Miscarriage is one of those topics that lots of people just don't talk about and if they do, it's usually pretty vague (especially when it comes to the physical aspects of it). As I was experiencing a pregnancy loss for the first time this last November, I really wished it wasn't such a taboo topic because I really had no idea if what I was experiencing was normal or not. For that reason, I'm not just going to say, I had a few rough months, and move on to more pleasant topics. I know I don't have a ton of people who read this blog, but maybe something I say can help someone sometime, so here we go. If you're just looking for fluff and happiness, feel free to skip this one.
After I ran Hood to Coast, we started trying to get pregnant and like with my previous 3 pregnancies, I got pregnant quickly. I was a little concerned at first because my "pregnant" line was on the faint side, but then I got this good, strong line, so I stopped worrying.
At 5 1/2 weeks, I had a (pretty pointless) visit with one of the OBGYN nurses where they took my weight and blood pressure and went over all the dos and don'ts of being pregnant. They couldn't get me in with my doctor until I was on my cruise, so I had to wait until after.
But I was feeling sick enough to feel confident that I was actually pregnant (although not sick enough that it was a huge problem), so we slowly started telling people. We had Logan wear one of Corbyn's Big Brother shirts from when he was Logan's age one Sunday while we FaceTimed our parents and then I took this picture to send to the rest of our family.
When we had our Ghoulish Feast I wore my skeleton baby shirt from when I was pregnant with Logan to share our news with the Yates and Willes families.
When we carved pumpkins, we took this picture to use when we made our big announcement after my cruise and my first real baby appointment.
Then I headed off on my cruise. Like I said, I was sick, but not too sick to enjoy myself (as long as I didn't let myself get too hungry - not a problem when we got on the actual cruise, but a bit of a struggle when we were traveling to the cruise and not wanting to spend too much money on food).
I ate pineapple any chance I got on the cruise because it always sounded good even when other things didn't.
The motion of the boat always puts me to sleep on cruises, but this time I had even more of an excuse as to why I was falling asleep reading Conference talks before bed. (Diana took this super flattering picture one night.)
Since I was feeling about the amount of sick I was when I was pregnant with Peyton, I thought (hoped) it was a girl and bought this dress for her.
But alas when I got home and went to my first baby appointment the next day (Tuesday), I found out all that sick and tired was for nothing. The very second they put my "baby" up on the screen I knew there was a problem. I knew an 11 1/2 week baby wasn't supposed to look like that. There was the sac, but there wasn't anything in it. My doctor said that I could just be not as far along as I thought I was, but I knew that wasn't the case. He handed me a box of tissues, but I didn't need them. I was in shock. When we got out to the car I texted Rog that there was no baby, but that I was ok. I had brought Logan to the appointment with me and he was just a perfect angel the whole time which was a tender mercy.
My doctor wanted to do a more fancy ultrasound to confirm and scheduled that for two days later (Thursday). As it approached I got more and more irritated. It just seemed like a waste of time because I already knew there was no baby.
The day after that ultrasound (Friday) my doctor called to talk about the ultrasound. He wanted to do some blood tests and see if my levels were continuing to increase and another ultrasound in a few weeks to make sure this wasn't an early pregnancy that was going to progress to be a normal pregnancy. I convinced him that I knew that wasn't the case and we decided a D&C was the best option since I was almost 12 weeks pregnant and the sac had only measured about 6 weeks - meaning my body had had 6 weeks to take care of this on its own and had failed to do so.
We scheduled that for the following Monday afternoon. We arranged for our neighbor, Erin Martyn, to come stay with Logan while he napped and then pick up our kids (and her kids) from the bus and watch them at our house while we were at the hospital. Someone (we still don't know who) had these flowers delivered while we were there. They were a nice surprise when we got home.
The surgery went well with no surprises. My doctor had already been scheduled for something, but said he would come do it if he finished early. I figured no way would he remember, but at the last minute he came in and did the procedure for me. Before getting pregnant I met him only once for my annual appointment. When I saw him for that awful appointment the day after my cruise, he remembered a lot of what we had talked about at our first meeting and made me feel like he had been my doctor for years. My friend, Melissa Yates, is a L&D nurse at our hospital and works with him. She had told him to take care of me after we told her I was pregnant. I don't know if it was because of that or if he's just this great with all his patients, but I feel like he's gone above and beyond my expectations through all of this and still is. That was another tender mercy to have found a great OBGYN, Dr. Michael Traynor, on my first try.
My Relief Society President, Dale Johnsen, brought us dinner soon after we got home. Peyton had dance, so Rog took her while I sat on the couch and the boys watched a show.
The next day I posted about my miscarriage and D&C on Instagram and the outpouring of love I received from that was overwhelming. So many people commented, liked, and texted after reading it. My friend, Jennie Giotta, offered to pick Logan up and take him to playgroup that morning, the bishop's wife brought us dinner that night and my friend, Shannah Tanner, brought us dinner Wednesday night. We were well taken care of for sure!
