain.  After pushing for 21 minutes, our baby came out and was handed right up to me on my chest, that's when I saw she was a GIRL!

I don't think there is anything as amazing and precious as holding your baby in your arms for the first time!  They wiped her off as best they could while she stayed on my chest, and without even thinking about all the stuff that covers a newborn baby, I was kissing her little forehead... I had waited long enough for that!

It was a very emotional moment, and while I was completely exhausted I was blown away by how long we had waited for this very moment.  By how much we had gone through to get to this very moment, holding our child in our arms after waiting 2 1/2 years, after losing three babies, after all those tests and ultrasounds, and constant worry, and sleepless nights, we were finally holding her, memorizing every thing about her, and thanking God for this miracle!

My birth experience with Babydoll was absolutely wonderful.  My nurse was always there when I needed her, the lights were dim, the room was quiet and calm, my epidural worked like a charm.  It was so serene and beautiful. 

I was really nervous about nursing Babydoll, because that had been difficult with Sweet Pea, but she was nursing like a champ immediately!

I was completely in love.  I didn't mind waking up with her in the middle of the night to feed her, it was nice to hold her and cuddle her in the quiet hour of 3AM.  One night when she was about 1 month old, it was just me and her cuddling on the couch, I was smiling at her, she was smiling at me, and I was thinking about how much I love her and how glad I was to have her.  Then I started to cry.

I hadn't really cried yet since she was born, and at that moment it all came flooding out.  I was expecting tears of joy, but what I wasn't expecting was this.  Tears of guilt

This emotion was unexpected and I just lost it.  I started crying because I felt guilty for loving her so much, it was only because my last 3 babies had miscarried that she was even here.  I felt like I was letting them down, like I was a traitor to their memory for being so completely overjoyed to have her in my life.  And then of course I felt guilty for feeling guilty for loving her!  I just held her and cried.  It was a relatively short period of guilt, and I'm not sure how I got over it except that I knew God wanted her in my life.  I knew after 2.5 years of heartache and struggle, she was meant to be.  She was our little miracle.  I've wondered ever since then if other women have had similar emotions after they've gone through something similar to what we've gone through.  If you have, please speak up so I know I'm not alone!

All of my children are miracles to me, I am amazed when I really look at them how God has blessed me more than I could ever deserve.  How could I possibly be so lucky as to have these three children to call my own?  Except that they are not my own, they are children of God and have been entrusted to us to take care of them.  To raise them to be compassionate, gracious, polite, hardworking, serving of the Lord, adults who will go out and make positive changes in the world.  They are all blessings, but my second baby is the one who most reminds me that we were all created for a purpose.  A purpose we may never understand in our lifetime, but a clear purpose in Gods eyes.  She was meant to be here, in our family, in our little speck of the world, and I pray that one day she will understand just what a miracle she is.

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 8

If you haven't been following along, please get caught up here  before you continue reading.  Thanks!

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Like I said last time, I'm going to fly through the next few months.

It was time for our big 20 week ultrasound.  When I was pregnant with Sweet Pea, I really wanted to know if she was a boy or a girl as soon as possible, but when we had our big ultrasound, she was... shy.  We couldn't get a good enough look down there to see anything, and by the time we had another ultrasound later on, we had decided not to find out.  With Babydoll, I wanted to know, but Spencer didn't.  He had no problem with me finding out, but I thought it would ruin the fun if I had that big of a secret and couldn't tell anyone!  Plus I didn't trust myself to not slip and spill the beans!  Either everyone was going to need to know, or none of us.  So we opted to wait and find out when the baby was born... when there would be no wondering for months if the technician was right or not. 

That's not to say I wasn't SOOOO tempted to peek!

June 14, 2006   20wks 6days

We had an ultrasound last week, baby is growing beautifully!  The ultrasound was so clear, it was amazing!  For a while Baby had it's arms up in sort of a boxing stance, and at one point it's arm was up and flexed!  It was so cute!  As far as movement goes this baby is very active, and a very strong kicker for such a tiny one!

   I have to step in here and say that that is exactly how she is now!  Her personality in the womb was very much like it is out in the world!

