Post by megbar548 on Feb 27, 2013 18:15:21 GMT -5
Today is three years. Three years since losing Sophie. Tomorrow should've been my EDD with Jacob. And April 8 is 3 years from losing David. Three babies lost in three years. I am overwhelmed just typing it out.
Our story begins a long time before that even, though. 21 years ago this April 17 is when I first became aware of and sensitive to miscarriage and stillbirth. I was 4, almost 5, and over the moon about my little brother that was on his way. Unfortunately, he died around 16 weeks. Meeting him, preparing for and going to his funeral and burial are some of my first and clearest childhood memories. Losing him and grieving for him has had a profound impact on me. As a kid I was always keenly aware of pregnancy loss. Years before I was born, my mom also had an ectopic pregnancy and another suspected loss. My husband's parents lost 4- one at 16 weeks and the others all very early. My husband is actually a "rainbow baby"- conceived right after a miscarriage. Fitting that his name is Noah.
We had an infant daughter when we first miscarried. Kelley was 7 months old. I had suspected I was pregnant for a few weeks- since the beginning of February. I wasn't sure of anything really since AF had not yet returned since Kelley's birth. I had a faint positive test on the 6th- at the time I was pretty much in denial. I wish now that I'd tested again sooner. Just to have something else to validate that she was actually here. The morning before my husband started his new job I woke up in a pool of blood with cramps as bad as labor pains. I didn't feel right. This didn't feel right. I asked every mom I knew that had had a miscarriage and a live birth whether it was normal for it to be like this (scary heavy and massive clots, cramps like labor) for the first period you got after a baby. I didn't really get any clear answers. I was too afraid to call my Dr. to get checked out, and we couldn't afford a visit anyway. We could not handle dealing with it. We acted for a while like it was just a horrible horrible period and the test had been a false positive.
Then 6 weeks later, I was pregnant again. I was sure of it. I tested at 3 in the morning when needing to pee woke me up. When I woke up for the day I was bleeding. I don't even remember if I looked at the test in the daylight. This time I was so depressed, so morose at being on my period. It was like 6 weeks before. I had always had heavy periods, but began to despair that this extreme might be my new normal. I kept feeling like something was deeply deeply wrong. The next day was Easter. It was horrible. That Thursday, everything made sense. While nursing my daughter down for her nap, I found myself doubled over in pain, weeping with contractions coming one on top of another. I prayed through tears that K would just fall asleep quickly and I'd be able to get her into her crib without waking her.
There was no denying now that this was a miscarriage. It was every bit as painful as labor with my daughter, and then after a contraction, there he was. Not really bigger than a grain of rice, but perfectly formed and so like the pictures and illustrations I'd seen while looking up the "your pregnancy week by week" articles while I'd been pregnant. This was not a period. This was my son. When I got her up from her nap, my daughter looked at me and saw me crying- she said "mama cry. mama cry baby." and then she pointed to my belly and wept silently with me. She knew. She KNEW. I don't know how, but she did. And she has talked about him and her sister since then just the same way she talks about anyone else in our lives.
We named him David. And I didn't go to the doctor this time either. In my head, OBs were for pregnancy- and I wasn't pregnant anymore, so I didn't need to go. If we'd gone, we would've likely been told 2 things- wait a few cycles before TTC and don't have sex again until you've recovered fully. Because we didn't know that, and because my husband comforted me as best he knew how, we had sex one time when we thought I was done bleeding (I stopped bleeding for 18 hours and then started again for a few days). That night we conceived our daughter Nora.
Nora made it to full term, and was born at home during a snow storm on her due date. Her pregnancy was a rocky one. Healthy in all physical respects, but so emotionally rocky. A week before I found out she was on the way we finally admitted that the first miscarriage had been that, and not just a false positive. We named her Sophie. Sophie Grace. In God's wisdom and grace, we didn't even acknowledge she'd been there until she was gone, and until she'd been followed by her brother David. Losing Sophie and David shook our marriage and our family and it shook our faith. Little did we know that was only the first that was to come.
Nora was born on her due date and as I sat there with her in our bed- getting to know her all by myself for the first time face to face, I realized that I had not prepared myself for her to make it through alive. I had readied our house for a birth. But not readied myself for a newborn. I hadn't looked up anything as simple as how to swaddle a newborn. In just 18 months, it seemed as if I'd forgotten everything. 11 days later she was sick. She had developed meningitis from Strep A (the same strain that causes strep throat). We spent the next few days in the PICU with her. She had a fever of 103.7 when we brought her in. I know it went higher. The swelling in her brain caused her to have seizures- focal seizures in her tiny right arm. It also caused basically a stroke- not the kind with a blood clot, but the swelling cut off blood flow and a third of the left half of her brain was severely damaged. We were not given much hope. But, God worked some miraculous things in that girl, and that tiny baby is now a happy 2 year old who has absolutely none of the problems that were in their best case scenario. None. She's fine. But we were shaken. Our marriage was shaken. Our faith was practically shattered.
