I've decided that the post I was keeping "top secret" regarding us finding out the news will be released with this new post because I don't want to hide the emotions that I've been going through this past month as I came to accept that I was pregnant and now the devastating news that I've lost the baby.
August 22nd, 2012 is full of irony. It is both a very happy and very sad day in our family and for Jon and I. The series of events leading up to this day are going to be both memorable and forever etched in my brain like a bad dream.
It all started on Saturday. Saturday was a big day. Jon ventured to Bismarck for the weekend to break the good news to his family and run a half marathon. Being so close to my sister's due date, I didn't want to leave the Minneapolis area in case I needed to get to the hospital in a hurry. While Jon was happily telling his family our surprise news, I went out to lunch with my 93 year old grandma and decided it was a good time to tell her I was pregnant. I was 8 weeks, and even though I hadn't reached the proverbial 12 week mark (also known as the "safe" zone....although you're never safe), I wanted my grandma to know in case something did happen because I would at least know that she understood. Since I told my one grandma, I decided to tell my other grandma afterwards. Both reacted with such joy and happiness for us, telling me stop worrying that everything will be OK. I also went out for breakfast that day with some good friends and eagerly told them our news. Everyone had so much to say and share of their own personal experiences and questions of "are you going to find out the gender?".....no one worried I was going to miscarry. Everyone talked as though I was going to have the baby in March. I decided that I needed to have an attitude adjustment and realize that odds are in my favor that I was going to stay pregnant because although miscarriages are "common", they are not as common as I was worrying it up to be. Everyone else but me seemed to understand this. Maybe it was me that needed an attitude adjustment.
That night I decided to spend the night in Stillwater with my sister and brother in law helping them tie up loose ends at the baby store before this baby was born. She was due in a week, but was absolutely convinced she was going to deliver 10 days late so we all sort of just went along with that belief. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we went on a 10:30pm grocery store trip that night to Cub Foods. I ventured off into some aisles looking for some good breakfast food for the morning only to return to the frozen food aisle and found my sister next to Gabe in tears. Nissa slipped so gradually on some water on the floor while I wasn't watching and wound up doing the splits on the floor. Although shaken up, she seemed OK physically.
The next morning at breakfast Nissa shared with me that she woke up at 5:30am (about 6 hours after her fall) to some major wetness as though as her water broke. She thought maybe it was urine and took a test on pH paper that she snagged from her former midwifery clinic which tests for amniotic fluid v. urine. A low pH means it's urine, a high pH means it's amniotic fluid. The pH paper indicated it was low meaning it wasn't amniotic fluid, yet she didn't think it was urine. The pH paper was also old and had been sitting in the heat these past few months so we weren't sure of the validity of the test. She explained to me the details of the morning dumbfounded as to what this was because she wasn't contracting at all, and it was a few days earlier than we anticipated (although babies go at any time no one ever believes they are going to be the lucky one that delivers earlier than their due date). She decided that she would go to the hospital to be checked 12 hours after the incident just to ensure it wasn't amniotic fluid because the risk of infection goes up once the water breaks.
We went about our day pretty much convinced that what had happened was nothing. You can imagine my shock when Nissa called me that evening while I was at home and told me that the hospital tested her and it was indeed amniotic fluid. She still wasn't contracting. She was advised to go home and wait for contractions to start. 95% of women begin contracting (if not already) within 24 hours of their water breaking and my sister was proving to be that 5% that don't. She was told to come back the next morning and they would induce her if she hadn't started laboring on her own because of the risk of infection.
To make a long story short, Nissa went to the hospital the next day still not contracting. She was advised to stay and was given cytotec so her closed cervix would start ripening. Once it was 3-4cm they would induce her with pitocin. This long drawn out process started with eager anticipation that eventually turned into impatient frustration when 24 hours later she still wasn't making progress. Finally by the afternoon over 48 hours after her water broke (or at least part of it did because part of the bag was still in tact when she was checked by the midwife) she started feeling contractions and began to dilate. So last night I turned my ringer on and prepared to get a phone call from her possibly to come in when she started pushing during the middle of the night. To my surprise, Jon woke me up at 4am to a text message that said, "wake up!". Confused, I scrolled through my phone and saw a series of missed phone calls and text messages from a few hours earlier telling me that I needed to come in because she was going to deliver soon. Because I don't have my hearing aids in at night I had relied on Jon to wake me up when my phone ring, but the poor guy was in a deep sleep and didn't wake up until 4am.
