Two years ago at 7am I had my blood drawn to find out if our 2nd IVF cycle worked or not. It was, ironically, to the minute, one year prior to that that I had miscarried the baby we conceived naturally (link). After the blood draw, I sat in my car and sobbed. I was convinced the cycle had failed because I was bleeding just as I had been one year prior. That cycle was it. It was our last shot at having a baby.
When my doctor called with the results (5 hours and 22 agonizing minutes later), I accused him of pulling an April Fool’s joke. I couldn’t stop shaking and sobbing. I told him to call Tony with the medication instructions because I couldn’t write it down… I was shaking too hard. Turns out, Tony couldn’t hold it together either, so I had to call the doctor back later, twice, when I had sort of calmed down. I couldn’t believe that I was pregnant.
This morning at 7am, I held the results of that pregnancy and nursed his warm, sleepy self in the darkness of his room before work. And I cried.
After some extensive monitoring and testing and ultrasounds and a visit with the high risk neonatal doctor, I was cleared off of bedrest and authorized to return to work on Friday.
They also cleared us to go to the mountains (with lots of rest breaks, hydration, etc., etc., and knowing where the closest L&D unit is just in case). That’s where we are now (the mountains, not the L&D unit). We had a wonderful morning spent at our favorite breakfast restaurant and a visit to our favorite candy store, I am currently eating a frozen banana and we’re sitting outside of McDonald’s using their WIFI.
We are calling this a Babymoon. ha
Seriously, thank you for all your prayers and your comments encouraging me — meant so much to me… I have a follow up appointment with the high risk doctors next week and we’re praying that all continues to be stable. Baby still has a lot of development to do and we would definitely prefer that he do it inside as opposed to in the NICU.
As if my uninterrupted 9 to 10 hour stretches of sleep on the weekend, and the drooling kind of sleep I do on weeknights aren’t enough — yes, pregnant women everywhere hate me for that — I am now assigned to bed rest. Again. 24/7 hours of bed for this week! Hate away, you haters, I have other, for more dramatic pregnancy inconveniences that make up for my Camel Bladder of Steel that allow me those marathon sleep nights.
You may recall I was diagnosed with a low lying placenta? Yes? Why don’t you recall that? Do YOU have pregnancy brain? Why is everyone around me suffering from pregnancy brain? ANYWAY, so when I bled last night and this morning, I consoled myself with, “Oh, it’s just that bothersome low lying placenta…” went to sleep last night, work this morning and called my doctor. That consolation didn’t work so well when they called back in less than two hours and said, “How fast can you get here?” I was glad to learn, so I know you’ll be glad to learn, that the placenta is no longer low lying and has moved up! Far, far away from my cervix. Hooray!
My cervix, apparently feeling lonely from the disappearing placenta, has decided to shorten into a zone that my doctor feels is “not an emergency, don’t freak out, but you’re on bed rest as of now, you’ll need to see a high risk neo-natal specialist, and come in for electronic fetal monitoring.” Basically, it’s way too early for my cervix to be shortening like this.
So, just out of curiosity, I innocently decided to verify what my doctor said and plugged in my cervical length, how pregnant I am and went off to the land of Dr. Google freak-out. Oh, when will I ever learn (oh, oh, let me answer — never?)? STAY AWAY FROM DR. GOOGLE!
I figure most of you guys have been around my blog long enough that I can ask a personal favor of you… so, let’s get REALLY personal, shall we? If you think of it, would you mind sending up a prayer for my cervix?
We (my cervix, Baby, me, and my husband) would greatly appreciate it. (Off topic: Seriously, doesn’t this kid have the cutest nose ever?)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We would like to interrupt our regularly scheduled program to make a public announcement.
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Assuming that all continues to go well, we are pleased to announce — with much excitement and happiness — that we are anticipating the arrival of our son mid-to-late December 2011.
Given our love for the holidays, a Christmas baby couldn’t possibly be more perfect for us.
To celebrate, I made some specially themed S’mores cookies just for you!
I’ve written and re-written this post… because the message I want to convey isn’t an easy one to summarize. The flow of it, it’s like a kaleidoscope, so many ways to look at it, and it all depends on perspective and where I am in the time line.
There were the days when I wrote it, and all I seemed to be able to express was bitterness and anger over the fact that God seemingly didn’t deem us worthy of being parents to our Miracle.