September 25, 2006   36 wks

Only 4 weeks to go!  The last 3 months have gone smoothly, which is probably why I haven't been writing.  The biggest thing is that for the past 3 weeks or so I've been having contractions throughout the day and night.  Most of them are in the afternoon and evening.  It's gotten really hard to get around, particularly getting up, and I'm getting uncomfortable.  I would be perfectly happy to have this baby soon!  I'm incredibly anxious and excited to see our baby!  I want to hug and kiss him or her so bad!  I'm a little nervous though about going into labor on my own - and knowing for sure that it's time to go in.  I also want to make sure that the baby isn't born too soon, so that it can come home with us.  I'll be taking 4 weeks off for maternity leave.

October 4, 2006  37wks 2days

The crib is ready to go and so am I!  Monday and Tuesday were pretty quiet as far as contractions go.  Sunday afternoon we all went to the apple orchard.  While we were driving out there and while we were there I was having contractions between 3-6 minutes apart for almost an hour and a half.  The only reason I didn't go in was they weren't getting progressively stronger.

At about the 38 week point, I suddenly was unable to sleep through the night.  I would wake up after a few hours of sleep, and then be wide awake for hours.  When it hurts to move around, and you know you're about to pull off one of the hardest physical challenges a person can go through, it really sucks to not be able to sleep!

October 13, 2006   38wks 4days

I woke up again last night, wide awake at midnight, but after a while of laying on the couch watching TV, I fell back asleep.  I woke up several times but was able to fall back asleep.  The night before, on the other hand, I was completely awake from 2-4:00, and up and down from then on.  May ankles hurt really bad right now, as do my legs.

I was getting desperate.  My OB was going to try to strip my membranes but was unable to reach them.  This most likely would have sent me into labor, so I was pretty bummed she couldn't do it.  I drank Raspberry tea, ate macaroni and cheese with A1 sauce (gross), exercised, did every idea I could find to try to go into labor.  At 39 weeks I woke up with groin and pelvic pain and a terrible back ache, I hoped it was labor - nope.  I took some tylanol and went back to bed and woke up in the morning feeling better. Better, but still pregnant.

October 18, 2006   39wks  2days

The last couple days I've been having a lot of Braxton Hix contractions but so far no real labor.  I have been able to sleep in my own bed all night for the past 2 nights though! Yay!  I still get up to go to the bathroom and wake up throughout the night, but I've been able to get back to sleep without too much trouble.  I wouldn't mind being up in the middle of the night if I was holding my baby!  I am very excited to meet our baby!!!

If you've been following along, you should probably click HERE for the final chapter of this story!

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 7

If you haven't been following along, please get yourself caught up because you missed a lot!  Click here to find Part 1. 

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In the last couple of weeks of my first trimester I was a tad on edge, just trying to hang on and hope and pray that this baby would continue to grow and develop and make it to the 12 week mark.  We had been feeling pretty confident that this baby would be fine after seeing it's heartbeat in the last two ultrasounds, but I was still not going to feel completely safe until we hit the 12 week mark.  I think we had started to announce our pregnancy after our 3rd ultrasound.  We had wanted to wait until we knew things were looking good, I didn't want to go through what we went through when we had our first miscarriage. 

Before our first miscarriage we had told lots of people, who had told people, that we were pregnant but the news of the loss didn't travel as far.  For several months we would get the occasional, "How's your pregnancy going?"  "How are you feeling?" or "How is the baby?"  followed by confused stare while I tried to figure out if they ment Sweet Pea and hadn't realized she's not at all a baby anymore or if they were referring to the one we lost and hadn't heard about it yet.  When I was faced with telling someone (that had never gone through a miscarriage) that we had lost the baby, I knew they wouldn't know what to say, I knew it would be awkward, I could imagine that they felt uncomfortable and helpless in not knowing what to say, and I never really figured out how to respond to them.  Usually they would say something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry" which is a completely appropriate response, but then what was I supposed to say? "It's ok" cuz it's certainly not!  Go into the whole story?  Nope, not enough time, not a strong enough emotional fortitude to tell the whole thing over and over again.  I usually went with something along the lines of, "Thanks, it was really rough but we're getting through it."  No response really seemed appropriate.

Anyway, back to the "present", sort of.  When I finally made it to the 12 week point we were so excited!  We knew there was still plenty of room for things to go wrong, but we felt pretty good about it all at this point!  

On to the good ol' journal entries...

