The following is what I experienced this past week from a miscarriage.
First off let me preface by telling you this one fact. My husband and I have a beautiful little girl who is healthy and active. We had no problems during our pregnancy with her.
OK. We will start before I ever missed my period or took the pregnancy test. I knew in my head that I was pregnant. But it was a very strange feeling of being pregnant because I continued to ask myself, “Why doesn’t it feel the same way it did when I was pregnant with Taylor?” I asked myself that question a hundred times. Then I started asking it to my husband and his reply was, “Baby, you aren’t even pregnant.” His theory is that until the pregnancy test says you’re pregnant, you aren’t pregnant. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of something not being “right.” I can’t explain it.
It came to the day I was to get my period. The day came and went without aunt flow. The following day we went grocery shopping and picked up a two pack pregnancy test. I was so eager I took it immediately after we got home from the store. It was positive!!! Yay!!!! I was very excited. I started thinking, that every pregnancy is different and it might just be a sign that this next child will be different from the first. (Who knows, personalities might just show up early!) When I informed my husband of the results, he did not respond the way I had expected him to. When we found out we were pregnant with Taylor he was just as excited and nervous and jumping for joy as I. This time, he kept saying, “I don’t think so.” He even made me take the second test before we went to bed that night. It was a very strange reaction and he didn’t want us to tell people we were pregnant. That made me feel like I was all alone in this pregnancy. It was so weird. He had wanted another child just as much as I did. Yet now that we were pregnant, he didn’t seem as interested.
By the next morning I had convinced him I was pregnant and we called our family to tell them the exciting news. The following Sunday, he announced from the pulpit to the congregation that we were expecting and through email and facebook, the rest of the world shortly learned of the news. As the week progressed I had already begun getting that morning sickness feeling. I had convinced myself that this child was making sure I knew that he or she was their own person and not like anyone else (i.e. their big sister, since the pregnancy was already so drastically different).
That week passed and it was Sunday again. We were excited because Travis had the next week off to visit family in Missouri. We were planning on leaving first thing in the morning. But before bedtime Sunday night, my stomach began cramping. Cramping badly enough that we decided to see the doctor first thing the next morning before leaving to visit family. I called the OB we were going to see for this pregnancy. (Our last OB was in Abilene). They (the OB in Irving) could not do any advising over the phone, not even to tell me if this was something that I should be concerned about since they had never seen me. The nurse practitioner was able to see me that morning for my first prenatal visit, so I took it. She was friendly and told me the cramping was probably nothing, just the stretching of my uterine wall. But she did say that they could schedule me for an ultra sound once we got back from our trip, a week from that day, to make sure the fetus was implanted in the uterus and that if I had any questions I could call her. So, off to Missouri we went.
Monday we drove the whole day. Tuesday everything was fine. Still a little cramping, but I was taking some Tylenol. Wednesday morning, I woke up and when I went to the bathroom there was some brown spotting. Just a little bit and only when I wiped. It worried me, so I called the nurse back. She told me it was probably just some dried blood from the pap smear on Monday, but if I saw any bright red blood to go to the emergency room. The day progressed and I hadn’t seen anything else. I was really beginning to feel better and we were about to put our daughter down for the night when I went to the bathroom and saw bright red blood. We went on to the emergency room in the small Missouri town we were in. We sat in the waiting room for almost three hours before we were taken back to a room. There we sat for another forty minutes before we even saw a nurse. It was a terrible feeling. Knowing that you are bleeding and not knowing if there is anything that anyone can do to help you. All I could think about the entire time was, is my baby still alive? And why isn’t anyone helping me?
Finally a doctor came to talk with us. He was not an OB/GYN, he was an emergency medicine doctor. He asked lots of questions and continued to forget the answers to the questions I had already answered. It was not reassuring. Then he proceeded to perform several tests. One of which was extremely painful. At the end of it all, after completely assaulting my body, (seriously, he was very rough and I am still sore from that experience), he had this to say: “Well, your HCG levels (pregnancy hormones) are 151. That seems low for six weeks, but we don’t know what you were earlier, so that could mean nothing. And your cervix is closed which means your body knows you’re pregnant. The bleeding could be nothing. We’ll just have to wait. But bleeding during pregnancy is never good. When your body is working properly, it notices if there is anything abnormal with the fetus. If there is a chromosome deficiency or anything abnormal with the fetus, your body will abort the fetus. It looks out for number one and if there’s a chance it could get hurt or if it thinks the fetus might not be strong enough to survive it cancels it. Your body might be aborting the fetus if that is the case.”
I’ll pause for a moment here.