There were the months that I tweaked it while I struggled to understand why something that seems to come so easily and naturally to everybody else is such an unattainable dream for us.
I deleted portions and re-wrote them during those weeks, months, when we were going to the birthday parties of children who had successfully turned a year older — and I was joyful for them, life is to be celebrated, after all — but sometimes it felt like a gut punch because our baby didn’t live to see his or her first birthday.
And then, a week ago, I deleted and re-wrote it in its entirety from where I am now.
I’ve intentionally chosen not to keep our loss a secret, but by doing so, I’ve opened myself up to the hurt inflicted by well-meaning, but misguided people who think that by sharing their stories of being “fertile Myrtle” and “I had 4 kids in 5 years” or “my friend didn’t mean to get pregnant so she had an abortion” is somehow appropriate. Or, even those who tell me “I struggled with infertility but after two years ended up pregnant and it must have all been stress related,” or “Having kids is stressful, you should feel blessed you have none,” or “There are too many souls in this world as it is.” I am not making these up — I couldn’t possibly.
By remaining open about my experience, I find that yes, it’s hurtful at times, but then there are times when I’m able to educate those who don’t know or understand. I’m breaking the silence! And even more remarkable, I’ve come across people — both men and women — who have suffered a miscarriage or baby born still. People who have remained a silent member of a club they never wanted to be in. These people, they tell me in near whispers, of their losses — birth stories without a happy ending — as if they are ashamed it happened to them. As if it were something they could even control.
So, please, if you’re stumbling across this post because you’re trying to figure out how to console someone who has had a miscarriage or a baby loss — just tell them simply, “I’m so sorry…” and then stop. That’s enough. Truly, it is. Don’t go on to share birth stories, abortion stories, successfully pregnant after managing stress stories, someone you know is pregnant, kid’s birthday party stories, suggestions of trying again or adopting, or whatever… just don’t. When people have done that to me, it makes me feel as if they’re belittling the death of my baby, as if it were nothing… a “nothing” that was life-altering to me.
The baby I lost may not seem real to anyone else, but I can assure you, as someone who spent the first three months of this year peeing on a pregnancy test every day and then watching in amazement as it turned positive, hoping and praying that we would finally have a healthy baby, and then spent 10 days miscarrying our baby, with hours and hours of cramps and contractions, sitting on the toilet passing enormous blood clots the size and thickness of my hand? And then, finally, when I held the very beginnings of human life in my hands? Even though it wasn’t alive, that baby became very, very real to me.
Yet through it all — through the worry, fear of the unknown, and emotional torment, the nights and mornings when I sobbed my heart out because the baby wasn’t viable, and physical pain, those times when I was on my knees trying to remember to breathe through the pain — I couldn’t help but be awed by it all. All those blood clots I passed? Those were intended to act as insulation to protect my baby from any harm that may come to it from outside of me. Those contractions, if they had come 6 months later, would have brought a live baby into the world. Even the fact that we had even miraculously managed to get pregnant, when all the odds were against us, made my brain whirl. My body did what it was supposed to do, even though it wasn’t the result we so desperately wanted.
For a short time, that seemed such a long time, we were parents. And for that I can’t help but feel grateful for the experience. Our baby was too small to warrant its own marked grave, but I believe that God wove our baby together and I believe that God is taking care of Miracle today. I have to believe that.
This day is so painful to me, and I don’t plan to memorialize it every year, but today I will. Because I will never forget. Anyone who has had a miscarriage or a stillborn baby never forgets. No matter how many children someone has, if they’ve ever lost one, there will always be one more who is silently counted in their parents’ minds.
Every day, a thousand times a day, I think about our Miracle… today especially, because today was Miracle’s due date.
* Having a sore jaw after a dental cleaning. Never used to have post-cleaning jaw pain until after the dentist yanked and pulled and yanked a wisdom tooth out six years ago. Which is why you should always have a specialist do those types of surgeries, I’m thinking.
* When I spend my lunch time driving to a store to purchase something after having researched it online, only to learn that the product is only available online. It should have said so on their website! If I should choose to order it, I’d have to either pay shipping, or spend $50 to get free shipping. Oh, I think not! I will go to your competitor and buy it and NOT pay shipping.
