(Photo credit to Raquel)
I've been writing this post in my head for quite some time, but it's heavy. I've gone back and forth about posting it, but in the end I decided that I should. I've read some really helpful things online recently that have helped me digest all that has happened to me, and I wanted to help someone else if I could. Some other great ladies have added their thoughts to the topics here, here, and here.
In July of 2011 we were deep in the throws of looking for a house to buy, living in one bedroom with our 2 kids at my parents house, nursing a 7 month old little babe, and decided to start thinking about letting nature run it's course and see if we might get pregnant again. At the time I didn't really understand why I felt the need to start again with so much going on it our lives. After all, with our first baby it took just one month and with our second it took two. I mentally prepared myself for a 3 month wait (by then we'd be in a new home! I'd have 9 more months to wait out the renovations before the new little one arrived! How perfect this would all be!).
Right.
So the three months came and went, and I tried to push my disappointment aside. Only another month or two of nursing to go (since Evan refused every. single. bottle. for his whole first year of life) and then surely we would get pregnant.
Nursing came and went, and it started to become clear that something needed to be done. From there we started in on a hormone roller coaster fun land. Birth control for one month, see if a cycle "reset" would do the trick. (nope, you guessed it.) Progesterone came next, and eventually clomid. By now it had been about 12 months, so I felt good about the clomid. Until it made me a raging hormone monster. But, after just 2 clomid cycles, we got a magical fairy dust pregnancy test- particularly exciting since I'd never been able to get a positive one a home test ever before, despite having two children.
We found out we were expecting on August 24, 2012- 13 long months after we started working on getting pregnant. I was so so excited! I thought about perhaps not finding out the gender. I started space planning in both kid's rooms, in the event of either gender. We talked names over Sunday dinner. We were invested.
We had our first ultrasound at 11.5 weeks. My doctor doesn't usually do a first trimester ultrasound, but I had been feeling rather queasy the whole pregnancy which was quite unusual for me. That, coupled with the clomid, we thought we would rule out twins. We brought the kids with us that first appointment so that they could hopefully grasp the idea of a new baby coming to our family. We saw that baby bouncing around and it was wonderful. Baby had a strong heartbeat (171) and everything looked great. The kids were excited and I think Abby really got it. She named the baby Salice and insisted that it was a girl.
A week and a half later I spent a Saturday morning sewing up some Halloween costumes for one of my good friends. It was nearly Halloween and she had her hands a bit busy with her premie in the NICU so another good friend and I were working on the costumes in her place. There was nothing traumatic.. no falls, no over-exertion. I started not feeling well, which in hindsight was sort of like overlapping contractions. I couldn't put my finger quite on what I was feeling though, so I decided to take a shower and then take a nap. I called Kristopher to come home from running errands. This should have been the sign.
After I got out of the shower and got into bed, I lost quite a bit of blood all at once. It was sort of similar to water breaking, and I was terrified. I couldn't get up so I called Kristopher on the phone to come and help me. We quickly arranged for a babysitter and rushed over to the ER. The doctors and nurses didn't seem all that optimistic, so I was very surprised to find out via ultrasound that our baby still had a heartbeat. The baby was kicking around still, and was right on track with growth to 13 weeks. I felt relieved.
Clearly there's more to this story, and so I will continue another day. Until then, I'd love to hear your stories too. There's something really strange and wonderful about the way that these kinds of things bind people together.
After I got out of the shower and got into bed, I lost quite a bit of blood all at once. It was sort of similar to water breaking, and I was terrified. I couldn't get up so I called Kristopher on the phone to come and help me. We quickly arranged for a babysitter and rushed over to the ER. The doctors and nurses didn't seem all that optimistic, so I was very surprised to find out via ultrasound that our baby still had a heartbeat. The baby was kicking around still, and was right on track with growth to 13 weeks. I felt relieved.
Clearly there's more to this story, and so I will continue another day. Until then, I'd love to hear your stories too. There's something really strange and wonderful about the way that these kinds of things bind people together.
3 comments:
I feel like so many people have been writing on this topic lately. Which is really interesting because I just lost a 7-week pregnancy last month. Just 7 weeks, but still a loss. I can't imagine what it would have been like further along. It was quite the interesting experience.
First of all, my daughter is currently only 9 months--the two would have been only 15 months apart, and that scared me to death. But there was no denying how strongly we got an answer to have another one right then. So, as you can imagine, in addition to the whirlwind of emotions that come with a loss, there was a lot of confusion.
Luckily I had the sense to turn to prayer instead of giving in to anger. It turned out to be a remarkable strength to my testimony. I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of Heavenly Father's plan for all of us, for me, and for my children. It's one of those things you just can't explain, but you're grateful that God blessed you with it.
I'm glad you wrote this post. I'm glad I finally gave into the urge to write something about my experience somewhere. I bet you didn't even know I was still following your blog. :) I look forward to the next part of your story. You're awesome.
I had a miscarriage at 9 weeks, my very first pregnancy. We'd waited for a long time to get pregnant (Rory wanted to finish school first), and I was devastated. It's a little crazy that this sort of thing has happened to so many people-but also nice to know you're not the only one going through it, right? :)
The more I read and the more I share with others the more stories I hear about how this has happened. Over and over... it's crazy. It's sad that so many people have had to feel that kind of pain, but it does make me feel like there's a big huge support group out there :)
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