A year later, when AF finally returned, we started TTC another child (I'd wanted to for about 6 months). It took 6 months, but on my birthday, at just 10 DPO, we found out we were expecting again. We were overjoyed. We told my husband's brother and his wife and my best friend and her husband that night. My brother-in-law was deploying to Afghanistan the next day and we wanted to tell him in person if we could. We were having a goodbye/happy birthday to me/early happy birthday to my daughter so her uncle didn't miss it dinner. My best friend also told that she was PG- just 6 weeks ahead of me.
The next few weeks were perfect. Absolutely perfect. Until the day before my daughter's birthday. That morning, I didn't feel right. I didn't feel nauseous enough first thing. And then when we were getting ready for my in-laws to come over, I went to the bathroom and saw that I had started bleeding. It was July 9th.
We went that night to my midwife's house and got an ultrasound. I could see him there- just a speck in a bubble, really. I actually thought I saw two sacs, but only one with a baby in it. I still wonder sometimes if he was a twin. We went home encouraged and so began the next few weeks of resting and praying and hoping. I kept bleeding, but he kept hanging on. Then on Saturday the 21st there was labor. Full on total labor. I bled and cramped and passed clots so large my husband was afraid I would pass out. I stayed just shy of the line for "you're dangerously hemorrhaging and need to go to the ER for a transfusion" for 5 hours before it slowed down. We were sure that had been it. We went in to see my midwife on Monday for an ultrasound to confirm and for an idea of what to expect for the next few weeks. Her ultrasound showed that there was still a sac there. There was also something on my ovary or tube- her ultrasound was a trans-abdominal one, and it wasn't clear enough for a real diagnosis because I was so early on in pregnancy. We discussed what that could mean, that it could be that it just wasn't over, and that it was possible we'd lost one twin. We went to the OB she works with for a trans-vaginal ultrasound. They were horrible. I described what'd happened, what we'd seen at the midwife's, and how I'd been bleeding, and then she did the ultrasound. She called it a "blighted ovum with debris inside the sac" because there was no heartbeat. We could clearly see a baby inside the sac, could see that it had grown some since our last ultrasound. When she told us we should schedule a D&C, we said we couldn't do that when there was even the tiniest chance this baby could make it- even the tiniest chance that it might be too early to see the heartbeat. She told us that we didn't need to worry about that because there wasn't any baby. She reluctantly let us schedule another ultrasound a week later. We had blood drawn and levels tested that day and a few days later.
The night before the next ultrasound I was putting my daughter to sleep and I clearly felt my baby move inside my womb. I was sure we'd see a heartbeat the next day, despite that I had continued to bleed (much lighter, but still too much.). The next day, we found out that what I had felt was not a kick, but the amniotic sac deflating and the placenta beginning to detach. I was crushed.
I spent the next 8 days in labor. I would have hours and hours of contractions and passing clots and horrible back-labor-type-pains. Then it would quit for a few hours and I would rest. My son was finally born on August 3, almost a month after I began to miscarry. I didn't stop bleeding until I finally passed the rest of his placenta- a full month after that for a total of 8 weeks of miscarrying. When I say that, people are shocked. Shocked that it's even possible to miscarry for that long. Shocked that we didn't just have a D&C. Shocked that it went on that long but we didn't need any medical intervention. We had a lot of reasons for avoiding a D&C, many of them very private. I was sexually abused as a child, and the idea of having such an invasive procedure like that was incredibly terrifying to me, and I saw no reason to invite those panic attacks back or to make the ordeal any more horrible than it was. We also couldn't come anywhere close to affording it.
But separate from that, I needed it to just happen the way it was going to happen. I needed to know that my body could finish this on its own. I needed to know that I wasn't broken so much that even my brokenness was broken. We also came from the unique position of having twice before conceived DAYS after a miscarriage- and our second living daughter was conceived DURING our second miscarriage. We could not bring ourselves to take even the slightest risk that a subsequent pregnancy might not have enough lining left after a D&C for a new baby to attach to and thrive.