Love:
* In the past week, I’ve had extreme swimming weather. Saturday and Sunday I had my first “under the sun” swimming of the year, and then Wednesday evening I had “swimming in the rain” weather. Both are all kinds of awesomeness, as far as I’m concerned and makes for a very happy Jammie J.
* Francine Rivers. She’s the author of the Mark of the Lion series I wrote about in last week’s post. I’ve now read another of her other books, and got another one in the mail which I can’t wait to start reading. I love how well-researched her books are and well-developed her characters are. Such a thrill to read quality books.
* Bringing laughter and joy to the lives of the people I work with. I love feeling like I’m making a difference to their lives.
* Getting “real” mail in my mail box. In this virtual world we all seem to have embraced, getting a real piece of mail is a nice reminder that people do still know how to put pen to paper.
One Last Thing:
Lately I’ve felt so quiet inside. Not surprising, I suppose, given how much noise has been clamoring inside of my head so far this year. All the teeter-tottering emotions of fearing a miscarriage and, conversely, trying to accept that whatever will be, will be.
And then the miscarriage happened… and when I finally had Miracle, it was as if I instantaneously felt … empty.
Empty and quiet. It was over. Irrevocable. No other outcome was possible.
And now I feel quiet. It’s not depression or sadness, not really. it’s more of a re-alignment of perspective. Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible, some say that King Solomon was depressed when he wrote it, but I personally feel as if he realized that the routine of our days and the focus on minutiae is all overly-dramatic and can be all-consuming, if we let it. Details and routines need to get done, but when it all comes to an end, what we’ve worked on for our souls, our spirituality, is what really matters.
And for now, life continues. My boss gave me an effusive thank you for helping him get organized. The details and minutiae of his job had overrun his office, and I helped him tame it… an ongoing project, to be sure, but the thank you made me smile inside all the way home. Even while stuck in traffic.
The night was crisp and cool, I was driving with the top down on my convertible, and I made a wish on a shooting star. The star appeared out of nowhere, bright and fleeting, visible to me for maybe five seconds. That was two weeks ago. Or was it three?
I felt silly then, I knew my wish wouldn’t come true. All the wishes in the world couldn’t change what was already happening. Of course, my wish didn’t come true, and I realize now that it wasn’t a shooting star, it was a falling star. The word makes a difference, at least in my brain.
It was a pretty thing to see, anyway, in the darkened night sky. Something I’ll remember. Something out of the ordinary.
I watched the sunset tonight while swimming laps in our community pool. I swam and swam and swam and swam and swam, and then swam some more, until I couldn’t swim no more, because I had to get out and pee. I swam hard, it feels so damn good to be able to use every muscle in my body again. I want to feel every muscle in my body again.
I think I’ll get that wish tomorrow.
Thing was, I was trying to outswim my mind, or swim it to the point of exhaustion, anyway. That didn’t work so well. The mind is always going to be faster, more fleeting and agile, than the body.
Grief is a strange thing. Weeping is something I find myself doing without any conscious thought, suddenly, I’m just there crying and I’d like to stop, but there doesn’t seem to be an off switch I can find. It just eventually tapers off, until the next session. I guess it’s just best to let it be?
On Easter, the day our Lord rose again so many years ago, we buried Miracle. Do the innocent go to Heaven? I’d like to think so. I’d like to believe that Miracle is in Heaven, holding my dad’s hand with her left hand, and our Heavenly Father’s hand with her right.
The morning of April 1st I finally passed our baby.
I didn’t post about it then because it wasn’t a joke, nor was it funny. Although the irony of the date wasn’t lost on me.
Even more ironic than it being April Fools’ Day was the fact that, when we first found out I was pregnant and calculated the dates, innocently lost in the excitement of it all, April 1st was the day we considered telling our family and friends our news.
Yesterday, I received this special gift in the mail from Stacey (a family friend and reader of my blog). Thank you, Stacey, words cannot express how much this means to us.
It reads, “Little I knew that morning, God was going to call your name, in life we loved you dearly, in death we do the same. It broke our hearts to lose you, you did not go alone, for part of me went with you, the day God called you home. You left us beautiful memories, your love is still our guide, and though we cannot see you, you are always by our side. Our family chain is broken, and nothing seems the same, but as God calls us one by one, the chain will link again.”
We named our baby “Miracle.” It seemed appropriate.
