I can't even tell you how excited I was...and shocked...to see that positive test! It was a miracle! And to top it all off, I got the positive result on the day of my my mom's wedding! I had taken that day off to plan, decorate and bake a cake for her special day and was just beaming with joy the entire time! I didn't call Chris right away because I wanted to surprise him...it was seriously the longest 8 hours of my life! When he arrived at my grandparent's house (where the wedding was held) I pulled him into the the bathroom and showed him the test!! It was amazing to see the huge smile on his face...it happened, we were pregnant! This time around, given that we had already had a miscarriage, we decided to be cautious with who we told. We decided that we would tell our parents and family but other than that we would wait to tell others until we knew we were in the clear.
I called my doctor the next day and let her know that I had gotten a positive home pregnancy test and she sent me a lab slip to get my blood drawn. This was where things turned south the last time so, understandably so, we were pretty nervous about this test...but two days later I got the email from my doctor that my levels had doubled and looked great and we were indeed PREGNANT! She did however say that my Progesterone levels (without going into all kinds of scientific detail, this is basically the hormone that helps you sustain your pregnancy) were lower than she'd like. She put me on a Progesterone supplement twice a day to help with those levels. To say that we were nervous, anxious, fearful, etc. would be an understatement. Due to our last miscarriage my doctor had me go in for a really early ultrasound at a little over 5 weeks. Now if you know me, you know that I am a researcher when I get anxious. So you bet I knew about everything Google, Bing or any other site for that matter had to offer me about pregnancy, HCG levels, Progesterone, ultrasounds and the list goes on. So with all of that research under my belt I knew that an ultrasound at a little over 5 weeks wasn't going to show much, and was a little irritated while simultaneously excited about having this first ultrasound. When the day came, Chris and I nervously went to the appt and were shown on the screen a dark area with a little bubble-type thing inside of it...this was our baby! It was the yolk sac and for that time was a good sign but also incredibly too soon to tell us much more than that. So we left knowing we would be going back in for another ultrasound in a week or two to see how things progressed.
The next few days went by pretty uneventfully and the idea that we were going to be parents began to sink in. I remember specifically feeling this peace, this calm that this was really happening! My reasoning for this was that I truly felt that God would not allow us to go through a miscarriage again. I saw the first one as being the event that led us to realize that we were ready for and truly wanted to have a baby...it was a painful, but God given event that spurred us to where He wanted us to be...right here, with this child growing inside of me! So my nerves were pretty calm for the most part and I felt confident that this was it for us! Fast forward a few days and I had gone in for another blood draw to see the progression of my levels and got the results...my Progesterone, even on the medication, had dropped and my HCG didn't quite look right to me. I mean I did graduate with basically a Medical License from Google so I would know right! ;) Well I contacted my doctor informing her of my medical evaluation of the situation...and she agreed, it was a little concerning. So she scheduled me for an emergency ultrasound an hour later and wanted to have them check me out and make sure everything looked ok. I called Chris and we met up to go to the ultrasound place. We both were braced for the worst...my levels didn't look good and we needed a miracle. As I laid on the table our hearts were racing and we held our breath waiting for the images to come on the screen and then we heard our ultrasound tech say "There's the heartbeat"! Tears streamed down our faces and we felt this instant relief...everything's ok! We celebrated and laughed with joy and Chris even leaned over and said "It's going to be a girl, the whole time we were waiting I was praying 'Lord let
her be ok' so I just know". We left and called our parents with the good news! Now again, because I now have a medical license, I knew that the statistics of having a miscarriage after a heartbeat is detected drops significantly...so we were in the clear...I just knew it! My doctor called me later that afternoon and said she was happy with the results and that we would go back in about a week and a half for our 8 week ultrasound to follow up. So we were riding on a cloud and really feeling like everything was great! Of course the next week and a half didn't exactly fly by but when the day for our next ultrasound came, we went in with excitement! What came next was our worst nightmare...
We went into the room and I laid on the table as I was becoming a pro at doing. The ultrasound tech began the ultrasound and everything was just silent. She was silent, we were silent and watching the screen in anticipation of seeing our baby. The ultrasound was performed with no commentary from the tech and then it was over and she just stated, "I will have the doctor review the scans and will be back in a minute". What just happened? I looked at Chris anxiously, with a pit in my stomach...something is wrong. And then Chris said the words I couldn't bring myself to say, "I didn't see a heartbeat". We both sat in silent shock, waiting to hear and trying to make sense of what just happened. The tech was gone for what seemed like eternity, and then came back in and said, "We are trying to get in touch with your doctor but she is not in today so someone from their office will call you to set up an appointment to meet with her". That was
IT...that was all we were getting!?! On our way out she just patted me on the back and said, "I'm so sorry". Those three words said it all!