April 18, 2006   12wks 5days
   I had my 2nd OB visit today and baby is still going strong!!  I heard the heartbeat with the doppler and it made me so happy to know we've made it this far and nothing is going to stop this baby now!  His or her heartbeat was in the 150's, wonder if it is a boy or a girl.  [Sweet Pea] has been really cute about that since we told her we were having another baby - she REALLY wants a sister!  When Mary (my mother-in-law) asked her a couple weeks ago, "What if it's a boy?"  Sweet Pea said, "Then you can keep it."  Tonight at bedtime she brought me a little girl baby doll and said as she handed it to me, "A baby girl instead of a baby boy."  How cute!  I asked what it was for and she said, "To snuggle with in bed when you're sleeping."  Could she be trying to convince me to have a girl?  :o)

Finally the pregnancy we've all been waiting for!  This is indeed my pregnancy with Izzy! (blog nickname also Babydoll)

May 9, 2006   15wks 5days
   Things are still going well.  I'm still throwing up from time to time, but at least it's not 3 times a day anymore.  My belly is definately out there now!  I pretty much just wear sweatpants and my stretchy black maternity pants because my maternity jeans and khakis are too tight in the legs now.  Sometime soon I need to go get some new mat. clothes. 
   So I have a pretty bad cold now, and it's made me extra tired.  The most exciting thing is that I could start feeling movement as early as 16 weeks, which is only 2 days away!  With [Sweet Pea] it was more like 20 weeks before I felt her kick, but with 2nd + pregnancies you can start feeling movement between 16-18 weeks.... I can't wait!

May 24, 2006    17wks 6days
   I started feeling the baby move two days ago!  It sort of feels like tiny little bumps.  Feeling the movement is definately my favorite part of pregnancy!  I still have this cold, and when I cough sometimes I throw up.  Once in a while (usually in the AM) I throw up without even coughing.  So far I've gained between 3-5 lbs (probably would have been more had I not lost so much weight in the first tri and had been able to keep food down!).  At my OB appt last week the heartbeat was still in the 150's.

My pregnancies with Sweet Pea and Babydoll, well all of them really up until my very last one, were pretty horrible.  They were filled with all sorts of miseries, but the one part that I never got sick of was feeling them move!  It is an amazing feeling.  When you can't see this baby that you love, but you can feel them moving - and when they get big enough see them moving too - it just gave me such a feeling of connectedness, like I could hold it in my arms if it weren't for that layer of skin, muscle, and uteran wall.  After having 3 children, I can still feel baby bumps, the memories have become so vivid that I can almost feel them again. 

Coming up I'll skip some stuff, breeze through months, so I can get to the birth, finding out if it was a boy or girl, and the very unexpected feelings that came up after she was born.  I'm really curious to find out if anyone else experienced those same feelings because they shocked me!

Click HERE for part 8.

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 6

If you haven't been following along on this part of my blog, before you read this post, get yourself caught up here.  Thank you.

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So in the last post I told you about my amazing hormone levels!  hcg levels are supposed to at least double in 48 hours, and my last check had almost quadrupled!  Our first thought was relief to finally get some good numbers, then it was, "since my hormone levels went up so high, does that mean we have twins?", and then it was worry because I had been spotting again since before I even found out I was pregnant. 

I felt like I was drowning in emotions, confusion, hope, fear, wonder, and trying to take it one day at a time.

One thing that I bet anyone who has lost a baby before, and then been pregnant again, would tell you is that paranoia sets in big time!  Every cramp, kink, spot of blood, sends you calling your doctor for blood tests/ultrasounds.  Even when things appear to be going fine, you still get paranoid and beg for medical reassurance, and if you have an understanding doctor, you get tests done! 

February 21, 2006    

  I'm still so scared that I'll lose this baby so I asked to go in today for more hcg levels.  It's only been 3 days since my last one but the hormone has continued to more than double!  They went from 234 to 842 which is about tripling and a half, plus some, in the time it needed to take to double. 

Do I dare get excited for this yet?

I feel pregnant this time around.  This morning I felt a little queasy (not bad though), my boobs feel uncomfortable, and I have mood swings.  Everyone is speculating twins since my hcg went so high, but I wont be so sure till we can count them on the ultrasound.  So technically my due date is October 23rd but I'm expecting to measure at least 3 days later than that since I got my ovidrel shot on day 17 instead of the "normal" day 14.

