Pregnancy Rewind

Since we got such a good report this past week at the perinatologist, I thought it was a good time to share something that happened last Spring.  Josh and I experienced a miscarriage in April.  We were SO ready to become pregnant and welcome another member to our family, and we found out exactly how ready we were when that didn't happen.  That made us even more thankful when we found out we were pregnant this time, and we are not taking any of this for granted--feeling under-100% at the beginning was not something I complained about because I knew how badly we wanted this.  We chose to not share these details as they happened because we wanted to maintain privacy for our plans to expand our family.  BUT, I planned to share my story all along since miscarriage still seems to be one of those taboo topics.  Not many people talk openly about it, but it turns out that more people have experience with them than you would originally expect...


Wednesday, April 6th: I am one week late.  I hadn't told Josh I was thinking about taking a pregnancy test, and even though I know he would have wanted to be there, I wanted to do it first thing in the morning when the horomones show up the strongest.  It's positive!!!  I hurriedly set up a "casual" lunch with Josh for us to meet him at work.  Jackson and I set off for Kohl's to buy a Big Brother shirt. We get to Crystal City and I change Jackson into his new shirt.  Josh comes out to meet us and he immediately grabs Jackson and hugs him.  But he didn't see the shirt!  I tell him we need a do-over, take Momo from Jackson, and let Josh get a look at the shirt.  The look on his face was priceless!  He looked at me and said, "Seriously?"  Yup :)  So, then Jackson had to put his jacket back on since we clearly weren't telling anyone yet, and we were staying for lunch in the office!  During naptime I called my OB and scheduled our pregnancy confirmation appointment!  I got a great time with my favorite doctor--I should have known it was too good to be true...


Saturday, April 9th: Second positive pregnancy test :)


Sunday, April 10th: We attend Maddie Bascom's 2nd birthday party.  It was really fun, especially because we had this fun little secret... That night I started having a touch of bleeding, but Josh and I both remembered some of that with Jackson, and it really didn't amount to much.  Phew!


Monday, April 11th: My appointment was scheduled for 12:45.  That morning I had started to have more bleeding and some cramping.  I was so nervous, and the time for our appointment could not arrive fast enough!!!  When we got to the doctor we found out my appointment had been scheduled wrong :(  They didn't really have anyone to see us, but once they found out I was bleeding, they sent me to the separate ultrasound office they use to see what was going on.  Let's just say it was an afternoon full of waiting, impatience, cramps, and a bit of unprofessional office demeanor. I'm sorry that the person who answered my phone call schedule the appointment wrong, but it's really not MY fault, perhaps you could handle this later?  Anyways, the ultrasound technician let us know that she didn't see any sign of pregnancy.  They got our doctor on the phone and they said to come back to the office.  Of course I was really upset and teary, plus I didn't like that everyone kept questioning the fact that I took two positive pregnancy tests.  On this day, I cried because I felt stupid.  I know how to take a pregnancy test and we were just following the doctor's orders.  The ultrasound office kept asking if I had had blood drawn, and made sure we knew they were surprsied when we said, "No."  I know these doctors and technicians deal with this all the time, but for us patients, it's a whole different ballgame.  We went back to the doctor's office and saw a doctor.  At the time he was my hero because he made it all seem like no big deal once I told him I'm not very regular without birth control.  He said we should do some blood work and see what it said.  We left there feeling like we might very well be pregnant after all!  I also was extremely annoyed at the ultrasound tech that really shouldn't have been telling me anything before we saw my doctor! 


Tuesday, April 12th: I get a phone call in the morning telling me my blood work showed a good horomone level for a positive pregnancy!!!  Looking back, I KNOW I shouldn't have gotten too excited since we needed another number to compare THAT number to, but I figured these people were the professionals and if they were telling us we were still pregnant, then I was going to believe them!  We scheduled another ultrasound for the next Monday.


Wednesday, April 13th-Sunday, April 17th: We wait.  I convince myself that the bleeding is slowing down (it did actually) and the cramps are all much more similar to the cramps I had early on in my pregnancy with Jackson than to menstrual cramps...


Monday, April 18th: I have convinced myself we are going to go to the ultrasound and we are just much earlier than we thought.  The tech will clearly see a heartbeat!  We ended up with four technicians in our room, I believe by the time our ultrasound appointment was all said and done.  I was so mad at that point because they all kept talking and I knew they should just say nothing, send the report to our doctor, and let us go talk to our doctor!  I was furious about that fact!  Finally they all left our room and let us be.  I tried to keep from getting too upset at that point because the last time the doctor said something completely different from the ultrasound techs!  So, we went back to the doctor's office and met with one of our favorite doctors (the one who delivered Jackson), and she was so nice.  She explained that we probably had had a chemical pregnancy and she suspected that my blood work would show my horomone levels had dropped considerably.  That was SO disappointing to hear, but she didn't make us feel stupid for believing the test we had taken or anything.  She was about as great as someone could be in that situation.  I had more blood work drawn before we left that morning.


Susie and Joe had kept Jackson this morning while we went to the doctor.  Jackson and I spent the rest of the morning at their house, and that was really helpful.  Joe kept Jackson and Rachel occupied while Susie and I got to really talk.  Nothing like comparing notes about miscarriages with a good friend :(  I did feel much better after leaving Susie's and pretty much threw myself into preparations for moving and plans for the new house!  Oh yes, this all happened as we were trying to rent out the townhouse and get everything aranged to move into the new house!  Great timing, right?


Tuesday, April 19th: I get the results of my blood work back and the levels have indeed dropped a lot.  I was pretty excited at that point because the faster they got back to 0, the faster we could start trying again!


Wednesday, May 4th: Final blood work done that showed my levels were back to normal.


Unfortunately, this was one way we found out how ready we were to have another baby!  Mother's Day was hard.  We went to the National Zoo (this has become a tradition), and it seemed like everywhere I looked there were new babies and pregnant bellies.  That was supposed to be us.  Facebook and I have had a love/hate relationship going on based on various friends' posts about pregnancy discomfort and newborn struggles.  I would do ANYTHING to be experiencing the discomforts that come with pregnancy or to get spit up all over by my newborn.  I am SOOO ready to do all of that again, which leaves me little room to sympathize with others' complaints!  Plus, (and I realize this is 100% our choice), very few people actually knew what we went through at the time.  Josh and I like to keep certain parts of our lives private, and this includes not announcing when we are "trying."  Clearly, if we shared our news of our miscarriage, people would know we were trying to have another baby.  So, yes, we chose to miss out on the sympathy in order to maintain our privacy.  Comments about our plan to increase the size of our family always have irked me to some extent, and after this I just was worried I would feel more pressure.  That's definitely not something you need more of!  But, that being said, I do think it's important to share stories of miscarriage.  I figured better late than never.