*This post was written 2/2/14
Eleven days ago I found out I was pregnant. I paced back and forth in the kitchen waiting for the results of a home pregnancy test. When I checked it there were the two pink lines. Not being one to always trust just one test I bought a digital test the following day. There in bold letters was the word "Pregnant". This was it, we were actually pregnant once again. To say it has taken a lot of courage to get to this point is an understatement. It took my husband and I over a year following the birth and death of Penelope and James to even think we were ready to try again. But here we are, ready to face the fear.
For about two days I felt optimistic about this pregnancy. Surely with everything we've gone through this would be okay. Then on Saturday morning, the panic set in. I woke up at 3am with thoughts racing through my head. I knew I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep to I went downstairs, made a cup of Sleepy Time tea, lay on the couch and settled in for a mini marathon of "The League". After several hours I drifted back to sleep and what seemed like moments later was woken up by my husband asking why I wasn't in bed. I then went to the bathroom and my heart sank, I was spotting. I remembered having some spotting with all of my other pregnancies so I tried not to panic. But I also prepared for the worst. It was the weekend so I knew I couldn't talk to my OB without calling the emergency line. So I cried a little and just went ahead with my weekend hoping for the best.
By Monday morning the spotting had stopped and I decided to call my OB anyway. The nurse recommended having my levels drawn just to check and make sure the pregnancy was progressing as it should. I had my blood drawn on Monday and again on Wednesday. Each day that went by I felt increasingly confident that maybe everything would be okay. Thursday morning I got a call from the nurse with my lab results, they didn't look good. My hcg was going up, but not nearly at the rate that they would like it to. So they sent me in once again to get my blood drawn on Friday. I was given a number that I could call that evening to find out the results.
All day on Friday I kept bouncing back and forth as to whether or not this pregnancy was viable. In some ways I was already grieving, assuming that this was a miscarriage. At other times I was hopeful, thinking that maybe my numbers were just a slow start and surely this lab would show a great increase. I called the number at 7pm, right after getting home from my daughter's first dance class. The woman on the phone gave me the my number, my hcg had gone down. My mouth got dry and I felt a lump in my throat. I said thank you and hung up the phone. I went downstairs and told Micah the news. He hugged my for at least two minutes. We didn't say anything to each other. My three year old continued to play in the family room completely oblivious to our loss.
Today I am feeling many things; sadness, disappointment, anger, unfairness, numb, relieved. Mostly I find myself wondering why. Why did this happen? Because this loss happened so early I am not really mourning the loss of a baby. This was most likely a blighted ovum, which means the fertilized egg implanted but never started developing into a baby. I am mourning the fact that the small amount of hope I had left seems to be gone. We will try again, but I have very little faith that we will have another healthy baby. I know that logically it is possible, but right now it feels hopeless.
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