And most importantly to me at the time, I knew this was it. This pregnancy was ending. I was losing Jacob. He was gone or going, and I could not bear to cut that one moment short. When Nora was sick, I had come to a place where even the horrible, even the painful, even the terrifying awful moments filled with fear and worry had so much value- so much worth. I had hit such depths with her and God had shown up and met me there and it was used for good. I knew that would be true for Jacob as well. I had lost two babies without ever really getting a chance to treasure them. And really, I hadn't had a chance to truly mourn for them either. With Jacob it was all there. I mourned for all three of my babies. I treasured each moment and each memory of my pregnancy with him. I don't know a good term for it, but I did the same for each moment of miscarrying him. The same way that I stored up the memories of labor with my living daughters, I did with Jacob. It was pain, it was torturous, but it was ours. I am so glad we did it the way we did. I didn't know it would take as long as it did, or that it would be as hard as it was, and it nearly broke me completely. Oh, who am I kidding. Each one of our miscarriages broke me. Each of our children has broken me in one way or another. But for us, miscarrying naturally instead of having a D&C was the difference between being broken and being shattered. I'm glad we made that choice, even if I do feel I have to justify or explain it every time I mention it.
Now here we are, 3 years from Sophie's stillBirthday. Tomorrow would've been my due date with Jacob. When I calculated that out almost 36 weeks ago, I thought it was poignant and fitting. A redemption coming to the end of February. A reminder that life is short and should be treasured. I imagined sitting here, still pregnant, but unable to complain about the end of pregnancy because February 27th would remind me that it can be over all too soon. Now it seems... I don't know. It almost feels like I've been pregnant with grief for 3 years. I have felt such a heaviness and weight this past week approaching these dates. Very similar to the way I felt at the end of my pregnancies with my living daughters. Heavy, full, and waiting for the Impending Inevitable.
About two weeks ago I started compulsively organizing things all around my house. Projects that've been put off literally since we moved here a little over two years ago. When I looked at the calendar the familiar feelings of compulsive readying made sense- it's nesting. I've never heard of anybody finding themselves nesting at the time their EDD would've been, but that's what this is.
I'm also in the TWW again. We've been TTC for a few months now. Right from the beginning I was pretty sure we wouldn't be pregnant again when this date rolled around. I'm still disappointed, but not surprised. We'll see what the next few months hold.
I didn't set out to write this much, or this much detail. I don't think I've written this much about it in one place ever. It feels good to write about it without bracing for hurtful comments from people who've not been there. I'm glad I found this board today.
Our story begins a long time before that even, though. 21 years ago this April 17 is when I first became aware of and sensitive to miscarriage and stillbirth. I was 4, almost 5, and over the moon about my little brother that was on his way. Unfortunately, he died around 16 weeks. Meeting him, preparing for and going to his funeral and burial are some of my first and clearest childhood memories. Losing him and grieving for him has had a profound impact on me. As a kid I was always keenly aware of pregnancy loss. Years before I was born, my mom also had an ectopic pregnancy and another suspected loss. My husband's parents lost 4- one at 16 weeks and the others all very early. My husband is actually a "rainbow baby"- conceived right after a miscarriage. Fitting that his name is Noah.
We had an infant daughter when we first miscarried. Kelley was 7 months old. I had suspected I was pregnant for a few weeks- since the beginning of February. I wasn't sure of anything really since AF had not yet returned since Kelley's birth. I had a faint positive test on the 6th- at the time I was pretty much in denial. I wish now that I'd tested again sooner. Just to have something else to validate that she was actually here. The morning before my husband started his new job I woke up in a pool of blood with cramps as bad as labor pains. I didn't feel right. This didn't feel right. I asked every mom I knew that had had a miscarriage and a live birth whether it was normal for it to be like this (scary heavy and massive clots, cramps like labor) for the first period you got after a baby. I didn't really get any clear answers. I was too afraid to call my Dr. to get checked out, and we couldn't afford a visit anyway. We could not handle dealing with it. We acted for a while like it was just a horrible horrible period and the test had been a false positive.
Then 6 weeks later, I was pregnant again. I was sure of it. I tested at 3 in the morning when needing to pee woke me up. When I woke up for the day I was bleeding. I don't even remember if I looked at the test in the daylight. This time I was so depressed, so morose at being on my period. It was like 6 weeks before. I had always had heavy periods, but began to despair that this extreme might be my new normal. I kept feeling like something was deeply deeply wrong. The next day was Easter. It was horrible. That Thursday, everything made sense. While nursing my daughter down for her nap, I found myself doubled over in pain, weeping with contractions coming one on top of another. I prayed through tears that K would just fall asleep quickly and I'd be able to get her into her crib without waking her.
