We Don't Know What It's Like

Over the past year or so, we've thought a lot about what it would be like to have a baby of our own.  We have read about various parenting theories, we've listened to stories from friends and strangers alike, we've spied on watched families with babies and small children out in public...  We've done all of this "research" to prepare, as best as we can, for the life-changing journey we're about to start together as parents.  We think we've got a pretty good idea about the kind of changes we're in for, and we hope we have realistic expectations.  But the truth is, we don't KNOW what it will be like.

The thing about the unknown is that it can be scary.  For many of us {ahem}, change is simply terrifying.  You can prepare and prepare, but there are certain things or situations or factors that can't be predicted, practiced or accounted for.  I'm sure any soon-to-be or new parents out there can relate... everyone has a story for you and everyone has advice about what to do when X comes up, or you find yourself in Y situation with no advanced warning.  And though all of the advice is coming from a well-meaning place, it can be overwhelming to keep hearing about all the things that can or will be difficult or challenges that lay ahead, when you haven't even yet held that snuggly baby in your arms for the first time.  And so, at a certain point, we just need to try as best we can to make ourselves okay with the fact that we might not have a CLUE about what we're actually getting ourselves into, but leap into it wholeheartedly anyway, knowing we have the best intentions and are as prepared as realistically possible given the world of unknowns.  At this point is when the palms get sweaty, fears race through our brains like lightening, and we start to wonder:  Are we sure we're up for this life-long challenge?

With only a couple weeks left until our little one is due to arrive, I'm looking forward so much to meeting our newest little family member -- but all of these "what ifs" and thoughts and fears are at the front of my mind.  I think I started getting ahead of myself by focusing too much on them {what if our baby has colic? what if s/he isn't a good eater or sleeper?  what if we're terrible parents?} instead of the sheer anticipation and excitement of our little one's arrival!  Thinking about all of this, I remembered a video ad I'd seen back in December, so I looked it up and watched it again.  And lo and behold, it made me feel better....

By any account, that family's life is stressful!  The house is a mess, the parents look frazzled and exhausted, the kid {though adorable} is into everything.  And then they find out they're having another little miracle, and instead of feeling overwhelmed or scared, they're deliriously joyous.  The stress can {and will!} come later, but for right now, I'm going to soak up the last couple weeks of this pregnancy, coo over every little onesie or outfit as I wash and put it away in baby's new room, and think about how full of love and excitement our hearts were when we first found out we were pregnant.  Those are the feelings to savor and focus on.

Don't get me wrong... I'm generally not one for burying my head in the sand.  I know it's going to be challenging to enter the realm of parenthood, and that there will be some very difficult and sleep-deprived days and nights ahead, but I shouldn't get ahead of myself -- first we need to actually get there... to the point where we have our precious baby in our arms!

Silent Tears

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Today would've marked the 19th week of my pregnancy.  I wonder how it would've felt to reach "the halfway mark"...

I'm nearing the point where I will have been "un-pregnant" for a longer period of time than I was pregnant.  I wonder how that will feel...

I've already been "un-pregnant" for a couple weeks longer than the period during which I knew I was in fact pregnant.  Unfortunately, if anything that fact only makes me feel worse, not better.

I also wonder if or when my brain will stop automatically calculating weekly gestation milestones each and every Wednesday...  Eventually, time will run out.  I would've never been 52 weeks pregnant even if I hadn't miscarried, so I guess this counting ritual technically can't go on much past December.

Eventually, it will be time to move on... time not to forget, but to focus on something new.  I can't imagine it but I guess that's the goal of the grieving process -- processing and accepting what has happened in order to move on.  Do I even want to move on?  Honestly, I'm not sure.  Will time heal this pain?  Only time will tell...

Only One First

It's been a little over one month since our miscarriage and a part of me still doesn't (want to) believe this happened. I am so upset that this happened to us but it's especially hard that it happened to our first pregnancy.

Thinking about it, there are few things in life that can so easily cause so much pure joy... and learning that we were expecting a baby was certainly one of them in our case.  We hadn't told many people, but the few we had were, like us, simply giddy at the news.  My husband and I were over the moon with delight knowing that we would become a family of three later this year.  To have had such a thrilling experience interrupted so abruptly was emotionally painful, apart from the actual pain we experienced from the occurrence of the miscarriage.  It still is a huge source of anger for me.  It's just not fair.  We hadn't even had the chance to share our terrific news with all of our loves ones before the news turned terrible.

On the other hand, those we did share the exciting news with were so supportive!  It broke my heart to have to bring their hopes crashing down to Earth from Cloud 9.  I immediately regretted sharing the news with them in the first place.  This may sound petty, but I have all these great photos and some really heartfelt video clips of how we we creatively shared the news with both of our moms and my brother (with personalized matching t-shirts during our joint mother's day celebration!), my 91 year old grandma (who has been patiently waiting for a great grandchild to come into her life and who literally prayed to God when I told her the news that she would still be around in December to meet the baby), my aunt, uncle and cousin (who were great sports about agreeing to participate in a "top secret" video-conference with me to "beta test" a new product related to my job - that was my cover for getting them all on the laptop together for filming) -- who were all SO happy!  I should smile at the thought of these memories, not feel overcome with sadness.  I should be organizing the photos into scrap books and creating a video montage of the exciting news as it's spread through our families, to watch on a special 1st birthday, or to show to our future baby.  What am I supposed to do with all of those photos, videos and creative ideas now???

I feel like this miscarriage experience completely ruined my idea of "pregnancy" and ruined the excitement of any pregnancies I may (hopefully) have in the future.  Will I ever be as blissfully hopeful again?  If I am lucky enough to get pregnant again, will I be filled with dread and fear 24/7?  Will we feel comfortable telling anyone about it, if there is a next time?  That sounds like an awful way to think about the future, but that's what I do think about.