I bolted out of bed not knowing whether she had delivered or not and raced to the hospital. I barged into the patient room door out of breath not knowing whether I would see my sister in the pushing position screaming her head off or if she had delivered. "Hey come on in!" Nissa's friend said to me. I looked around saw my family all there peacefully staring at a little baby cradled in my dad's arm. I had missed it. My sister had a baby boy at 3am and I missed it by 1.5 hours, but it didn't matter. I have a nephew!
While all of these events were unraveling, a series of worries were also unfolding in my personal life. The day before the baby arrived I started seeing some dark red blood. Only once, but it worried me because I was also cramping quite a bit. It was all tolerable, but it was consistent and felt like my period was coming. Cramping in pregnancy is normal, I told myself. But what made me worry was that pregnancy symptoms come and go, at least for me. This was a nearly all day cramping, it wasn't a one time thing. I shared my worries with Jon and he encouraged me to remain calm and just tell myself that I'm pregnant and that cramping is normal. I decided to take his advice especially because the bleeding had stopped. The morning that I rushed to the hospital to see my sister's new baby I did not have any bleeding or cramping so I figured it was just a bad scare and that everything was OK.
Once I returned home from the hospital a few hours later I started getting ready for work and saw some more red blood. I think that was the moment I really started trusting my instincts and knew something wasn't right. Two days in a row of red blood with cramping? I immediately called the nurses line and demanded (in a very polite way) that I have an ultrasound done. I am so glad that the nurse and midwives at the clinic believed me and ordered one for me immediately. As I talked with Jon through it he assured me that I've had many bleeding scares in the past month and the ultrasounds always turned out OK. I talked myself into believing that I was merely overreacting and that the chances of me miscarrying after seeing the heartbeat 2 weeks ago was low. The odds were in my favor that I would have this baby. Besides--these things only happen to other people.
Jon met me at the clinic for the ultrasound and we sat together in the waiting room as I silently talked myself through this that I was going to go into the ultrasound and they were going to see the heartbeat because so many girls like me have been in this position before worrying over nothing and everything is always OK. We got into the room and ultrasound tech began the exam. The first thing that triggered me was that she wasn't saying anything at all. I know the techs aren't supposed to tell you everything they see as they want your provider to explain the results to you so that there isn't misinformation. But the past 2 ultrasounds I've had the tech at least would tell me when they saw the baby. She didn't say a word and I was too frightened to ask the question because I was scared to hear the answer. As she finished up she had me sit up and she asked me, "so are you going to be seeing your doctor now?". I explained that the midwife was going to call me with results if needed.
This next part reminds me of the bad memory of being laid off in December of 2008. I will never forget the moment when I walked into the office of my boss and saw her pained look and knew instantly what was about to happen. It's like being a dream and thinking, "oh my gosh, is this seriously happening to me right now?". The tech looked at me straight in the eye without a smile on her face and said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't see a heartbeat". She then said the midwife would come find me and go over what's next and then she left for me to change and talk to Jon in the room for a few minutes.
The look on Jon's face and the sadness in his eyes broke my heart. I hated so much that he was so sad. I knew it was neither one of our own faults for this, but I so badly wanted to give him this baby as he has wanted a baby for years (long before I ever did) and I thought we were finally doing it. She then brought us out to the waiting room full of senior citizens who saw the two of us obviously shaken up and we just had to sit there and wait for the midwife to call or visit. It was a horrible 20 minutes as I processed what had just happened and how incredibly unfair this was. The first reactions in my mind were "why me?" and "how in the world am I going to get pregnant again and get through the first 8 weeks of hell?".
The midwife finally called me and I got to escape the onlookers in the waiting room who had probably deduced by now what was happening to a young couple who were sitting there heartbroken in the ultrasound waiting room. She explained to me that it wasn't our fault, that it was likely a chromosomal abnormality which are completely random and that it doesn't mean I'm more likely to miscarry next time. Of course I should believe that but I know that when it comes to next time, I'm going to worry 10x more than I did this past month. She told me that some girls wait to miscarry naturally while others would prefer to just get it over-with and have a d&c which requires some mild sedation. Since my body was showing some early signs that it's ready to dispel of our little precious embryo I am choosing to wait and see if it happens naturally. For the time being, I'm OK with waiting this out. She told me that the baby stopped growing only a few days ago.
Jon and I both came home and looked at each other with a "what now?" look. A week ago I was an expectant mother who was having a baby in March just 7 months after my nephew would be born and now I've shed a layer of my identity. I'm back to being married with no kids. Not married with one on the way. I feel like I've lost a piece of my heart. I can't stand to see Jon so sad and so much want to see him happy.
We welcomed one baby into this world today while we said goodbye to another. Too much irony for one day.
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