The Shock and Pain

I found out I was pregnant on my birthday. Even now I think back on it as the best birthday present I ever got. My husband's birthday is the day after mine, and I woke him up the morning I took the test with an early birthday present. When he opened his eyes there was a positive pregnancy test in front of him. It was the happiest day of our lives. We had been trying for just a few months, and we couldn't belive we were so lucky. The timing seemed perfect, finding out on our birthdays, and his family was visiting from across country, so they were there to hear the news in person. For the first two weeks that I knew I was pregnant, it seemed like it was charmed. Then I started spotting.

Through my short pregnancy I had problems almost from the begining. A week of bed rest was what I got for the first incident of spotting. I had ultrasounds but they were never quite normal. Each time I went in there was some other little thing. Each new problem carried with it this statement from my OB : It could be nothing but you still have a 50% chance of losing the pregnancy.

All I ever heard was: It could be nothing. I kept telling myself that everything was fine. What else could I tell myself? On Monday November 17th I told the children in my kindergarten class, "I'm going to the doctor tomorow morning, I'll be here in time for lunch." I didn't return to work that week.

Tuesday morning, November 18th, I went for an ultrasound. I had been spotting the week before and my doctor was still concerned. The ultrasound tech was the same as my last ultrasound, and I knew she wasn't going to tell me anything, so I didn't ask any questions, just laid there quietly. "Stay there," she said, "I'm going to see if the doctor wants to see you." She said that last time, so I didn't worry until the doctor actually came in the room with her. She repeated the ultrasound.

"I'm sorry," he said to me, "There's no heart beat. I'm afraid you're going to lose the pregnancy." I was devistated. I choked out the words, "Are you sure?" The doctor and the tech offered me words of condolences, but I didn't hear them. I dressed slowly and went out into the waiting room. My father who had come with me was sitting there.

"There's no heart beat. I've lost the baby." was all I could say. The tech told me she had contacted my OB and she wanted to see me at her office. We stopped on the way to pick up my husband from work. The most painful thing of all was the look on his face when I called him out of a classroom to tell him his baby was dead. When he got out the front door of his work he colapsed on me and cried.

My OB told me that it was probably genetic. And looking back, it was never quite right. My first ultra sound she said the gestational sac did not look right. My second the heart beat was too slow. She said it was nothing I had done wrong, and nothing we could have done to stop it. She told me it was still more than likely that my next pregnancy would be normal, and that one miscarriage really meant nothing in the way of future pregnancies.

She gave me the choice of waiting out the miscarriage or having a D&C to remove it. I decided to wait for a week, but in that week nothing happened. No spotting or cramps, so I called her to schedule the surgery. She did so, but I'd have to wait another week. Still nothing happened. Before the surgery I wanted a blood test, to prove to myself that the baby was really dead. If my hormone levels had dropped, I'd feel better about the surgery.

Due to a mix up at the lab, my surgery ended up being postponed a few hours while they repeated my test. My hormone levels had dropped by more than half, so I went through with the surgery. After two weeks of feeling like a time bomb with my dead baby inside me, I finally started to feel like it was all over. Now I could start to heal, and get back to normal.

Life is still painful at times. Jon and I try to honor our baby. We feel jelous and sad when we see others who have been blessed. But in time we will try again. Hopefully it will all work out. Jon and I have too much love to not have children, so no matter what, one day we will have them.