We had our first ultrasound for this pregnancy when I was 5 weeks 5 days pregnant.  I was scared to death, I think Spencer was mainly just ready to start counting embryos!  I was trying to brace myself for the possibility of either seeing an empty uterus, or seeing something like 4 embryos!  I knew there was a chance that taking that Ovidrel shot would cause my ovaries to release more than one egg, and those skyrocketing numbers made it seem even more possible. I always thought twins would be fun, triplets would be really really busy but I thought we could handle it, and quads or more would just make me pass out.  I'd be done.  4 babies at once, 24/7?  I'd be praying to grow some more arms and a stronger back!

That ultrasound was a glorious sight to behold! 

What you see here is called, by some, "the diamond ring".  And you can see why.  The large yolk sac and the tiny embryo look like a diamond ring.  This made our ultrasound lady very happy:o) which meant that Spencer and I were very happy!  I had trouble scanning this photo so I started looking on google images to find an example but was unable to find a "diamond ring" ultrasound picture so perfect as this one! 

There was one baby, and it was growing at the right pace, and my doctor assured me that the progesterone hormones I was taking can cause women to bleed/spot until they stop taking them at the end of the first trimester... RELIEF!

After this ultrasound was done I had 2 more done before I even hit the 10 week mark (remember... paranoia!) to make sure its heart started beating and continued to grow correctly.

One last journal entry for this post, we jump ahead to the 10 week mark!  Yay! The 10 week mark!!

March 30, 2006    10 weeks pg

  Wow, I've made it SO FAR now!  I'm almost to the "safe" point now.  I've had 3 ultrasounds and all measured right, and the last two had a beating heart (152 and 161 bpm)!!!

  I've been a little sleepy and very sick since 5.5 weeks.  I haven't been able to eat for almost 5 weeks now and I've lost 5.5 lbs.  I've tried anti-nausea meds but they haven't worked.  Sucking on slices of lemon, and ice cubes.  That's about all that sounds good now.  I choke down food and try to keep it down as much as possible, but I feel like this baby isn't getting any food.  I hope my prenatal vitamins and vitamin stores will compensate for now.

  Baby's got 7 months to go.  The new due date is Oct. 26.

  It's been hard juggling family, work, school, and a nauseous pregnancy, but I think being so busy will make it go fast!

If I haven't scared you away yet, click here for my second OB visit and what was going on at the 12.5 week point.

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 5

If you haven't been following along, please start from the beginning.  Click here to start with Part 1.

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So I was waiting and waiting for blood test results that would tell me if our fourth baby was making it.  My last hcg test hadn't gone very well, but wasn't terrible either, and since the spotting had stopped I felt like things were looking up.  We had already lost 2 babies, (and yes, we consider them babies right from the get go) and we couldn't possibly lose 3 babies!  We already had a child, so we knew it was possible.  Third time's the charm right?  We prayed to God, we bargained with God, we begged God to let this baby be ok and go to term.  We were doing everything we could think of to keep this little one going!

Eight days after my last hcg test was taken, what we thought was impossible happened.  We suffered our third miscarriage.  Baby number 4 was gone. 

October 18, 2005   tuesday

We lost this baby.  I began miscarrying yesterday, october 17.  My second round of hcg's were october 7 and 9 at 6 weeks 1 day and 6 weeks 3 days.  Those numbers were 2345 - 3024.  They only went up 28%.  Then on October 11 I had an ultrasound which showed me measuring at least 2 weeks too small.  If I take off the week that I didn't ovulate on time, that's still at least a week small.  Those two things convinced us that this wasn't going to end well.  Spencer hung on to hope that this would be a miracle baby, I tried to catch that hope, but I knew in my heart the baby was already gone.  This continues to be a very painful journey for us.  I don't know what the next step in testing and plans the doctor has in store for us, but neither one of us is ready to quit trying. 

I would be 7 weeks 4 days along yesterday.

I felt so defeated.  I felt empty.  I felt like nothing was possible.  I felt like I'd never give birth to another child again.  I felt like a broken woman, unable to keep a child alive in my womb.  The female body is supposed to be able to carry a child until it is ready to be delivered, yet mine had failed three times!  In a row! 

What the hell?  We had prayed and prayed and trusted God that He would keep this baby alive, all for what?  More blood and tissue in a toilet.  A baby that would never grow to wiggle, kick, squish my bladder, or take a breath.  These were the times when I would question my beliefs.  I believed that God has a plan, and that perhaps these babies weren't in that plan.  But then why let me get pregnant in the first place?  Was this payback for something that Spencer or I had done?  Had we not had enough faith?  I thought I had trusted Him to give us this baby, but had I really trusted Him?    I still don't have the answers to all of those questions, but have resigned myself to not knowing until the day I walk through those pearly gates.

