The Beginning of my Journey through Grief

The past week has been one of the most difficult weeks in my life to date. I've decided to share my experience through my blog, therefore sharing my experience with people who have no idea of what I'm going through right now and allowing those that do know a little more insight into how I am feeling.

FOREWARNING: This blog entry contains very sensitive subject matter, here is your chance to turn away and stop reading now. If you choose to continue, you may need tissues. This will also be a very long post.

On Friday, September 3, 2010, I took a home pregnancy test and it came up positive. I was very excited, although I was very cautious too. I had been in this same place on February 14, 2010, only to realize I was starting to miscarry a week later. That pregnancy in February was possibly a chemical pregnancy, the pregnancy never progressed at all, multiple ultrasounds showed no pregnancy/growth/changes in my uterus.

On Friday, September 24th, at 6 weeks, I had an ultrasound and when my husband and I saw the baby with a heartbeat on the ultrasound screen and heard the heart beating, we started to slowly and cautiously let ourselves feel some relief and start to get excited about the pregnancy, there was actually a baby growing inside me, this was great news!

Four weeks later, on October 21st, I had another ultrasound, the pregnancy was now 10 weeks along. Again, we saw the baby growing accordingly with a heartbeat and no indication of any complications. We were still keeping the pregnancy secret and not really letting it be public knowledge that I was pregnant. I had a first trimester screening ultrasound scheduled for 13 weeks and our thoughts were after that ultrasound we would go "Facebook" with the pregnancy.

Thursday, November 11, 2010 - - The day my world fell apart
This was the day of, what is called, the NT scan. My husband was out of town working 7 hours away in Louisiana, so I asked my mom to come with me to the scan. The scan was being done at a special lab. We were hoping to be able to find out a guess on the gender of the baby. I was so anxious and excited for the ultrasound. When I got on the table the ultrasound technician was rambling on about how much water I had drank before I got there and other nonsense about my bladder, when all I was thinking was "let's just look at the baby".

While she was looking at the size of my bladder, I was focused on the part of the screen that had the baby on it. My heart started to sink, I knew automatically something was wrong. There was no movement on the screen, no flicker of the heart, it looked like the baby was just slumped over in my uterus...lifeless.

The ultrasound tech started asking me when was the last time I had an ultrasound and if I was having any complications like spotting. I asked her what was wrong and she was just silent. At that point panic really started to set in, tears started to come to the surface and my mom came to my side and held my hand. I again attempted to talk to the tech and asked if there was no heartbeat and she said no. I really broke down at that point. It literally felt like my world just crashed all around me. The room felt like it was closing in on me and there was no way to escape. I kept saying "This can't be real. This is not real. Why is this happening to me? GOD, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? This is NOT supposed to be happening to me!"

Suddenly it felt like I was in a nightmare and couldn't wake up. If I could just wake up this wouldn't be happening and everything would be fine, but it wasn't a dream, this was now my reality. This is a reality that no woman should ever have to go through. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.

I spent a while crying in that office suite, lost and confused, heartbroken and devastated. Amazingly enough I found the ability to text a prayer request to a few friends because I knew I wasn't going to make it through the rest of that day without lots of prayers and support. Then, it hit me, the realization that my husband was 7 hours away. It hit me almost as hard as the devastating news I had just found out. HOW was I going to tell my husband that the baby we had been so happily anticipating had died and we were not going to be taking home a precious baby next May?

On the way home, I sent him a "warning" text message that said: I need you to come home now. Please call me. When he called me back, I told him the news. There was no way to sugar coat it or break it to him easily, I had to just come out and tell him. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, I hated the idea of him having to drive 7 hours, all by himself, with this aching news on his mind and in his heart. Every time I talked to him, on his way home that day, I made sure to tell him to drive carefully and not to speed home, I was so worried about him.

Back to the ultrasound results
As it turns out the baby had stopped growing at 10 weeks. Meaning that the baby died within 24 hours of the last ultrasound I had. To add salt to the wound, the baby most likely died on what would have been my estimated due date for the pregnancy I lost in March, October 22, 2010.

I felt so foolish to have trusted my body, I had been thinking everything was okay for a full 3 weeks, thinking my baby was growing and alive. I was so excited and hopeful and waiting to be in the second trimester so I could breathe a sigh of relief and share with everyone the great news. I couldn't believe that my body never gave me a clue that something was wrong.