There was no denying now that this was a miscarriage. It was every bit as painful as labor with my daughter, and then after a contraction, there he was. Not really bigger than a grain of rice, but perfectly formed and so like the pictures and illustrations I'd seen while looking up the "your pregnancy week by week" articles while I'd been pregnant. This was not a period. This was my son. When I got her up from her nap, my daughter looked at me and saw me crying- she said "mama cry. mama cry baby." and then she pointed to my belly and wept silently with me. She knew. She KNEW. I don't know how, but she did. And she has talked about him and her sister since then just the same way she talks about anyone else in our lives.
We named him David. And I didn't go to the doctor this time either. In my head, OBs were for pregnancy- and I wasn't pregnant anymore, so I didn't need to go. If we'd gone, we would've likely been told 2 things- wait a few cycles before TTC and don't have sex again until you've recovered fully. Because we didn't know that, and because my husband comforted me as best he knew how, we had sex one time when we thought I was done bleeding (I stopped bleeding for 18 hours and then started again for a few days). That night we conceived our daughter Nora.
Nora made it to full term, and was born at home during a snow storm on her due date. Her pregnancy was a rocky one. Healthy in all physical respects, but so emotionally rocky. A week before I found out she was on the way we finally admitted that the first miscarriage had been that, and not just a false positive. We named her Sophie. Sophie Grace. In God's wisdom and grace, we didn't even acknowledge she'd been there until she was gone, and until she'd been followed by her brother David. Losing Sophie and David shook our marriage and our family and it shook our faith. Little did we know that was only the first that was to come.
Nora was born on her due date and as I sat there with her in our bed- getting to know her all by myself for the first time face to face, I realized that I had not prepared myself for her to make it through alive. I had readied our house for a birth. But not readied myself for a newborn. I hadn't looked up anything as simple as how to swaddle a newborn. In just 18 months, it seemed as if I'd forgotten everything. 11 days later she was sick. She had developed meningitis from Strep A (the same strain that causes strep throat). We spent the next few days in the PICU with her. She had a fever of 103.7 when we brought her in. I know it went higher. The swelling in her brain caused her to have seizures- focal seizures in her tiny right arm. It also caused basically a stroke- not the kind with a blood clot, but the swelling cut off blood flow and a third of the left half of her brain was severely damaged. We were not given much hope. But, God worked some miraculous things in that girl, and that tiny baby is now a happy 2 year old who has absolutely none of the problems that were in their best case scenario. None. She's fine. But we were shaken. Our marriage was shaken. Our faith was practically shattered.
A year later, when AF finally returned, we started TTC another child (I'd wanted to for about 6 months). It took 6 months, but on my birthday, at just 10 DPO, we found out we were expecting again. We were overjoyed. We told my husband's brother and his wife and my best friend and her husband that night. My brother-in-law was deploying to Afghanistan the next day and we wanted to tell him in person if we could. We were having a goodbye/happy birthday to me/early happy birthday to my daughter so her uncle didn't miss it dinner. My best friend also told that she was PG- just 6 weeks ahead of me.
The next few weeks were perfect. Absolutely perfect. Until the day before my daughter's birthday. That morning, I didn't feel right. I didn't feel nauseous enough first thing. And then when we were getting ready for my in-laws to come over, I went to the bathroom and saw that I had started bleeding. It was July 9th.
We went that night to my midwife's house and got an ultrasound. I could see him there- just a speck in a bubble, really. I actually thought I saw two sacs, but only one with a baby in it. I still wonder sometimes if he was a twin. We went home encouraged and so began the next few weeks of resting and praying and hoping. I kept bleeding, but he kept hanging on. Then on Saturday the 21st there was labor. Full on total labor. I bled and cramped and passed clots so large my husband was afraid I would pass out. I stayed just shy of the line for "you're dangerously hemorrhaging and need to go to the ER for a transfusion" for 5 hours before it slowed down. We were sure that had been it. We went in to see my midwife on Monday for an ultrasound to confirm and for an idea of what to expect for the next few weeks. Her ultrasound showed that there was still a sac there. There was also something on my ovary or tube- her ultrasound was a trans-abdominal one, and it wasn't clear enough for a real diagnosis because I was so early on in pregnancy. We discussed what that could mean, that it could be that it just wasn't over, and that it was possible we'd lost one twin. We went to the OB she works with for a trans-vaginal ultrasound. They were horrible. I described what'd happened, what we'd seen at the midwife's, and how I'd been bleeding, and then she did the ultrasound. She called it a "blighted ovum with debris inside the sac" because there was no heartbeat. We could clearly see a baby inside the sac, could see that it had grown some since our last ultrasound. When she told us we should schedule a D&C, we said we couldn't do that when there was even the tiniest chance this baby could make it- even the tiniest chance that it might be too early to see the heartbeat. She told us that we didn't need to worry about that because there wasn't any baby. She reluctantly let us schedule another ultrasound a week later. We had blood drawn and levels tested that day and a few days later.