Had these babies died so that someone else could be born?  Perhaps.  But it still sucks.  And you can bet I'll have these questions ready when I die and can finally, hopefully, get some answers.

My OB referred us to The Center for Reproductive Medicine for testing and help with our next pregnancy.  When I told a daycare parent about this referral she told me that she had gone there as well, and that the doctor I was seeing is fantastic (turns out over the years I've had 3 daycare parents who have gone there!). 

On our first visit we went over our past experiences, and what tests would be done first to check for various problems.  They found no physiological problems with me, and not much wrong with Spencer.  For his sperm check (yes, I got his permission to share before writing this) he had a slightly higher than average count of abnormal sperm, but had about 300 million more than he needed to have, so the doctor didn't feel that that was the problem either.  The only thing they found with me was that historically I ovulate later than "normal" and that the egg was sitting around longer than it should have before being released. 

They started checking my follicle counts and watched for an egg to be ready.  When I had at least one egg that was ready (cycle day 17) I gave myself a shot of Ovidrel in my belly at home, which would induce ovulation.  You'd think giving yourself a shot in the belly (right under my belly button I think it was) would be scary and weird, and it was weird, but it didn't bother me, and it didn't hurt much.  After my Ovidrel shot we were given a babymaking schedule.  Romantic huh?  yeah... not really.  But nothing new after trying for almost 2 years to have another baby. 

On Valentines day 2006 I peed on a stick and saw that blessed little second line!  I was pregnant for the 5th time!  I had a blood pregnancy test/hcg done on Feb. 16 - the results: 62 on cycle day 31.  So we were shooting for a 124 or better 48 hours later.  While we waited to be able to take the second hcg test, I was scheduled for an ultrasound on the 28th. 

I was so nervous... no, scared to death... for this baby.  I couldn't get excited about it because I didn't know if this baby would make it.  It's hard to let yourself get attached at that point after suffering a loss, but it's inevitable... you get attached - actually you are attached, physically and emotionally the second you find out you're pregnant.  At least that was my experience, I can't really speak for everyone.  I do know that many women have a hard time bonding until after the baby is born, some quite a while after the baby is born.

We had all this help, a fantastic doctor, tests and monitoring galore, but I wasn't optimistic.  After all, I had begun to spot AGAIN every day since before I even got my positive pregnancy test.

Then this happened:

February 20, 2006

Today I got the best pregnancy news I've received in a long time!  My hcg levels went from 62 to 234!!!  It not only doubled, it nearly quadrupled!  I've never had hcg's double before in my last 3 pregnancies.  I had become very angry over the weekend at the thought of losing yet another baby.  I was scared to death when I called for my results!  I expected the worst, really did.  Luckily I was shocked at how high my numbers were on Saturday!!  So does this mean that there is more than one baby in there?  How scary and amazing would that be! 

Click here to read Part 6, when the paranoia sets in, more tests, and Symptoms!

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 4

If you haven't been following along before now, click here to start with Part 1. 

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After losing two babies and having no answers as to what had happened, we were told we should wait at least 1 whole cycle before trying again.  This was tough because we were worried after trying to have a second child for over a year that it would never happen for us.  It had taken us almost a year to get pregnant the last time and I didn't want to wait any longer.  In the end we waited one full cycle before trying again... 2 months was just out of the question at this point.  I set up an appointment with my OB to go over a plan for how we would monitor the next pregnancy, and what could be done to help it along.

August 3, 2005   wednesday

We waited one cycle and now I'm on cycle day 12 of our 2nd month.  I had an appointment with Dr. Keller today to talk about fertility and sustaining the next pregnancy.  She gave me a prescription for progesterone which I take twice a day from ovulation through the first trimester (or until I get my period if I don't get pregnant).  They also did a lot of blood work - they took 8 vials of blood for the tests - which wont come back for a couple weeks.  I've been taking my temperatures each morning which have stayed fairly even, so it should be easy to tell when I have ovulated.  I'm also doing my ovulation predictor tests the same way every morning right when I wake up. 

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August 15, 2005   monday

I got my blood work results back on thursday and there was definitely something there.  It showed that I most likely have Antiphospholipid Syndrom, which is a blood clotting disorder I think.  One main symptom is repeated loss of pregnancies.  So this is the reason for my miscarriages.  When we get pregnant again I will need to see a high-risk OB, and be monitored more closely.  I am already taking one baby asprin per day and I will most likely be doing that for the rest of my life.