I would think that even an ER doctor would understand how to be a little more tactful than telling a pregnant woman her body might be aborting her deficient child. He went on to say, “But the odds are in your favor. You’re cervix is closed and the HCG levels might be going up, so the odds are in your favor.” That was all I cared to take away from that conversation. The odds were in my favor. He told me I could be released if I agreed to come back Friday to do some more blood work and see the OB there before I traveled home. I agreed and went back to the house to see my sweet child sleeping peacefully. I was exhausted and yet as I laid there in bed, the words of the ER doctor continued to replay in my head.
Thursday morning came extremely quick since we hadn’t been asleep but a couple hours. I woke up with a positive outlook and continued to tell myself that plenty of women have a period while they’re pregnant and have perfectly normal pregnancies. Friday came and I went in for my blood work and then went immediately over to the OB’s office. Fortunately the OB was a wonderful doctor. He reminded me a lot of the OB that delivered Taylor. He was very nice and very calm. He informed me of the results of the blood work and said, “I’m sorry, but this is a miscarriage. About 33% of all pregnancies end as a miscarriage. It’s very normal and very common. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy. You can mourn about this. It doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you or your spouse. It’s just nature’s way of protecting itself. If your body knows something is wrong and the baby won’t be able to survive to full term, it takes care of itself. Nature isn’t always easy, but it’s a sign that your body is doing what it’s made to do. It is for the best.” Then he asked me several questions, like “Do you work near radiation? Have you used cocaine?” etc. All of which I answered, no. He said, “Then hear this if you don’t hear anything else I say today. Nothing you did caused this. Nothing that you have done, caused this miscarriage.” He was a very nice man and answered the questions I had about when we could start trying again and how long this would last.
Walking out of the office, I lost it. Tears came down in the room as he said it was a miscarriage, but as I was walking out, I was just in pain. Deep gut pain at the thought that all this blood I was seeing and all the cramping I had felt was the cause of my body terminating this pregnancy. Now we were going back to Travis’ grandparents house to inform everyone. I couldn’t even say it out loud. I texted the message, “It’s a miscarriage.” to our best couple friends. If I couldn’t say it to my best friend, how was I going to tell anyone else? Fortunately we have great friends. She called and talking with her allowed me to stop crying. That way when we entered the house, I could at least get out those three words before I broke down again.
Travis’ family took the news better than I had expected. Better than our good friends too. I got the feeling they were as upset as we were. I decided it was time to call my family, who knew nothing was wrong. To our surprise, everyone took the news well. It was kind of scary, but in a weird way, a blessing. Then messages and emails of prayers and love came rolling in from friends. It was really nice. It does make you feel good to know people care. They always tell you never to tell someone who is mourning that you are sorry. But the words that helped me the most were when people sent the message, I am so sorry you are going through this. My heart and prayers are with you. Those two sentences helped me the most.
Sunday we traveled back home. On the way home we ate lunch with some of my distant relatives. I wanted so badly during lunch to say, and we’re expecting our second child this November. But I couldn’t. That wasn’t true any more. When we got home, we put our daughter to bed and the moment I sat down, I lost it. I was home. There were no walls keeping my emotions or feelings in. I was allowed to loose it. And I did. Some times I feel good and feel like I’m looking at it in a healthy light. During those times, if someone says something about how terrible it is, I then feel guilty I am not mourning it more and wonder what’s wrong with me. Then when I am loosing it I wonder how I could have gotten so attached to something so quickly. I am very blessed that since it happened it happened so early in the pregnancy.
Looking back it’s weird that from the very beginning both my husband and I had reservations. I don’t know what that means exactly. If our bodies knew it and were trying to prepare our minds? Who knows? It could just be coincidence. Today I went back to the OB here in Irving. He did a urine sample that didn’t even register I was pregnant and an ultrasound. The good news is that the fetus was implanted in the uterus and that no surgery is needed. The bleeding and cramping should only last a couple more days and then I will ovulate again in about two weeks. We can start back trying whenever we want to.
I am still terrified of facing people at church next Sunday. I don’t want a lot of questions and I certainly don’t want opinions from any of the older ladies as to why I had the miscarriage. (Raising your arms above your head will not give you a miscarriage!) I don’t know what the days to come will hold for me emotionally. I know that the due date will probably be hard and if another miscarriage occurs it will probably bring more pain. What I have learned is that the physical pain I endured is nothing compared to the emotional pain. I could have done without the ER doctor’s harsh words. Those remain lingering in my mind. But at least I have the support of friends and family. My husband has been absolutely amazing during all of this. He is an incredible man and I am very blessed to have married him. And as for friends, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have told me they too have had a miscarriage. I knew they were common, but I didn’t know they had affected so many of the people I care about.