I went to my doctor's office that afternoon and she said that the measurements she had from the ultrasound 3 weeks ago and the measurements from the ultrasound that had been done that morning were only 2 or 3 cm different and she didn't want to put me through another ultrasound to confirm because the measurements were confirmation enough. I'm glad she felt that way because I couldn't handle looking at another ultrasound again.

My doctor, who was so loving and caring during the whole appointment, gave me three options: 1) Wait to miscarry on my own, 2) Take medication to induce the miscarriage, 0r 3) a D&C at the hospital. Before I went into that appointment, I knew I wanted a D&C and so that was the option I took. Because it was already Thursday afternoon, they weren't able to schedule the surgery until Tuesday afternoon. She told me she didn't think my body would start to miscarry over the weekend, since it hadn't started anything in the last 3 weeks, but if I started bleeding or having heavy cramping, I could go to the ER because she was the OB on call that weekend.

The mind is very powerful
For 3 weeks my body did nothing to let me know there was something wrong with the pregnancy. Within 24 hours of finding out the bad news, I started to lightly bleed. My husband noted how the mind is very powerful, it seems as soon as I knew I was going to miscarry, my body started to do what it was supposed to do, what it should have started doing weeks ago.

Saturday night when I went to bed, I was starting to feel menstrual like cramping but I tried to sleep it off. By 2:30 am, it was getting worse and I kept tossing and turning in bed trying to find a comfortable position to get some sleep, this went on for 2 hours. At 4:30 am, I couldn't take the pain anymore and I woke up my husband to tell him we needed to go to the ER NOW!

We were so blessed that my in-laws came in from Dallas on Thursday night and stayed through the weekend. If they wouldn't have been here, we would have had to call my mom and wait for her to come and watch our son. I did not have that much time to wait.

I'm going to leave out some of the details, but I will say that Saturday evening I was reading online about miscarriages trying to guesstimate how long after starting light bleeding do women normally miscarry. I'm glad I read several women's stories because it totally prepared me for what my body was doing early Sunday morning.

The ER
I walked into the ER, told the nurse behind the desk what was going on, she quickly checked me into the computer system and then immediately led me to a room. After I changed into a hospital gown, 2 nurses started hooking me up to machines, putting an IV in my arm, and taking samples of my blood.

Within 10 minutes of arriving at the hospital, I started to feel like the room was closing in around me, I was dizzy, nauseated, light head, and felt like the room was extremely hot. I told my husband to hand me the nurse call button NOW! Turns out my blood pressure went from about 140/80 to 70/40! I have never felt that horrible in my life, I felt like I was dying. At that moment, I was so happy that we went to the ER when we did. If that had happened at home, I would have passed out and needed an ambulance. This is where the in-laws staying at our house was a huge help, I probably would have passed out waiting for my mom even though she only lives a few miles away.

After that fiasco the ER doctor came and did an examination and then told me he was going to call my doctor and find out what she wanted to do. A few minutes later the nurse came in and told me my doctor wanted to do the D&C NOW and they were calling in the surgery team. It probably wasn't even 20 minutes later the surgery nurse was taking me to the surgery center. My doctor met us there and talked with us for a few minutes. Then I was taken into the operating room.

I was home by 8:00 am and resting the rest of the day. The physical recovery was very easy. I am still so impressed by my treatment in the ER and how quickly they got everything done. I was in and out of the hospital, including having surgery and being completely put under by anesthesia within 3 hours!

Although I may not understand where God was when my baby died, I do know that he made everything work so incredibly smoothly this past weekend. He was definitely with me and watching over me the last several days. I'm amazingly not mad at God, although, I do have a lot of "Why" questions for him.

Moving On
It's been 2 days since the D&C and now that the physical part is over, I am truly moving into the grieving process. I've never been through this and I don't know what to expect but I know I have to go through this process so I can come out a stronger person on the other end. Blogging my grief, fears and feelings is going to be a part of that process. I don't want to hide my grief and pain.

I had a good friend ask me today if I was ok and I said "No, I'm not". She was understanding and knew the answer before I said it.

I've had several reminders over the last several days that in society today we are taught to hide the pain, put on a fake smile for the world and say everything is great when that cashier or bank teller asks you how you are doing out of courtesy. I just can't do that, I'm not going to hide or be fake. I'm going to work through this pain so that I can one day smile and say everything is great and not be faking it.

If you took the time to read all of this, thank you. I will be trying to update my progress/feelings through this journey on a regular basis.

I want to thank all my family, friends, and my church family for all their love, support and prayers. I am truly blessed by all the people God has placed in my life.