This is a very rare disorder and Dr. Keller said that most doctors don't know much about it.  I feel very relieved that we figured this out so that our next baby can have a better chance.

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September 28, 2005   wednesday

A second blood test showed that I don't have the disorder they previously thought, but I'm thinking of getting a third test and go 2 out of 3.

      

I found out later that the reason the first test was positive, was because it was supposed to be done after fasting for 12 hours or something, but I had eaten meals that day because no one had told me not to! Nice huh??

We found out I'm pregnant just this past Saturday (9/24/05) but already it's not looking good.  I started spotting on Monday morning.  I went in for an hcg test yesterday evening and they called me today saying it was 81, which she said is low for how far I am.  I'll go back thursday evening for more blood work and will get the results of that back friday.  My lower back, all the way around to the sides of my abdomen are achy, but that could just be my body stretching. 

If we lose this baby, I don't know how I'll make it through starting another pregnancy.

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September 30, 2005   friday

The nurse was wonderful enough to call me back right away this morning before 9:00!  Usually I wait and pace until I eventually call them to find out my results.  My hcg numbers went from 81 to 144.  It isn't doubled but it's close.  She seemed very optimistic and said it's a good number, even though it's not the 160 we were hoping for - she said it's still good.  I'm not so sure.  This spotting seems so much like last time when we lost the baby.

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October 9, 2005   sunday

I am waiting - patiently I might add - for my newest hcg levels.  Last week, tuesday I was very sick with some flu-like virus but stopped spotting for 3 days!  Thursday night I had some pink blood, but haven't been spotting since.  I had blood work done friday morning and this morning.  Hopefully I will get results soon tomorrow.  Then I have an ultrasound on tuesday.  I'm not sure what it will show though since I ovulated on day 19 or 20 instead of day 14 like  you're "supposed to". 

This period of time was so filled with hcg numbers, and waiting for phone calls, and checking for blood, and getting blood drawn (it's a good thing I'm not squeamish about blood!) and worrying, and more and more worrying. 

Can I just say that waiting for your hcg levels is a killer.  It's awful knowing that there are answers to some of your questions just sitting on someone's computer somewhere, and you have to wait for someone to call you to let you know how your pregnancy is doing.

Click here to find out the results and what happened next. 

Have any of you ever been through this experience?  It sucks... big time doesn't it.

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 3

Before you read this post, please click here to start with Part 1.

After seeing the very unexpected heartbeat at our ultrasound, we were cautiously excited.  We had praying constantly that God would let our baby be ok.  That we would carry this baby to term and give birth to a healthy baby that winter.  We are Christians, we know God, we have faith, we prayed a lot about this baby, why should we think anything other than what we were praying would happen??

June 18, 2005

Seven weeks four days pregnant.  For the past four days I've been spotting on and off when I wipe.  At the same time it started, I had begun taking a baby asprin once per day.  [A daycare parent] recommended asking my doctor about it because her fertility doctor told her it sometimes can help sustain a troubled pregnancy.  I called my doc and asked about it.  Dr. K said to go ahead, so Tuesday night Spencer went to pick some up.  The next day I started spotting.  I'm hoping that nothing is wrong.  Maybe there's a blood clot and the asprin is breaking it up.  We pray for a healthy baby!  Yesterday we reached the point that we miscarried with baby #2.  I'm not sure if I'm having dull cramping or if I'm just very tense from worrying about the spotting.

June 22, 2005

We lost the baby.

I started bleeding heavily at 4:30 PM Monday and went to Urgent Care right away.  The doctor said with the amount of blood, it looked like I was miscarrying.  I had an ultrasound yesterday and the baby was gone. 

It measured at 6 weeks and I should have been 8 weeks.  Apparently the baby died right after our last ultrasound.  To have seen his or her tiny little heart beating, and to feel hope that this baby was going to make it, only for it to stop beating hurts so much I can't even put it into words. 

Our baby's heart was beating, then it stopped.

I have a follow-up with my OB this morning.  I'm having really bad cramping this morning, so I'll write more later

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While having my exam, I passed the baby.  It wasn't even together anymore, but had fallen apart.  I had to remind myself that the baby's soul is with God.

