I have been excited to get my blog up and running with all the current happenings, but first I have to backtrack a bit and cover all that got us to the point we are now. So settle in ladies and gents, this might be one of my longer posts! I guess the easiest way to do this is to just give a month-by-month summary of 2011. I wanted to start off 2012 by burning the 2011 calendar on New Year's Eve. In hindsight I suppose it is a good thing I didn't go through with that plan because now I have a very detailed record to help create this post..
JANUARY 2011
24th - Matt surprises me with one of those old lady pill boxes wrapped in a cute gift bag. I give him one of my usual "what the hell is this?" looks, and he tells me it is for prenatal vitamins because he is FINALLY (after months of persuasion on my part) ready to try and have a baby! WOOHOO! Victory is mine!
FEBRUARY 2011
10th - I get my first positive ovulation test. You know what happens next! bow chicka bow wow...
11th - 28th - So many things were going on in February that I did not even have time to wonder whether or not I had gotten pregnant. My grandmother died, Matt's grandfather died, I started ballet, it was Matt's birthday, etc etc. Looking back I wonder if having it at the very back of my mind actually helped us conceive.
MARCH 2011
4th - We leave for England to visit Matt's family and friends. I had taken a couple of pregnancy tests prior to this but all came out BFN (Big *insert favorite F word* Negative).
***WARNING*** I feel like I have learned a third language during this journey, and now that you are reading my blog I am going to force you to learn it as well. I had no idea there were so many acronyms, abbreviations and code words used in the infertility community, but just start googling...you will find that the information is completely incomprehensible without a glossary.
8th - Holy S@#%! I brought one single HPT (Home Pregnancy Test) with me to England and had honestly forgotten I even had it until this morning. I decided to take it, and unbelievably it came out BFP!!! Hopefully you have that one figured out.. I am 25 DPO (Days Past Ovulation) at this point, and I should have had a BFP long before this. But I didn't really do the math at the time..obviously there was too much excitement to be doing math.. I call my doctor back in the states (screw international roaming charges...I AM PREGNANT, bitches!! woohoo!), and they schedule me for an appointment when I will be 8 weeks. As a pregnancy virgin (hmm..) I had no idea. Totally bummed to have to wait that long. Over the next several days I spend God knows how much money (it doesn't count really..I mean it's foreign money..) on crazy British brand pregnancy tests. They all come up BFP.
10th - Happy birthday to me! Not significant other than the fact that I was not able to drink ON my birthday IN England. Bummer.
13th - We return home to Dallas, and I immediately start googling all things baby/pregnancy related. I am SUCH a newbie. Also begin counting the days, minutes, seconds until my first appointment on March 25th. Why.is.time.going.so.slowwwwly?
23rd - I start having some lower abdominal/almost ovary twinges. Not particularly painful but what I described as an "awareness." Thankfully the nurse tells me to come on in for a sonogram, and this is where the first dip of the rollercoaster happens. I get some blood work done and then have the sono performed. The fetal pole is there and measures fairly accurately for my dates, perhaps a few days or a week behind which is common, but they tell me "we are having a little trouble finding the heartbeat." Since I had become somewhat of an expert on pregnancy timelines by this point, I knew that wasn't good. At 7w5d there should have been a very obvious heartbeat. I was expecting the worst and was indeed told that this was not a viable pregnancy and that I needed to go home and use Misoprostol (a very unpleasant drug that causes your body to rid itself of a pregnancy). I come from a medical family and knew I should trust the doctors, but everything happened so fast and I just needed time to process it. I couldn't accept that the baby was "dead" when my body was showing no signs of miscarriage. I declined the medication and requested a follow up ultrasound in a week which the doctor reluctantly agreed to.
30th - I am back at the doctor's after a hellish week of worrying, wondering and waiting...three things I have decided are what the road to pregnancy is ALL about. I had had no pain, bleeding, cramping whatsoever, but my blood work results had come back and were not favorable. While my hCG and progesterone were very high, the follow up hCG had only gone from about 16,000 to about 18,000 in 48 hours. Typically an hCG should double or very near double in 48 hours. So I was again expecting the worst. Matt could not make it to this appointment, and since I knew what the result was going to be I decided to just get it over and done with on my own...NBD, right? Wrong.
I had my eyes closed for the sonogram and all of the sudden heard the sono tech say "Do you see what I see?" Immediately I opened my eyes to look at the screen and saw a very obvious flickering/flashing which was the heartbeat! I could NOT believe it!! They measured the heartbeat and it was on the lower end of the normal range but still NORMAL! I was ECSTATIC!!! It made me sick to think I could have used the Misoprostol and would never have known this. I called Matt immediately and told him we were blessed and so incredibly lucky and all the things you could imagine saying at that point. The doctor scheduled us for our first big OB appointment the following week.
APRIL 2011
5th - Our first OB appointment!! I had spent the week in a cloud of delusional happiness, and Matt had to remind me several times we were not out of the woods yet. I knew he was right, but I fully expected to go in for the appointment and see the heartbeat and share that moment with Matt that I had experienced alone a week earlier. I was so so very excited. After our usual hour of sitting in the waiting room we were finally called back to the sono room. I was feeling great and optimistic, starting intently at the screen...no fear this time. But then came a major drop on the rollercoaster. No heartbeat. No growth. WTF?!?! Why is this happening to us??! It was JUST there a week ago!! COME ON!!!!! @$#%@#$ you world!
We had a long consultation with multiple doctors and nurses and made the decision that clearly this was not a viable pregnancy. I went straight home and used the Misoprostol. FML.
Oh.. my heart sinks (with everyone else) when I read this. I remember finding out very early that I was pregnant. In fact, so early that I needed blood work done to PROVE I was, in fact pregnant. During my pregnancy I volunteered at the School of Ultrasound and I could literally tell you the medical terms that the students had to know (I come from a "medical family" too).. When I was finally in labor and went into triage.. and the nurses couldn't find a heartbeat-- I knew. You are never told growing up (ughhh tears are welling up) that things like this happen-- no one ever prepares you for miscarriages or stillborns.. I remember NOT seeing my son's heartbeat on the ultrasound and I remember my whole world coming down around me-- as if it looked like the twin towers collapsing after the planes crashing into them.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry that this happened to you. I won't tell you that God has a plan for you.. I WILL tell you NOT to ask why. What I can tell you is that I will pray for you :)
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