I was feeling pretty good those first days. My pain was mostly just like regular period pain and I hardly even felt like I needed medicine for it. I made a full Thanksgiving dinner for our family and went out shopping on Black Friday (Thursday night). The bleeding was light too and I was thinking, "That was no big deal!" But then Friday night my bleeding increased and continued to increase through Sunday. By Sunday afternoon I was passing clots like crazy and started to worry that it was too much. I called the nurse advice line and then later when it got even worse, my L&D nurse friend, Melissa, and my sister who is a midwife. I don't know why I didn't just call Diana first because she unfortunately has experienced many miscarriages, so in addition to having medical knowledge, she has personal experience. She was able to assure me the clots were normal and just my body's way of getting rid of all the stuff it had built up for 12 weeks to grow a baby. I thought that part of the D&C was to clean everything out, but apparently it is just to remove the actual baby or in my case, the sac.
***I'm sorry if that paragraph was TMI, but I wanted to share because no one talks about that part of a miscarriage. All I had heard was that it was like a bad period and I felt like had I been warned about all those clots, it would have been so much easier and a whole lot less scary!***
About two weeks after my surgery I felt like I hit rock bottom physically and mentally. The bleeding was mostly done, but I was having terrible acid reflux, back pain, and a sudden increase in anxiety. (I'm pretty sure most of that was related to the changing hormones.) I weathered that for a couple weeks before I finally started to feel somewhat normal again.
They tell you to expect your first period to be weird, early or late, but then, at least from what I've read and heard, your period should go back to how it was before - typically within a few months. My periods were always very regular, but that hasn't been the case since my miscarriage. I've had very long cycles, some that were pretty close to normal, and one that was weirdly very short. We've been trying to get pregnant again, but it hasn't happened yet. Since I always have been able to get pregnant quickly, I figured that I would certainly be pregnant again by the time my "due date" came on June 3rd. Since I was induced at 39 weeks with Peyton and Logan, I figured I would have this baby around May 27th or 28th (since the 27th is a Sunday and they don't always induce on Sundays). That's just days away and I'm not pregnant yet (at least to my knowledge 😉).
I had a video appointment with my doctor about a month ago and he suggested we do an ultrasound just to make sure there isn't anything causing these irregular periods. They want that ultrasound to be between days 5 and 10 of your cycle and they called to schedule it when I was on day 8, but they couldn't schedule me in the next 2 days, so I've just been waiting. I'll call on the first day of my next period to get that scheduled and we'll go from there.
My doctor suggested that we could try Clomid and I'm open to that, but Rog and I agree that we don't want to do much more than that. We watched our sister-in-law, Martha, go through hell and back (and pay thousands and thousands of dollars) to get their second baby and while I definitely would have done whatever it took to get a first, second, or even third baby here, I don't feel like we need to put me or our family through that to get a fourth. After Logan (and the crippling anxiety I experience after he was born) I debated if I should just be done and we ultimately decided that I could do one more. But if we only end up with 3, that's ok too.
Logan is very much past the baby phase in so many ways - he's out of his crib, he's potty trained (during the day, unfortunately we're still working on night), he's very independent (sometimes too independent), and he's starting preschool in the fall. At times it feels like it'd be so easy just to be done and not go back to all that baby stuff, but then of course I remember how much I love that tiny baby phase and I'm back to wanting just one more.
Part of me really wants to take a break from trying, so I can enjoy this summer with my kids and run Hood to Coast in August and then start trying again, but there's also a very loud, ticking clock going in my head because I don't want a huge gap between these last two and if I don't have this fourth baby before the end of August 2019, there will be a five year school gap which just seems too long. 😱
Throughout this experience, I have felt the whole range of emotions - sadness, disappointment, anger, irritation, fear, and anxiety. I always thought that if I ever had to experience a miscarriage, I would just be overcome with sadness, but that wasn't necessarily the case. I was definitely sad, but because I saw in more than one ultrasounds that there never was a baby, the sadness wasn't as crippling. If I had seen a beating heart and then lost that baby, it would have been much more difficult for me. Mostly I have just felt a great deal of gratitude for the 3 beautiful babies I already have and am so grateful that if I had to go through this, it was after I already had them. And I'm much more aware of how blessed we were to get those 3 so easily.
As the months have gone by these emotions have come in waves. I'll be doing fine and then something happens to send me into another wave of emotions - someone announces they're pregnant, someone has a baby, I'll have a weird period or some spotting, or probably the hardest thing was when our ward boundaries got changed AGAIN and we were moved back into the ward we were in when we first moved here (although not exactly the same ward since the boundaries are very different). That didn't have anything to do with babies, but at the time it was like the Happy Valley ward, our callings, and our friends in that ward were the things keeping me from completely falling apart. When that changed it felt like losing the pregnancy all over again (and more) and for a few weeks it felt like nothing in the world was ever going to be right again. I'm in a good place now, but there's no telling what waves are ahead.
I'm not going to say I'm grateful I had to go through this (at least not yet), but I guess I needed to learn firsthand what it is like to lose a pregnancy and have trouble getting pregnant. I'm trying to live with faith and not let fear overcome me. I know that our Heavenly Father has a plan for me and our family and if we are meant to have another baby it will happen when it's supposed to happen.
Hopefully the next installment on this topic will be an announcement that we are going to be having a baby (for real this time)!