My cervix was wide open so she went into my uterus with a suction catheder and removed what she could of the tissue.  There may still be more - my hcg tests will tell if its all gone.  The suction caused bad and sudden contractions that hurt like hell!  I can see why they put you to sleep for a full D&C - it's painful!  It felt a lot like going from feeling fine, to being in the worst contractions of labor instantly.

I explained very short and simply to [Sweet Pea] that the baby that was in Mommy's tummy is gone now, it's not in my tummy anymore - it's in heaven with Jesus.

When this happened Sweet Pea was 2 1/2 years old.  She had been so excited to have a sister or brother.  After this miscarriage, she developed an imaginary sister.  She played with her sister, talked to her sister, and talked about her sister for several months until it disappeared.  This was a reminder to us that we weren't the only ones hurt by this loss, she had lost a baby sibling as well.

I promise that this story does eventually end in joy.  It was quite a journey.  Click here for part 4, where we get set to try again and have a bunch of blood work done...

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 2

If you haven't read part one yet, read that first, please and thank you.

We thought we'd get pregnant for the third time pretty easily, we hadn't had any difficulty before, so we were a bit surprised when we didn't get pregnant right away.  I wasn't terribly surprised to not be pregnant the first month of trying since we had just had the miscarriage and I figured my body wasn't quite back to normal yet, though we were disappointed.  I was more surprised when the second month went by with no positive pregnancy tests.  A few months later, we still weren't expecting.  I started tracking temperatures, ovulation charts, ovulation predictor sticks, and getting more and more frustrated.  A few more months went by and we were still not pregnant.  They say the stress of trying so hard to get pregnant can make it harder to get pregnant, so for a couple months we tried to relax a bit and leave the sticks, temperatures, and charts alone and just take a pregnancy test when it was time... that didn't work either.  Needless to say I was worried that I was broken.  I prayed a very thankful prayer that we had been "surprised" by our daughter's arrival since maybe there was something wrong with me and she had been our miracle baby.

At a family Easter celebration in 2005, our cousins arrived with their daughter and brand new baby.  He was born the same week that our little angel baby had been due.  This fact didn't escape me but he was family and adorable and very loved, so I held him.  I choked back tears.  I had to hand him off after just a couple minutes (I generally hog babies for as long as I can get away with).  I couldn't help but look at him and see, instead of our new cousin, our baby - in my arms - having his or her first Easter. That was an incredibly painful afternoon, I hadn't been expecting to have those feelings, I hadn't expected it to hit me that hard.

Nearly a year went by before we finally got a positive pregnancy test!  When I was about 6 weeks pregnant I decided to go buy a journal to keep track of my thoughts, fears, and joys of this journey to the birth of our second child.  I will be sharing that journal, well most of it, here with you.  My hope for sharing our story here is that it will help heal others who have gone through the same things we have gone through.  I remember reading/writing on online support websites just trying to reach out to others who knew what I was feeling. The plain black print are my thoughts and experiences that were not recorded in my journal.

June 11, 2005

Only about 6 1/2 weeks pregnant and WOAH what a rollar coaster ride!  I am so happy to be pregnant again after 11 months of trying!  We decided a while back we would only tell immediate family and a few close friends, so we've pretty much stuck to that in case something happens.

On Tuesday May 31, I had an internal ultrasound that showed an empty embrionic sac.  This was not a good sign, as they were expecting to see more there.  They drew blood to check my hCG levels and again on Thursday.  hCG is a pregnancy hormone that is supposed to double every 48 hours in the early weeks of pregnancy.  Friday they called and said my hCG level went from 5100 to 5900 instead of jumping to 10,000.  The doctor had told us that if the levels didn't go up enough then it ment we were losing the baby, or that there may have never been an embryo there in the first place.  After receiving the news of our measly little 5900 we cried and grieved for another loss. 

After a horrible weekend that we had planned on celebrating our anniversary, I had an ultrasound on Monday June 6th  to confirm a miscarriage.  The mood in the sonogram room was somber, we knew we weren't there to listen to a heartbeat, watch a tiny embryo wiggle wround, or rejoice in the blessing of new life.  We were there to confirm that the baby, or lack thereof, was indeed gone.  Then something happened that blew us out of the water.

After a lot of measuring and studying and silence, the technician said, "I have a heartbeat here."