The night before the next ultrasound I was putting my daughter to sleep and I clearly felt my baby move inside my womb. I was sure we'd see a heartbeat the next day, despite that I had continued to bleed (much lighter, but still too much.). The next day, we found out that what I had felt was not a kick, but the amniotic sac deflating and the placenta beginning to detach. I was crushed.
I spent the next 8 days in labor. I would have hours and hours of contractions and passing clots and horrible back-labor-type-pains. Then it would quit for a few hours and I would rest. My son was finally born on August 3, almost a month after I began to miscarry. I didn't stop bleeding until I finally passed the rest of his placenta- a full month after that for a total of 8 weeks of miscarrying. When I say that, people are shocked. Shocked that it's even possible to miscarry for that long. Shocked that we didn't just have a D&C. Shocked that it went on that long but we didn't need any medical intervention. We had a lot of reasons for avoiding a D&C, many of them very private. I was sexually abused as a child, and the idea of having such an invasive procedure like that was incredibly terrifying to me, and I saw no reason to invite those panic attacks back or to make the ordeal any more horrible than it was. We also couldn't come anywhere close to affording it.
But separate from that, I needed it to just happen the way it was going to happen. I needed to know that my body could finish this on its own. I needed to know that I wasn't broken so much that even my brokenness was broken. We also came from the unique position of having twice before conceived DAYS after a miscarriage- and our second living daughter was conceived DURING our second miscarriage. We could not bring ourselves to take even the slightest risk that a subsequent pregnancy might not have enough lining left after a D&C for a new baby to attach to and thrive.
And most importantly to me at the time, I knew this was it. This pregnancy was ending. I was losing Jacob. He was gone or going, and I could not bear to cut that one moment short. When Nora was sick, I had come to a place where even the horrible, even the painful, even the terrifying awful moments filled with fear and worry had so much value- so much worth. I had hit such depths with her and God had shown up and met me there and it was used for good. I knew that would be true for Jacob as well. I had lost two babies without ever really getting a chance to treasure them. And really, I hadn't had a chance to truly mourn for them either. With Jacob it was all there. I mourned for all three of my babies. I treasured each moment and each memory of my pregnancy with him. I don't know a good term for it, but I did the same for each moment of miscarrying him. The same way that I stored up the memories of labor with my living daughters, I did with Jacob. It was pain, it was torturous, but it was ours. I am so glad we did it the way we did. I didn't know it would take as long as it did, or that it would be as hard as it was, and it nearly broke me completely. Oh, who am I kidding. Each one of our miscarriages broke me. Each of our children has broken me in one way or another. But for us, miscarrying naturally instead of having a D&C was the difference between being broken and being shattered. I'm glad we made that choice, even if I do feel I have to justify or explain it every time I mention it.
Now here we are, 3 years from Sophie's stillBirthday. Tomorrow would've been my due date with Jacob. When I calculated that out almost 36 weeks ago, I thought it was poignant and fitting. A redemption coming to the end of February. A reminder that life is short and should be treasured. I imagined sitting here, still pregnant, but unable to complain about the end of pregnancy because February 27th would remind me that it can be over all too soon. Now it seems... I don't know. It almost feels like I've been pregnant with grief for 3 years. I have felt such a heaviness and weight this past week approaching these dates. Very similar to the way I felt at the end of my pregnancies with my living daughters. Heavy, full, and waiting for the Impending Inevitable.
About two weeks ago I started compulsively organizing things all around my house. Projects that've been put off literally since we moved here a little over two years ago. When I looked at the calendar the familiar feelings of compulsive readying made sense- it's nesting. I've never heard of anybody finding themselves nesting at the time their EDD would've been, but that's what this is.
I'm also in the TWW again. We've been TTC for a few months now. Right from the beginning I was pretty sure we wouldn't be pregnant again when this date rolled around. I'm still disappointed, but not surprised. We'll see what the next few months hold.
I didn't set out to write this much, or this much detail. I don't think I've written this much about it in one place ever. It feels good to write about it without bracing for hurtful comments from people who've not been there. I'm glad I found this board today.