There will only ever be one "first" pregnancy for us, and this was it.  Even though it didn't work out as we hoped and dreamed, that's it.  No rewind button.  No do-overs.  This horrible experience is the only "first pregnancy" we'll ever have, and although our baby is gone forever, it feels as if my anger and disappointment about how this pregnancy ended will always haunt me.  It's just not fair.

Back to Work

Today was my first day back to work and I dreaded it. Honestly, I considered calling out sick again. I didn’t want to get up and get dressed, like I hadn’t been through hell last week. And I really didn’t want to answer questions about how I was feeling or whether I had the flu or hear any of my co-workers well-meaning concerns over my absence. Even though I know their hearts are all in the right place, they have no idea what I’ve been through, and I have no interest in enlightening them. But that makes it hard to go back to work when I don’t want to make small talk or pretend I’m “all better” (as if recovering from a common cold). A couple people asked what was wrong with me and I politely said I didn’t want to get into it, and luckily they left it at that.

I’d forgotten about the girl in HR who I think might be pregnant -- she’s very thin but lately seems to be sporting a mini belly bump and is often sitting on a chair in her cubicle with her feet propped up. I walked past her on the way to a bathroom break and all my emotions came flooding out. Why her? Why not me? Will it always feel like this?

I don’t want to be one of those women who glare at every pregnant woman or mother with hurtful envy, but I can’t help  myself. I don’t understand why they get to have their babies and I can’t have mine.

Tonight I played the blame game, big time. Why did the doctor prescribe me those medications without my permission? Why didn’t I ask more questions before heading down a course of treatment? Were they even 100% sure that there was no heartbeat before I began taking them? I honestly can’t remember the doctor confirming this point blank. Did I kill my own baby?? My husband recalls the doctor confirming there was no embryo when we met in the doctor’s office on Monday afternoon, but I don’t recall much of that meeting except that there was only one guest chair so she had to drag another one in from the waiting room. What if they just didn’t see it in there? Seeing an embryo without a heartbeat seems different than not seeing anything at all. I know it was in there -- we saw it just a couple weeks ago. What if they weren’t looking in the right place, or missed it on the ultrasound? Oh my God, the agony to think I may have taken those drugs prematurely...

Today I came across this article and it scared me to death: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/finding-hope-after-miscarriage/. I barely survived this miscarriage, and the only reason I didn’t have a complete breakdown is thanks to my husband. He loved me like I’ve never felt loved before, even when his own heart was breaking. I honestly don’t know how this woman coped. If this were to happen to me again I don’t know what I would do.

Officially a Miscarriage

Monday morning when I woke to urinate there was a lot of red blood but still no pain. I was able to shower and get dressed before calling my OB as soon as they opened to schedule an 11am appointment. I was still bleeding, but mostly only during urination. But, as soon as my husband left for work -- a little over an hour before my appointment I started having mild-moderate cramping. To me, it felt like constipation. I sat on the toilet eating a whole wheat English muffin, using all the mind power I could muster to try to remain calm and try to have a bowel movement, but nothing was coming out. The pain didn’t ease up, so I took a cab from home to the doctor’s office. The 30 minute ride was unbearable and as we got closer I knew something didn’t feel right. By the time I arrived at the dr's office I could feel that I was bleeding heavily. I can picture vividly my husband's face as I exited the elevator and told him that I could feel the bleeding. I burst into tears and was ushered in to provide a urine sample. As expected, it was full of blood. The nurse took my BP and weight (I still don’t understand why that was important) and left me in an exam room waiting for the doctor. The examination was incredibly painful -- I remember crying out that it hurt while the doctor tried to check to see if my cervix was still closed. I’m not sure she ever felt it, and she didn’t say much except to instruct us to go into the sonogram room. At this point, I still don’t think I knew what was about to happen.

I can’t remember what happened next -- the day turned into a blur. I’m not sure if the sono tech checked me before or after speaking, but I do remember her saying it was obvious my body was trying to get rid of the baby... I was having a miscarriage. This statement shocked me and broke my heart at the same time. I remember crying out and my husband holding my hand. He held my hand a lot over the next few days, and thinking back I’m honestly not sure how we was so strong when I was such a mess.

The OB sent me home with 4 methotrexate pills to take every 6 hours and orders to come back the following day for an ultrasound to check on progress.

The Beginning of the End

Of course I didn’t know it, but today was the beginning of the end. After a lazy morning having breakfast with my hubby, I decided I’d show Aunt B. a photo of our first ultrasound while doing a video chat via Facetime. The plan was to call her up and ask her to try Facetime out on my new mac, and then I’d randomly hold the ultrasound photo over the camera and record her reaction. Great idea, right?! Only things didn’t turn out that way. After getting out of the shower, I felt the urge to pee. I didn’t have any pains, but there was a certain discomfort in my pelvic area that made me pee before even getting my robe on.

Looking down, I saw bright red blood come out in my urine stream and immediately my heart sank. I threw my robe on, screamed for my husband, hopped into bed and propped my feet up on pillows. The time was 2:30pm. I called my OBGYN’s emergency service line and anxiously awaited areturn call. The on-call doctor happened to be the one I saw at my recent visits, and she returned the call within a few minutes. She asked whether I had fallen or had any cramps or pain (which I didn’t) and advised that unless I was soaking a pad an hour (which I wasn't -- the blood was really only coming out when I urinated) to wait until Monday morning to come in. For several hours after that call I laid in bed, scared to death. I knew bright red blood could be bad, but I didn’t have any pains and the blood only seemed to be coming out when I urinated. After doing some online research, I slept with my legs up on a pillow and hardly bled on my pad at all at night.