Tony is a little amazed that I just seem to keep going, pain or not. He says most people would just stay home… I suppose he’s right. But the thing is, I learned a long time ago that if I let pain control my life, then pain becomes my life. I’d rather have a life and deal with pain, than to isolate myself because of my fear of pain, or fear of showing others my pain.
As with most life altering things, I’m learning that having a miscarriage is one of those things that silently twines itself around the daily happenings of a person’s life. Of my life. It’s weird, because it’s like this quiet grief of which no one ever speaks. No one I meet on the street has any idea that at the moment I’m telling them “I’m fine,” in response to their standard greeting of, “How are you?” I’m actually losing a life I’ve nourished for 2 1/2 months, and a dream for which we’ve prayed for 3 years.
Today would have marked the beginning of my 2nd trimester.
The dreams are hard, and I’ve awakened more than once the past few days because I’ve been crying in my sleep. ~~ I felt like I’d been punched in the gut the other day when I saw a woman holding her newborn close to her cheek. ~~ I wanted to punch someone in the gut when, within the first five minutes of meeting him and his obviously pregnant wife, he made more than three comments about his wife being pregnant.
Irritable. Sad. Sensitive. Tired. Impatient. Cramps. Bleeding.
Yet, despite the pain — emotional and physical — I’ve been able to carry on a semblance of a normal life. I’m able to go to work, learn new things and practice my craft as an assistant. The people I work with are cool and hip. There are fun perks at this company, like free breakfasts every Friday, sponsored by the company.
Tony and I were able to have a great weekend together. Friday night, we went up to the local mountains and, Saturday morning, visited our friends (the cook & waitresses) at our favorite breakfast restaurant up there. Which also means we’ll think of them and our time up there for most of the week, because we have breakfast leftovers.
We drove down Saturday afternoon to attend a Honda-sponsored dinner event for the people who rode on their float in the Rose Parade. A dinner at a ritzy steakhouse, with appetizers, salad, main course (filet mignon for us, please) and dessert. The representative from Honda said they’d stayed away from having riders on their floats in years past, but now might reconsider that policy in the future because all the float riders this year were so wonderful. As a thank you, beyond the experience, memories and dinner, they gave all the float riders photo albums and DVDs. I continue to be so impressed with Honda corporation.
This weekend was also Marigold’s birthday and the Steve/Marigold/Huck/Milo Show invited us to join them at Disneyland. Our schedules meshed up, so we spent the afternoon at the happiest place on earth, riding kiddie rides with the kiddies and getting our picture taken with Mickey Mouse.
The best ride of the day was the Jungle Cruise, because I got this picture of nephew Huck just after we saw the hippopotamuses get “shot at” by our guide. He wasn’t pleased.
* I think I’ll just let the previous post fill this slot this week.
Love:
* The movie The Blind Side. We saw it in the theaters and loved it so much, Tony bought it this week on DVD. Watched it again, and still love it. I’m a bit annoyed about that, because you know when people ask, “What’s your favorite movie?” I may have to change my answer… this is a big deal. I must give this issue proper consideration, can’t just decide that over night.
* $.25 hot dogs on Wednesday nights at Weinerschnitzel.
* Tony bought melon seeds at the store the other day. He has no idea where he’s going to grow them, we really don’t have any sunny spots around our place. But I just love his enthusiasm and desire to try to grow plants.
* I read in my community’s newsletter that they’ll start heating our pools in time for spring break/Easter. One more week!!
* I had a hot fudge sundae tonight. It was dark and we were driving to the mountains, and kept thinking I’d spilled it on my shirt, but I hadn’t. We got to the cabin and I looked in the mirror and started laughing. No chocolate shirt, but a chocolate chin. I looked like I had a chocolate beard.
* How joyful our little bird is every morning when she sees me. It’s such a sweet thing to watch her perk up, chirp and lean way far out to climb on my finger. Especially when I remember back to how when we first got her, we had to chase her all over her cage.
One Last Thing:
So, I made it through the week and still have my job… which is nice. More importantly, things seem to be doing OK as far as my health. I learned that Aleve (naproxen sodium) is my friend, especially when taken on a consistent basis. I feel tender, swollen and very tired, all of which seem like normal and expected things given what my body has been through, and I plan to go have blood work done next week to make sure my hormone levels are where they’re supposed to be.
Jammie J's Quest 