We spent the day in disbelief...we had lost the baby. We were devastated, trying to make sense of this situation and honestly trying to understand why God would take another baby from us. We cried and got angry, we pretty much experienced every emotion possible and then settled on numb, because we couldn't do anything else but just wait to talk to the doctor and see what went wrong. We met with her the next day and she confirmed what we already knew, they couldn't detect a heartbeat and we had what is called a "missed miscarriage" which is when the baby doesn't make it but your body doesn't detect it so you don't miscarry on your own. She reviewed with us what would happen next, what to expect and then reviewed the testing she would like to have done to try and see if we could find some cause for the miscarriages. It was such an emotional time! Eventually I did miscarry and I began the testing to see if there was any biological cause for the miscarriages that could be prevented. Over the next month or so I was poked and prodded and had multiple viles of blood drawn for what seemed like every test known to man! After about a month or so we met with our doctor and she told us that all of my tests were normal, there was no physical cause for these miscarriages...basically "these things happen" and we were just unlucky...
twice. It's hard to articulate exactly how it feels to go through something so painful and get no answers for why it happened...I was hopeful and angry all at the same time. But more than anything, what took me over was fear...fear of not getting pregnant and also equal amounts of fear about getting pregnant. I wanted to be pregnant so bad and felt like it would never happen. But getting pregnant would mean that I might have to go through all of this again, and that didn't feel any less scary to me...it was such a weird feeling!
Nevertheless we forged ahead. For the next 5 months we tried to get pregnant and every month experienced disappointment when that darn stick turned up stark white! I really felt like this wasn't going to happen for us. In the meantime, enough time had passed that we felt we were ready to tell our story to a larger group of people...our church family. Chris gave a sermon in January of 2013 in which he shared a bit of our journey. It was so emotional to relive but also so amazing to receive the outpouring of love and support from our church. We knew that we would now have hundreds of people praying for us! We knew that our experience would not be for nothing as we wanted to allow the Lord to use what we had gone through to touch the lives of others who might have had similar experiences and know they aren't alone, that someone understands. It was a powerful moment for us in the journey God had us on and we were grateful to have gotten to experience the love, prayer and support given to us as a result. That month came and went and again, we were not pregnant...but it was okay because we knew that God had a plan, either way, He was doing something in our lives and we were finally getting to the point where we could submit to whatever that meant for us.
February 2013 was a tough month of trying for me because I felt the reality that if I didn't get pregnant this month that I would no longer have the opportunity to have a baby in 2013...the failure of this cycle would mean my due date would be either the last day of December or, more likely, the first weeks of January 2014. This was really really hard for me for some reason...2014 seemed so far away and I really felt a lot of despair. I remember getting to my testing window and feeling so much anticipation and fear. I woke up on a Tuesday morning, the same day of my cycle that I got my last positive test and prayed hard that I would see two lines...but the three minutes came and went and there was nothing but white. I was crushed! I told Chris that we weren't pregnant. I confided in him how I was feeling about this being our last chance for 2013 and began to grieve the loss of that reality. Chris was always so supportive in these times and never tried to give false hope, he typically just followed my lead and when I said we weren't pregnant, accepted that it was true and we moved on. But for some reason, he didn't do that this month. He got down on his knees and he said, "Let's pray" and began to pray that God would do a miracle and that we would be pregnant this month and have a baby in 2013. I have to be honest, I was actually a little irritated because I just needed to move on and I didn't want to pray for something I knew was impossible! The next night as we went to bed Chris prayed that same prayer again, but this time he anointed my stomach with oil. I laid there and submitted to his prayer and allowed myself too, to pray that I would be pregnant. We went to sleep and when I woke up the next morning I decided to take another test. What happened next still, to this day, gives me chills! I took the test and began going about my business of getting ready for work. After about 3-4 minutes I glanced at the test, fully expecting to see nothing and then I saw it...was that...it was...there was another line! I ran up stairs and with a shaky hand and voice asked Chris what he saw. He said, "Well I see a faint little line right next to that line...what does that mean"? I said, "Well, that means that we're pregnant!!"
To be continued...
His crib, where the "sweet dreams" happen!
.jpg)