My breath caught in my throat and I just focused on the ultrasound screen.  Spencer jumped out of his seat to get to the screen.  All I could choke out was, "What??"  I couldn't believe it.  There on the screen in front of us was a yoke sac that hadn't been there last week, and an embryo with a heartbeat!  A heartbeat!!  The heartbeat was 127.  The tech told us that normal at this point is 120-160. 

So we are still expecting a little winter baby, though we're not sure of the due date.  I ovulated on May 4th, which puts the due date at January 25th, but the last ultrasound had the baby measuring 1 1/2 weeks smaller.  So I'm a little confused about that and the hCG levels but we are praying for a healthy baby in January!

Click here to read part 3.

Our story of Grief and Joy - Part 1

In April of 2004, our daughter Sweet Pea was a year and a half, we decided it was time to start trying to have a second child.  We felt like we were ready to expand our family, and I was getting that urge to bring another child into the world.  We knew it could take some time to get pregnant, but when in our first month of trying we got a positive pregnancy test, we were so excited!  Spencer was at work, I was home alone with SP, when I took the pregnancy test.  Before the 3 minutes were up I had a positive, I was so excited that I immediately ran into the living room, dropped down to SP, and told her, "you're going to be a big sister!  We're going to have another baby!  You're going to have a baby brother or sister to play with!!"  I started telling her about how there was a baby in mommy's tummy, and imagining her as a big sister! 

Spencer and I were thrilled about the news and told everyone we knew, eager to bring them into our excitement.  Plans were made and preparations started.  My due date was the last week of January, 2005.

In June we planned a trip several hours north of us to the town where my dad lived when he was young, where his family was from, and where a few of them still lived.  It was a family reunion and we were excited to get up there, meet people we hadn't met, see people I hadn't seen in several years, and enjoy some relaxation and fun.

About an hour into our drive North, I started feeling cramping.  I thought I was bloated, that it was gas, so I unbuttoned my jeans to relieve the pressure and relax.  The cramping quickly got worse and I was getting nervous so I asked Spencer to pull over somewhere so I could use a bathroom.  Spencer pulled up to a gas station or something and I ducked into a bathroom quickly.  When I pulled down my pants I was horrified... speechless.... stunned... I couldn't move.  There was blood.... a lot of blood... too much blood.  Then I started crying.  I grabbed a handful of toilet paper and wiped, only to find even more blood.  Panicking, I cleaned up what I could and stuffed toilet paper into my underwear.  It was such a long walk to the truck where my husband and daughter were waiting for me.  I wasn't sure what to do, what to say, who to call... what to do. 

I got into the truck and told Spencer that I was bleeding, a lot.  He looked horrified, and I thought I must be seeing a reflection of my own face.  We immediately called our doctor's office and were told to go to the emergency room since it was a weekend and the clinic was closed.  We were a couple hours away from the hospital now, so it was a long drive filled with fear.  We called my mom to let them know what had happened and that we weren't making it up to the reunion.  I could hear the fear in their voices, this had come completely out of the blue to everyone.

When we walked into the hospital emergency room, there were a lot of people waiting to be seen.  A new wave of panic swept over me when I thought I'd have to wait for all of these people to be in and out before they'd be able to check on our baby, but when I told the person checking people in that I was pregnant, cramping, and bleeding and that our doctor said to get here right away, they immediately got us to a room.

Things got fuzzy from here out, but the doctor had told us that I was dilated and had miscarried, the baby was gone.  That's the last thing I remember, it was too painful to remember. 

What I do remember though was the pain, the pain of contractions that brought no happy ending, the pain of telling our little girl that the baby was gone, the pain of all the dreams we had already dreamed for our child disappearing, the pain of telling people over and over that we lost the baby, the pain of not knowing why.... and the emptiness.  I distinctly remember the emptiness I felt.  It felt exactly like my entire body was hollow, when I wasn't feeling pain I felt nothing.  Just emptiness.  I remember one evening when I was alone, I couldn't take the empty feeling and started eating.  I ate an entire package of cookies, drank a lot of milk, ate as much as I could until I felt sick.  I wanted to feel sick, at least that was something I could feel.  I didn't want to throw up, I just wanted the stomach ache, I wanted to feel something in my body.

My doctor told us that we'd be able to start trying after a month or two if we were ready.  We gave it a full month and started trying again. 

We thought we'd get pregnant right away again.  Our first child had come unplanned, and we had gotten pregnant so quickly the second time that we had no reason to expect difficulty getting pregnant, only fear of losing another baby. 

Things didn't go as planned....

Click HERE to read part 2